What is the Impact of Visual Content in Marketing?

There is a reason why kids books are filled with colorful images. Kids are more eager to listen and give attention when they read a book with their parents, if they can see a lot of pictures. This is largely because visual content engages and helps them understand complicated concepts better than just a whole bunch of text.

Explaining Visual Content Marketing

Content marketing has constantly evolved. White backgrounds with long paragraphs of black text are no longer holding the success of online marketing. Today, there is a new trend that’s taking the lead.

Visual content marketing refers to using visuals that include images and videos with inspiring or educational texts, branded images which promote the video, audio or written content, infographics and other related images and videos. This content conveys valuable information in an engaging visual format.

You may ask, what is the intention?

The answer is simple: to attract more people to your website and make them stay by generating an interest using visual cues.

Because of the ever-increasing use of visual social media such as Instagram, Pinterest and Vine, online digital marketers and business owners are very busy in maximising the potential of these platforms for the marketing campaigns of their company.

social media loves visual content — Social Media loves visual content

The Impacts of Visual Content in Marketing

Humans have always been comfortable with visual content and it seems doubly true on the internet. No one wants to read long lines of text. That would instantly trigger us to click on the back button. We all want colorful videos, images as well as infographics in order to break up the text and entice to finish the whole content.

[Tweet “Adding visuals to your content will make it more engaging for your audience.”]

Here, I have added a few visual content marketing statistics which illustrate the large impact of visual content in having social media engagement and reach:

In the year 2014, research has revealed that 39% of B2B buyers tend to share infographics on social media frequently.
The quantity of video from brands and people in Facebook’s news feed had a 3.6 times increase year every year.
Socialbakers revealed that the top 10% of its posts were made by over 30,000 Facebook business brand pages and the posts with visuals got the most engagement, accounting for an amazing 87% of total interactions.
Tweets with images get 150% more retweets, 89% more top favourites, and 18% more engagement.
Adding an image URL to your tweets can increase retweets by 35%.
Social posts became highly visual and it is the reason why you are seeing more photos and images in your newsfeed
An industry report and research showed that B2C digital marketers are more inclined to use original virtual assets (56% B2B vs. 63% B2C) and original videos (56% B2B vs. 63% B2C).

The importance of visual content for brands and marketers

A recent study found out that 86% of buyers expressed interest to access visual or interactive content on demand.
95% of B2B buyers said that they wanted shorter and highly visual contents.
Social Media Examiner conducted a research and asked marketers which type of content they most want to learn in 2015. The top responses are creating original visual assets which are then followed by video production.
By providing interactive contents, SlideShare and Brainshark have increased in popularity— from 21% in the year 2013 to 28% in the year 2014. This is because of the appearance of new tools like Visme which facilitates the creation of visual content.
The use of video contents for B2B marketing has increased from 8% to 58% last year with the use of infographics topping the list and increasing its usage from 9% to 52%.
A report in 2016 showed that 37% of marketers believed that visual marketing is the most important form of content, second only to blogging.
CISCO projects that world internet traffic from videos will make 80% of all traffic by the year 2019.
Infographics are shared and “liked” on social media three times more than any other type of content.
Buzzsumo analyzed more than a million articles and found out that their articles with a photo once every 75 to 100 words received double the social media shares than articles with fewer images.

Why is Visual Content in Marketing Effective?

All these statistics showed the impacts of visual content marketing. But why is it so effective? Here’s why:

Engages The Brain

One of the reasons why it is effective is that visual content is processed in a different and less busy part of our brain.

From the moment you wake up to the time you lay in your bed you are listening, reading, speaking or writing words. So many WORDS, all day long!

However, there is this fast part of your brain that is not as overworked; which is the visual cortex. So, when you tap on your audience’s visual cortex, you get to engage more areas of their brains.

Adds Interest To Your Page

Visual content is used to create a more inviting page.

When you break a page text with occasional, related images or videos, you show your reader or audience that the page is easy to understand and skim and it is not “BORING”. This helps information retention and boosts the time spent on your page.

Faster And Easier To Consume

Did you know?

When researchers tested on how long it takes for a human brain to process and images, they recorded only 13 milliseconds.

However, that may not be accurate. Why? Because our brain might even process images faster than that. And 13 milliseconds was the shortest measurable unit of time that they were able to capture.

Images or visual contents are understood in an instant. There is no process like Letters – Words – Sentences – Paragraphs. It is an image of something and we immediately “get” it, get it?

So, why not put that amazing speed to work in your marketing campaigns.

Sign up for a free Rocketium account and start making videos for your brand right away!

Here is an infographic to tell you how visual content generates value

Conclusion

A picture is worth a thousand words, they said. And it’s true even in the web space of today. You are only given a few seconds to capture attention and to engage with your audience, and your content will make or break your whole chance of getting a customer. So, jump into the trend of digital content marketing now and have Sydney Video production create amazing videos and images for your site.

