Month: July 2017

Making the most of any video you create is important. Although they might be doing a good job of driving traffic and boosting conversions on their own, you should always look for ways to leverage those assets. One obvious method is repurposing. After all, why have only one video when you can have five versions of it? Luckily, video is quite simple to repurpose and with some careful planning, one video can be leveraged in many different ways.

Why Repurpose Video Content?

• Improved SEO

• Better audience targeting

• Wider distribution

• Gain more video views

• Refresh old content

The easiest ways to repurpose video content are to create a transcription and and edit your video into shorter clips. There are good reasons behind this approach:

Transcribe Your Videos

Transcribing your videos has a lot of benefits. For starters, transcriptions can make them more search-friendly because closed captions are something that Google can index. And internal tests by Facebook revealed that captioned videos saw an increase of 12% in view time, compared to non-captioned ones.

Once you transcribe your video, you can easily repurpose the text into other types of content like blog posts, podcasts and webinars. Since quality content is the basis of any good SEO strategy, any way to make content creation simpler is a bonus.

There are many services to choose from for transcribing videos and it’s usually very affordable and fast to do. You can also use speech-recognition software like Dragon or Camtasia. For a human touch, there’s Speechpad, a transcription service which costs about $1 per audio minute for transcription.

Break Up Your Videos

With video, shorter is almost always better. Consider cutting some parts from an existing video and throw them into clips of 10 to 30 seconds each. These mini-videos can then be used as teasers for a product/service, provide the latest update or games on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or elsewhere.

Recent studies show that with our dwindling attention spans, shorter is better. In fact, 56% of all videos published in the last year are less than 2-minutes long. But it’s important to note that video length is site dependent. For example, viewers are more willing to watch a 2-minute long video on YouTube than on Twitter.

GIFs are also a great way to engage with your audience on social media, especially on Instagram and Twitter. Product videos, testimonials, and webinars make good options for quick clips and GIFs. Whatever path you take, remember that these version receive more views and better engagement if you upload them natively to each social platform.

Stories capture our interest for a reason. From childhood on, we are drawn to the lessons we learn, the journeys we embark upon and the chance to free our imaginations.

Stories also make messages stick. Remember that teacher that used to tell stories about what he was teaching and how those stories made you remember what you learned? That’s the power of storytelling. In fact, stories activate our brains in a way to make us relate information to our own experiences. According to Princeton researcher Uri Hasson, storytelling is the only way to plant ideas into other people’s minds.

As one of the most engaging mediums, video is ideal for storytelling. As opposed to a print article or block of text online, videos have the power to create both compelling and lasting memories in the minds of consumers. Here’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about:

What could have been a simple PSA is transformed into a personal story that has a gut-wrenching emotional impact at the end. Even though we saw this video weeks ago, we still remember it.

That’s why over 50% of marketers across the world say videos have the best ROI, and why shoppers who view a video in the pre-purchase stages are 1.81 times more likely to make a purchase than non-viewers.

Some people say all good content is storytelling. That’s a myth. Sometimes content is purely informational. Storytelling goes beyond that. It’s about emotions, authenticity, experiences, needs and driving to action.

The key to good storytelling is to make it part of your brand. It’s not as hard as you think as your business is full of stories. It’s the very reason your company exists and why you have developed products and services for customers. With a strong insight into who your customer is and what’s their point of view and you have the foundation for brand storytelling.

Yet marketers still rely on explainer videos that detail the features of a product or service. What’s missing? The emotional tug provided by storytelling. If you struggle with how to weave storytelling into your content here are a few tips

Make it Personal. Storytelling isn’t a group effort, it’s a distinctly personal one. A single voice telling a story is always more powerful. Think about how your brand was born, what inspired you to create the company and what your personal mission is. But most of all think about what the needs of the ‘audience’ were when doing so.

The Hero’s Journey. Writer and theorist Joseph Campbell believed in every story there’s a hero, someone you care about. The hero encounters a challenge. In dealing with the challenge, the hero’s life is changed. Your story needs a hero who rises to a challenge.

Tap into Imagination. The best stories are those in which the viewer suspends disbelief and enters the story. To make this happen, the storyteller needs to provide some space for the viewer to imagine themselves in the scene. Provide the narrative space to do that.

Sharpening your storytelling skills will improve the content of your videos. There’s nothing all that new to effective video storytelling — and done well, there is nothing more powerful.