Since moving pictures were first created they have been a very popular medium, and have also often been used as a highly effective form of communication. It’s also safe to say that more than any other medium, film and video have the capacity to reflect ‘real life’. They engage several of the senses at once, and when done well have the ability to deeply engage human emotions.

MORE: Choosing the Best Channels for Promoting Business Content

These days, of course, just about any of us can be our own film-maker, editor, director and scriptwriter without the need for a giant film studio, and video content can be used in a myriad of ways. Your videos can also be posted on your website or blog posts, used in webinars and SlideShares, hosted through YouTube, or shared by email or on a variety of social media channels.

Whichever way your video content is utilised, the most important thing is that it supports your content marketing goals and delivers results – especially since this medium can often be a costlier form of content marketing than blogging, podcasts, or social media.

Ideas for video content

You can use your video content to:

• Present yourself as the ‘face’ of your business, and allow your audience to get to know you better.
• Tell a story about your brand, in turn increasing brand awareness.
• Promote and demonstrate your products.
• Provide tutorials or how-to instructions on products.
• Share case studies or success stories.
• Film and share interviews you have held with influential people.
• Raise awareness of an important issue.
• Respond promptly to trending topics.
• Invite people to a special event or webinar you are holding.
• Create a virtual reality or interactive experience.

Some stats and information on video

• Nearly ¾ of all internet traffic is expected to be in the form of video by 2017.
• Of all content, video is considered by around 50% of professional marketers to deliver the best ROI.
• Video has been shown to command greater attention on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) than other content types.
• Videos included in emails can increase open rates by up to 20%.
• Video can boost conversion rates by up to 80% when posted on landing pages.
• While video on your own website may attract more site traffic, hosting it on a third-party platform such as YouTube could potentially reach a wider audience.

In addition, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 83% of B2C and B2B businesses in Australia have used video for content marketing, but only around 56% of these users report feeling that it has been effective. This makes it important to develop a sound strategy when using video as a content medium, and to track engagement and refine and adjust your methods for better results.

7 tips for making video content effective

1. Understand your audiences: As for all marketing strategies you need to start by knowing and understanding your target audiences well. This involves finding out what interests them, how they spend their time online, which channels they use and so on. From this you can develop buyer personas or fictional representations of your various types of buyers. It’s also a good idea to understand the differences between existing and prospective customers so you can develop different approaches for each in your content.
2. Create goals: Develop goals for your video content and always keep these in mind. This will help to drive your strategies and enable you to better plan your video production steps.
3. Be professional: It’s important to post video that looks professional and polished. So unless you have expertise in the use of cameras, lighting, sound production and editing software yourself, hire a professional to produce your videos for you.
4. Use friendly language and keywords: Use language that is conversational and easy to understand – which may involve avoiding jargon and using short and concise sentences. In addition, using popular keywords in titles and descriptions may improve your ranking with search engines.
5. Create transcripts: Consider including a transcript for people to read or print where possible.
6. Make the next step easy: Include a clear call-to-action if appropriate, so that people know what steps they can take next.
7. Use analytics: Track engagement so you can refine your methods and strategies. For example, tracking the points at which people stop watching could enable you to edit or shorten parts of your videos in order to encourage them to watch right to the end.

Next week we will be covering the case for blogging in our series on content marketing platforms for business.