July 4, 2018

How India’s largest startup-focused digital media company is leveraging videos

About YourStory

YourStory is India’s largest startup-focused digital media company. It publishes stories about entrepreneurs and change-makers. YourStory offers a glimpse into the emerging trends from India’s booming entrepreneurial ecosystem. It has published close to 60,000 stories and helped more than 50,000 entrepreneurs access networking and funding opportunities.

We got into a conversation with Aaron, the Digital Head of YourStory. Here are few interesting insights:

Need for videos

In India, YourStory goes toe-to-toe with the likes of TechCrunch. Their followers love the stories and look forward to more and more of their content. Initially, the writers focussed on articles to share their stories. But they soon realised that in today’s fast-paced world, time and attention are 2 very precious assets. The way their content was presented had to evolve and adapt from the traditional article style, especially on platforms like Facebook.

It is common knowledge that social media is a battle ground for videos. Every media house fights for the viewer’s attention on social networks. So, for YourStory, it wasn’t just about pivoting to video. The bite-sized video format helped them improve the experience of how their followers consumed their content. It was short, informative, attention grabbing, and most importantly, fun to consume!

“Our audience loves consuming videos. The shorter format helped us increase our overall engagement, go viral quickly, and gain new followers for our dedicated Facebook pages for regional Indian languages”

However, they had the usual challenges any media house faces when they are transitioning from articles to this format:

1. Complexity of professional tools

Tools like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut and iMovie require a certain level of expertise due to their steep learning curve. Not only are they complex to learn, it takes quite long to get used to the tools and become efficient in their usage.

2. Time consuming process

The process of content creation followed in YourStory is – ideating, scripting, designing, and finally producing videos, with multiple reviews in between. This turned out to be really time consuming and involved multiple people.

3. High production costs

Apart from the monetary costs, the amount of time taken to produce one single video was a real bummer!

4. Lack of integrations

YourStory relied on emails for all the communication – reviewing of scripts, videos, sharing of ideas, corrections, etc. This was highly time consuming and involved dependance on multiple tools and platforms.

They also had to manually upload all videos to their social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

… and above all making it look professional!

YourStory was looking for a simple video making solution that adapted to their existing workflow, but automated the video making process.

“Rocketium made it Easy”

YourStory’s mission is to highlight stories about Indian entrepreneurs and share them with the entire nation. While they continue to write articles, they simultaneously use Rocketium to create highly impactful videos to engage their audience on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

“We did not create short form videos at all. But with Rocketium it was a breeze! We just had to approach the video script like an article and the tool churned out a beautiful video”

Their videos range from 2-3 minutes and primarily focus on conveying interesting stories from India’s budding start-up ecosystem. They convert their existing articles to videos by importing the text and images, using Rocketium’s built in Notes feature. This was supplemented by Rocketium’s built-in library of royalty-free and UGC media assets.

Rocketium also enables them to automatically translate English videos into regional languages to help them increase their reach across multiple cities in India.

How Rocketium became an integral part of YourStory’s Content strategy

In a matter of months, YourStory’s content team of 3 editors scaled their video production by 20x. They went from 5 to ~100 videos a month without increasing their team size!

Rocketium has helped YourStory increase their overall engagement (likes, comments and shares on their videos) and reach (more impressions and views) across Facebook by more than 40%.

“Rocketium reduced our video production time by 90% & costs by over 75%. The team did not have to learn complex & expensive video editing tools to create videos. We didn’t even need to hire experienced video editors since our existing content team created stunning videos”

The scale at which they are able to produce these engaging stories has also allowed YourStory to start 2 new Facebook pages for their non-English audience. In a matter of months, the followers for these pages increased exponentially – more than 500,000 for YourStory Hindi and 200,000 for YourStory Tamil!

Inspired? This could be your story (pun intended) too! Sign up for Rocketium now!

July 4, 2018

Are Your Facebook Video Ads Performing Well?

Marketing on Facebook gives you the opportunity to leverage various types of content in your campaigns, including Facebook video ads. Research indicates that video is the highest-converting medium for social marketing campaigns. Thus, it should play an important role in your strategy when advertising on Facebook.

That said, as with any marketing campaign, it’s still very important to track certain key metrics when assessing how effective a video ad is. Monitoring the following data points will help you better understand how well your Facebook videos are performing, making it easier to improve your campaign if it’s not meeting your standards.

You can run A/B tests on your video ads and pick the best performing video version to show to your audience. But how do you know which video performs the best? And what metrics should you consider? Here are 4 metrics you should be tracking:

View-Through Rate

The view-through rate refers to the people who viewed your video once it reached them. Mathematically, is the number of videos watched divided by the number of impressions (times a page loaded with a video). This metric essentially tells you whether the content a user first sees when your video reaches them is effective in catching their attention.

If you’re not satisfied with your view-through rate, you may want to make changes to the first few seconds of the video. You could also consider adding a more relevant description, thumbnail and title.

Here is a quick read on video thumbnails and its importance.

Positive Engagement Indicators

Don’t make the mistake of assuming everyone who viewed your video had a positive reaction to it. Simply tracking views won’t tell you with any degree of certainty whether a video is making the right impression on potential customers or not.

That’s why it’s also important to track indicators of positive engagement with the content. This includes shares, likes, comments and the shares, likes and comments on the shared posts.

Average Watch Time of Facebook Video Ads

According to one study, the average amount of time a user spends watching a video on Facebook is just 10 seconds. Obviously, the more time people spend watching your video, the more engaged they are with the content. Only tracking video views won’t give you the full picture; it’s worth paying attention to how much time the average person spends watching the video.

10-Second Video Views

Facebook lets you track how many times a user has watched your video for 3 seconds or longer. Unfortunately, because Facebook videos often play automatically in users’ feeds, this metric doesn’t give you the clearest picture of how genuinely engaging your content is.

Thankfully, Facebook lets you track another metric – 10-second video views. Seeing how often people watch your content for 10 seconds or longer will let you know if you’ve succeeded in capturing your audience’s attention. This will also tell you if the audience you’re targeting is the right one for your video ad or not.

To reiterate, the point of tracking these metrics isn’t simply to learn how effective a campaign is. Tracking key metrics like those listed above gives you the information you need to make changes to a campaign if it isn’t working. Monitor these statistics, and you’ll gain an edge over the competition!

June 26, 2018

2018: Predicting the Future of Video Marketing

There’s no way around it: Any business that wants to elevate its marketing strategy must get serious about video marketing. The latest video trends suggest that soon, the majority of consumable content on the internet will be in the form of video.

So how do you create and incorporate engaging video content into your marketing strategy and not get left in the dust wondering why no one’s engaging with your static, text-only page? Let’s take a look at a few predictions for the future of video marketing to help ensure that your content is well made and well marketed moving forward in a competitive marketplace.

Authenticity Is Everything

According to Appnovation, authenticity is one of six major trends impacting the future of brand survival. Authenticity just means portraying your brand accurately. By presenting your brand’s true culture and values, you’re creating trust between you and your customer. If you don’t appear authentic in your marketing efforts, no one will want to engage with your brand.

The distance and boundaries between brands and their customers is slowly closing. Today, people expect a personalized experience that feels real. If they don’t get it, they have the option of taking their business elsewhere.

With so many options available, people today are more and more likely to seek out a personal relationship with a brand that feels authentic. Being authentic could be as simple as replying to customer comments on social media channels, personalizing newsletters, and using video to show the people behind the brand.

By presenting yourself as a real person talking to other real people, you’re giving consumers a reason to choose you and your service over everyone else in a vast and overwhelming sea of options. Authenticity is essential for being successful in the future of video marketing.

Living In a Livestreamed World

Livestreaming has become an extremely popular form of video marketing. With many tools available to make it a quick and easy process and more being developed every day, livestreaming is likely to continue to be an effective way for companies to incorporate video into their marketing efforts in the future.

Apps like Zoom and Crowdcast, as well as social media features like Facebook Live and going live on Instagram, make it easy to record and stream video in real time, helping your customers and audience feel more connected to you. As more and more consumers take advantage of livestreaming, they’ll want to see the brands they support doing the same.

Livestreaming is a great way to interact with your audience. Be sure to define a clear goal before going live so that you’re aware of your livestreaming objective. Maybe you want to answer customer questions about a new product, or inform your network of a new project or venture. Whatever the purpose, livestreaming can help get the word out.

The Importance of Interaction in Video Marketing

People are no longer satisfied with simply reading text on a page. They want to engage on the internet. Luckily for marketers and businesses, new technology is making it possible to engage creatively and dynamically in new ways every day. This technology can help you come up with creative ways to interact with and personalize your content. The more you do this, the more audiences will respond.

Chatbots that pop up when you visit a webpage provide a personal customer service option, for example, while the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality create compelling ways to engage with a website, from virtual online stores to personalized shopping experiences.

Companies are even using virtual reality to study their audiences and conduct research.

“It has been found that shoppers make approximately 70% of their brand decisions when they are already inside the store,” says Rutgers University. “Some wait until the last minute to decide … A lot of factors influence their choices. Accurate simulation is required to conduct reliable research. VR technologies can provide this accuracy.”

It’s clear that the appeal and application of video marketing is beginning to go beyond customer interaction. Companies are likely to take advantage of this trend in the future and utilize video paired with new technology to carry out market research that will better their companies.

Closed Captioning/Subtitles

The only thing worse than not having a video marketing strategy is creating great video content and not optimizing it for SEO. What good is a great video if no one sees it? Spoiler alert: No good at all. There are many things you can to do increase the visibility of your content, from keyword research to link building.

Using subtitles or closed captioning is one trend in video marketing that’s predicted to continue and that can help your content get more engagement. When text appears on a video screen, users are getting information from the video regardless of whether they have the sound on or off.

Prioritizing Video

It’s no secret that marketing directors have the difficult job of always staying up to date on the latest and greatest practices and collaborating with other departments to achieve success for a brand or service. And marketers can’t be savvy unless they place video media at the forefront of their content marketing strategy.

By prioritizing your efforts to address the predicted importance of authenticity, immersive interaction, livestreaming, subtitles, and personalization in video marketing, your company or brand will surely feel a positive impact.

June 21, 2018

6 Ways Video Impacts The Ecommerce Industry

The ecommerce industry hasn’t been around for all that long in the grand scheme of things, yet it has changed enormously in that time. Who could have envisioned the level of fast retail accessibility we now have with 24/7 internet-enabled devices?

As technology has matured, UX practises have gone from cluttered desktop interfaces to fledgling mobile designs, and then ahead to clean, minimalist mobile-first responsive designs. Buyers now take options and convenience for granted — and ecommerce video has assumed dominance.

But why is this, exactly? If we get a little more granular, how has video left its mark on the ecommerce industry, and what can we expect in the future? Let’s go through it.

#1 Video Drives Up Presentation Standards

What do you think of when you imagine a product array from a retail site? A decent image for each one, perhaps some additional images from different angles to provide some more information for the user. Video blows that kind of detail out of the water, and thanks to the march of technology, the barriers to entry have all but disappeared.

Until just a handful of years ago, high-quality video wasn’t viable online: the hosting infrastructures weren’t there, recording equipment was expensive and unwieldy, and internet connections couldn’t handle large files.

But today, YouTube and comparable sites will store as much as you want, just about everyone has a smartphone capable of shooting decent footage, and mobile data connections are perfectly adequate for streaming in HD.

Because of this, the ideal product listing has changed significantly, with users expecting so much more and more often than not being disappointed when there isn’t some kind of introductory video displaying a product. I know I find it invaluable, especially when I’m looking at electronic products.

#2 Video Provides Creative Options

You can accomplish a lot with page text and imagery, but you can do so much more with video, and retailers have steadily come to understand this. As an ecommerce video maker, you can provide commentary on an item, talk directly to camera, narrate product construction or a guide on how to use it. To add to this, you can also shoot footage in different places and in different styles, then bring in post-production elements to make it even more stylized.

With video, you’re not limited to some basic photos of a product and a couple of paragraphs about why someone should buy it. You can get really creative and develop a tone and aesthetic that really makes people want to buy while feeding into your overall brand identity.

#3 Video Saves Screen Space on your Ecommerce website

Suppose you want to offer a full installation and setup guide for a new speaker system. You can painstakingly list all the steps in text, but it will take a long time and various illustrations to make it clear enough to be worthwhile, and that will cause the page to drag out. You could lean even more heavily on high-quality images, but that would take up even more space. Going down that route, you end up confining the guide to a downloadable document, which then means that relatively few people will ever actually see it.

If you make a video guide, however, you can fit the entire thing into a small embedded window near the top of the page. If the user isn’t interested in it, they can ignore it completely, and if they want to soak up all of the information, they can watch entire thing without having to leave the website or even scroll.

By focusing on video guides and reviews, you can fit a vast amount of relevant information into a very small space on a product page.

#4 Videos Make Stories More Viable

We’ve looked at how video offers so many more creative options, and this really makes a difference when it comes to storytelling, something that has traditionally been used for dedicated advertising campaigns but little else.

If there’s a fun little story about how you came to sell a particular product or product line, you can put it in the copy, but it won’t catch the eye nearly as well. Turn it into a punchy short video with animation, transition effects and narration, and you’ll see engagement levels skyrocket.

And think of the effect this has on blogging options. Corporate stories are more important than ever before because customers increasingly expect sellers to be transparent and openly ethical, and what better way to explain what drives your ecommerce business than by filming a video about your entire team?

#5 Video Dominates Social Selling

Social media feeds fly by at a rapid pace, and most of the posts get lost in the blur of activity. It’s the elements that really stand out and command attention that get users to stop the scrolling and focus their interest, and video is the undisputed leader for this, especially with the prevalence of high-speed data connections and autoplaying options.

Retail companies that want to get the most out of social selling need to take inspiration from how companies like Coca-Cola mix regular videos with animated GIFs to create eye-catching, digestible, and highly shareable content.

#6 Video Guarantees Conversions

This one should seem obvious, but let’s confirm it: video drives conversions in a massive way. By next year (2019), a massive 80% of web traffic will consist of video, and coincidentally it’s been found that the inclusion of video on a page increases its conversion rate by 80% on average (there’s something about 80%, clearly!).

And if you think it’s too complex or expensive to use in your case, you’re wrong. You can easily build videos from image and text resources you already have, and then it’s just a matter of embedding them on your product pages.

Big players in the Ecommerce industry use Rocketium to make product videos and then embed them onto their website. You can embed the videos manually, if you have a custom site, or if you have a DIY webstore build, you can find add-ons, plugins or extensions such as EasyVideo or Product Video Gallery.

Video is already positioned at the top of ecommerce selling methods, and it’s only going to become more important as technology develops and always-on data connections get cheaper and faster.

By finding a place for video in your ecommerce strategy, you can start taking advantage of its incredible conversion-driving power, make your website work more efficiently, and enhance the image of your brand. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

June 15, 2018

How to Make An Engaging Video for Social Media in 2018

The trend of daily video views around the globe is very dominant. It is all over the internet, and you don’t need to look into the statistics because it’s not a secret as to how viral a good video is on social media.

So, how do you make a good video? That is the question that this article will answer through its six guidelines.

1.Identify your end goal & video statement

Marketing is one of the objectives existing right now in all social media. To let you know that we are on the same page. This write-up is about how you can use video for social media, in the best way as a marketing tool.

Now that you are acquainted with the true objective, it is essential to further break it down into more specific objectives.

Do you want to make people aware of your product? A new gadget came out, and do you need to promote it well? Or are you determined to show to the world your company culture so that it will ensure everyone that whatever product your company has is an absolute quality?

BONUS READ: How to setup goals for videos at every stage of your marketing funnel

Focusing on a single objective one at a time will help you get your point across while preventing your readers from being confused and too overwhelmed, and through this, your video will also be shorter, because it is more concise and more direct to the point.

People in social media, who are usually busy and have small patience with a long video, will surely love it.

2. Keep the camera steady

Since we are talking about social media, it is not uncommon that handheld smartphone cameras are usually used. However, your shaky hand is always the culprit here.

Don’t worry the solution is quite simple, one which does not require for you to dismember your hand and replace it with a mechanical one.

On a serious note, to have a smooth quality in your video, you do not need a fancy or expensive camera gear to do the job. Sometimes, all you need is a simple ingenuity.

There are different solutions to make your video look professional. One is investing in a tripod. Another one is utilizing the stabilization settings on your smartphone.

If you still want to take it to another level, you may also use an external lens that can fit your smartphone. This will significantly enhance the quality of your videos, which we all need aside from keeping the camera steady.

The thing is, they are all very cheap but very helpful in making great videos for your business.

3. Focus on a strong message when creating video content

Structure your video wherein all parts work hand in hand to achieve a very clear and compelling message. To do this, incorporate narratives to your video content, whereby, it is also an effective way of strengthening your connection with your viewers.

A good narrative has an easy to follow setups, where a problem is stated in the beginning and eventually gets solved in the end. It must be healthy to the heart, because it shall resonate with people, making them relate to the struggles you’d like to champion.

An intense message will always provoke a strong reaction. It is good to note that this results in your video leaving a memory to your viewers and a call to action to influence them.

By being memorable here, your narratives can be funny videos where people will find their giggles irresistible and contagious to others nearby. It can also be a motivational video that taps their energy to be instantly inspired.

Whatever it may be, a strong message in your video content will help you achieve people’s attraction to your brand, the way you have always dreamed of.

4. Take advantage of trends on social media

It is a basic human need to feel a sense of belongingness. This is a feeling that you are socially accepted in a group. This concept has some small changes in the passing of times, especially now in the modern world.

Social acceptance nowadays is also gauged in trendy things that you wear or use. To put it simply, everybody wants to be kept up to date, and nobody in his right mind wants to be left out as the odd member of the society.

What is trending, has significance to your end goal, and has relevance to your audience, is something you should consider in incorporating into your video.

The result will be an extremely engaging content and we all want that!

5. Try to connect with influencers

Influencers or trendsetters are very valuable people in social media marketing. They influence a lot of followers, and for business owners, these people are indispensable to the success of their brands in the market.

Thanks to them, you’ll no longer feel the pressure of staying on top of the social media trend, as you can just be updated to what keeps influencers busy. This is due to the fact that these people are very proactive and talented in exposing their preferences and opinions in such a way that many will follow them.

It is your job to befriend them. Follow their social media channels and who knows, you can maybe ask them on how they feel about your brand.

If not, you might consider hiring them, or you can always just study them, and learn from their actions on how to engage the audience the best way. With that, it is also possible that you can start being your own influencer.

6. Optimize your video content

To make your videos as perfect as possible, you should not forget some basic but essential principles in videography first, especially in the context of social media marketing.

First of all, your camera should be appropriate for social media. Then, avoid digital zoom and just try to move closer to the person or the object that your lens is trying to capture. Always choose a well-lighted area for your videos. Make your videos mobile friendly, that is, it takes a few seconds to load in smartphones.

Now, to finally put the final touch to a video, making sure that it will suit the general aesthetic need of the people, editing is an integral and important part which should be strictly observed.

An editing application will be your friend here. It will help you make an artsy, yet clean and easy to understand video.

A YouTube video editor will do the trick for simple editing. But if you are into a more complex edit, you might want to try other programs available in the market. There are a lot to choose from.

Final Words

You won’t lose anything if you will follow these six guidelines in making engaging videos for social media.

You’ll never know if they are effective if you don’t apply them!

June 5, 2018

How Video Marketing Can Boost Your SEO

With all of our talk about the importance of content, video marketing is a sorely overlooked subject. Visual storytelling has proven to be an excellent marketing tool. Therefore it’s very important not to miss the opportunities it can offer you.

Let’s just start with some facts:

YouTube is the arguably the second largest search engine and the third most visited site on the web [source]
Internet video will account for 79 percent of global web traffic by the year 2020 [source]
Video content has the highest retention rate [source]

That said, it may or may not be surprising to you that videos typically leave a longer-lasting impression as well as improve your chances of ranking on the first page of a SERP. However, as with any useful tactic in the marketing world, it can be misunderstood and abused. Here are the ways video marketing can help your SEO and some tips to help you avoid the ways it could hurt you.

Good vs. Bad SEO Marketing

As with all kinds of online marketing strategies, there are good ways of doing them and bad ways of doing them. Make sure that your site and its individual pages are all totally optimized for their maximum ranking potential. You will need to utilize technical SEO tools such as keyword usage, title tags, H2s and H3s, and proper metadata. It requires effective page optimization.

When you begin link building to your website and specific pages, you will find that it’s important to not only produce good content but to get it in front of the right people talking about it. A lot of companies build up their link portfolios with low-quality directories and sometimes pornography websites — and this often gets them penalized. It doesn’t do much for ranking either. So utilize good and healthy SEO tactics, because although a video can propel your content farther, it won’t cancel out your bad SEO techniques.

Optimizing a Video for SEO

Since video is under-appreciated among marketers, optimizing your YouTube videos with SEO tools is also under-appreciated.

In Search Engine Land’s 2015 article entitled “Do Not Underestimate the Power of Youtube,” they laid out a checklist of four ways to optimize your video content for Google and YouTube:

Create an optimized title.
Use tags wisely.
Create a full description, and fill it with keywords and synonyms of keywords
Consider using closed captions or uploading a transcript.

Of course, good SEO won’t make up for bad content either — your videos have to be useful and enjoyable. But you also don’t want to have a killer video that isn’t optimized. Then nobody will find it, and it becomes purposeless.

The Videos That Drive The Most Traffic

You may now be asking, “what makes a good video?” In other words, what videos drive the most traffic?

This is a very important question, and there’s been a lot of research on the subject. In 2015, it was reported that 91% of smartphone users watched how-to videos. Popular YouTube influencers run their own vlogs as well. It would seem tutorial-esque videos — also known as explainer videos — tend to do really well.

However, businesses are finding that user-generated content tends to be one of the highest forms of video marketing there is right now. It would seem that involving customers and even on-the-ground employees is attractive to people. Maybe it’s the inclusion factor of feeling like they are part of the brand and the product. It goes to show that including your audience in your marketing plan is better than selling down to them.

Your Audience and Your Keywords

Of course, your target market is at the core of everything. The success of your campaign depends on the effective choosing of your audience. So first, decide who your target audience is going to be. Once you have a general idea of the age, demographic, and geographical location they tend to reside in, choose the keywords in your video titles, descriptions, and tags carefully to cater to that audience.

These are what we call “niche keywords.” You can use tools like Google Analytics and WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool to see competing search terms your target audience is searching for. Then, optimize your video accordingly.

Link Building and Video Marketing

The SEO of link building doesn’t stop with keywords in the descriptions. There are some who would suggest that link juice is passed through video embed codes – meaning your video will rank better in search engines the more it’s being shared on websites and in online articles.

Another way to use videos in link building is in an exchange scenario. For instance, offering to make a website or online journalist a video specifically designed for their article, which they can post on their site in exchange for a link to yours. You offer them content, they give you a link. Additionally, video captions themselves – for instance, the blocks you see on Youtube videos that link to other videos or places on the web, pass link juice as well and can be used to build links to your own website or another. And of course, a Youtube description also builds follow links.

It’s clear that video marketing can be used to build your SEO as well as your brand, but what are your real-life experiences with doing so? Please share in the comments below!

May 21, 2018

How to Scale Video Production Efficiently

It is simple to manage videos if you rarely make them. It is easier to track who was involved and how the script of the video content was built. But what happens when you scale video production and have multiple video campaigns running simultaneously? What do you do when you want to know who was involved in making a particular video? How do you manage video creation, review, distribution and analytics?

If your team is making more than 2 videos a day, you need a video management solution. Period. Instead of relying on multiple tools to create, review, track and analyse different video campaigns, you need one platform that can manage all your campaigns and monitor the processes at once. One platform to rule them all! Only then you can do what you do best – ideate and optimise.

Why your business should scale video production?

For a moment, imagine that your team can scale video production to 10 videos a day. You will realise that this opens up opportunities that you had never even considered before.

1. Generate more qualified leads

With video production not being an issue, you can have better targeted and more personalised video ads. You can explore new ad networks, platforms and audiences, run A/B tests, and experiment just like you do currently with images and text.

2. Reduce drop-off in your sales funnel

Including the word video in an email’s subject boosts open rates by 19%, improves click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26% (source).

Your team can now create videos for every drip you’re running for your inbound traffic. You can have industry specific emails, usage specific emails, location specific emails, device & OS specific emails – all with relevant videos.

3. Boost SEO for all landing pages

You already know that including a video on your landing pages helps in SEO. Why restrict yourself to only the homepage? Create a video for every landing page you have. You can add demo videos, explainer videos and even testimonial videos to boost conversions on your landing pages.

4. Increase efficiency of your content strategy

Is your content generating quality leads for your sales team to convert? You can improve this by establishing your brand as an authority in your industry, which in turn, can be achieved by producing premium quality content that your users will find value in.

Make a video for every article you produce. The video can be a short 1 minute introduction to the article, where you mention prerequisites, statistics, etc. You can also summarise your article and present it as a 1-2 minute video. Just make sure you put the video in the first fold of the article, so that users can view it before they read your article.

Create your own video library on your blog. If you use WordPress, you can select themes that support video uploads. If not, you can create a video gallery on your existing blog with the help of your web developers. These videos can be a part of your existing content strategy, or you can build a new one around it.

5. Get traction on social media

Social media is a breeding ground for videos. By posting videos, you can boost user engagement and increase brand awareness efficiently.

Honestly, apart from YouTube, no other social media platform will help you generate revenue by producing more videos. But you will get something more valuable from this – a solid social media presence! You can generate leads to fill the top of your funnel, build your brand’s authority, and engage existing and potential users by running competitions.

Different social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat support different video formats (square, landscape and portrait). You can create copies of the same video in different formats, and experiment to see which format and platform work the best for your brand. This article is a good place to start.

How to scale video production?

You can scale video production in 2 ways – increase number of videos for existing campaigns, or build new video campaigns.

1. Increase number of videos for existing campaigns

You can increase your current video production rate by either scaling your team, or by decreasing the time spent on producing a single video.

Scaling your team gives rise to new complications which I will address below. Ideally, you would want to optimise the video creation time without doing any changes to the team. This is why online video making tools like Rocketium are used by businesses to make more videos using their existing teams.

2. Build new video campaigns

Here are few ideas for new video campaigns you can run:

Video emails – you can use videos in sales emails to convert users to paying customers, or in newsletters to boost customer engagement and build stronger relations with your customers
Testimonials – make videos where clients share how great it’s been to work with you, industry partners who have benefited from your collaboration, or even your own team talking about what it was like to be part of your latest project
Reviews, UGC (User Generated Content) – run competitions asking your users to submit videos of how they use your product, or ask them to review your product through a video and string them all into one detailed video you can use in emails or landing pages
FAQs – checkout the FAQ microsite of McDonald’s Canada and how they use videos to answer frequently asked questions

Complications that arise when you scale video production

If you’ve decided to boost your video production rate, you need to brace yourself for these potential hurdles:

1. Managing multiple videos becomes difficult

With multiple video campaigns running simultaneously, keeping track of what campaigns are live, and the stage of each campaign becomes cumbersome.

Slack, Google Sheets, Trello – you’ll realise that each have their own restrictions and limitations.

2. Tracking video creators and contributors of individual videos is a pain

There are times when you would like to know who was involved in making a particular video – maybe you want to replicate it, or maybe you want to run A/B tests. But this becomes difficult and time consuming, particularly if the same team is involved with multiple video campaigns.

3. Communication gap increases

The communication between your video creation team, video design team and the distribution team must be quick and precise.

The distribution team consults the video analytics and determines what content works best on what platforms. This information should be conveyed to the video creation team so they can ideate and come up with engaging content for different channels. The video design team collects input from both the teams and styles the videos so they go hand-in-hand with the content, ensuring that viewers complete watching the whole video.

If communication breaks at any point, or the information is delivered later than expected, it could affect your entire video campaign. How do you scale video production and maintain clear communication at the same time?

4. Video review becomes complicated

There is a general review process followed in most media houses and business where there is a high content creation rate:

The video creation team creates a script and sends it to an editor for a review via email (or Slack). After reviewing, the editor sends corrections to the team, who make the changes and send the script back to the editor. After getting the final green signal, the video creation team fills in the content and proceeds to forward the video draft to the design team. The design team finalises the styles and sends it back to the editor for a final review. Post this, the distribution team picks up the videos and puts them in respective channels.

This process works seamlessly when you have very few videos. But once the video numbers go up, following the process becomes time consuming and complicated. There are times when either the creation team or the styling team sits idle because videos remain in the queue for review. This ultimately results in decreasing the efficiency of your video campaigns. This affects all efforts you’ve put in to scale video production.

5. Educating new recruits of different tools & processes is time consuming

When you have new members in the video creation, styling or the distribution team, you need to train and familiarise them with the multiple tools you’re using for communication, video creation, review, etc.

It may take close to a month for them to get to speed and perform efficiently.

WORKSPACE – One platform to rule them all!

Imagine if you had one platform, one tool, where you can create and manage all your videos at one place. Workspace is a complete end-to-end video management system at your fingertips. You can ideate, create, review, share and analyse videos by involving all the different teams at once.

Workspace is the perfect fit for newsrooms and large media houses which focus on publishing multiple videos in a day. All of the above roadblocks can be avoided by using Workspace, thus becoming your go-to platform to scale video production.

Features

1. Kanban style video management UI

You can create different lists which represent each stage of your video creation process. Using simple drag and drop, you can move videos from one list to the other, as it progresses through the video creation stages.

kanban style management for when you scale video creation — Each of these cards is a video!

If you use Trello, Workspace is a breeze!

2. In-built video creation studio

After you jot down ideas for videos, you can assign videos to individual members and create the video right there! The Rocketium Studio is integrated inside this, so you don’t have to depend on more than one tool to ideate and create.

3. Real time comment and review

You can view the drafts, review them, and comment right there the changes you would like to make. Just like Slack, you can tag your team mates and just like Google Docs, you can track the changes in real-time.

review and comment in real time in rocketium workspace — Tag team mates and they get notified in real time!

4. Integrations

Workspace comes with tons of integrations to help you create and manage videos.

For creators and editors:

You can access over 1.5 million royalty free media assets from Storyblocks, Shutterstock, Lobster (for UGC), Pexels and Pixabay
Creators can access copyright free music tracks from Soundstripe and individual composers
You get notifications via email and Slack
You can connect your website’s RSS feed to Workspace and create video entries automatically for every new article

Distributors can share videos directly to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Brightcove and Dropbox.

5. Analytics

Get metrics, numbers and visually appealing charts that let you know how your video campaign is performing, the contribution of every team member, and how much time it takes for you to make one video.

Use these to optimise your video creation process further!

You can sign up for Workspace here.

May 3, 2018

Rocketium and Soundstripe : Create Videos with Premium Music

We’re excited to partner with Soundstripe and give access to a new collection of over 10,000 royalty-free background music tracks, for our users inside Rocketium.

How to use Soundstripe tracks in Rocketium?

You’ll find these background music tracks inside your Rocketium Editor.

STEP 1: Go to the Editor

Visit https://rocketium.com/editor, or access it from inside your Dashboard.

STEP 2: Click on ‘Continue’

After you’ve decided the video script and have added your content, click CONTINUE to process to the next step.

STEP 3: Select MUSIC tab from the left panel

Premium tracks from soundstripe inside Rocketium

Things to note

You can check the Terms of Use for this integration here.
All Soundstripe assets are available for purchase and use within Rocketium only.
You can preview the music track and listen to it before purchasing.
Once purchased, the music track can be used for the particular video only and not for it’s copies, clones or any new video.

May 3, 2018

Access over 65 billion UGC in Rocketium

Rocketium is excited to announce a new integration with Lobster.

This integration gives our users access to 65 billion UGC (User Generated Content) within Rocketium. To know the importance of UGC in your videos, you can give this article a read.

How to use Lobster images in Rocketium?

You’ll find these images inside your Rocketium Editor.

STEP 1: Go to the Editor

Visit https://rocketium.com/editor, or access it from inside your Dashboard

STEP 2: Click on ‘Search’

STEP 3: Enable ‘Paid Results’

Search for paid results inside Rocketium's Editor — Search for paid results inside Rocketium’s Editor

STEP 4: Enter Search Terms

Search terms inside Rocketium Editor to get Lobster assets

STEP 5: Confirm your purchase

Things to note

You can check the Terms of Use for this integration here.
All these photos are available at discounted prices inside Rocketium for use within Rocketium Studio only.
Once you purchase the image, you can re-use it multiple times for subsequent videos. You’ll find these images in your ‘Saved Images’ tab.
Saved Images tab