With the rise of YouTube video has become a mandatory part of company’s sales and support strategies online. Yet, given that video is expensive to produce – it might be a good idea to consider some basic best practices before you record and launch your video offerings.
Know The Audience
Author/Copyright holder: marc cornelis. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
As UX professionals this should come as second nature but it’s worth reinforcing. You probably know that the younger generation is more likely to click on a video than the older generation; but did you know that very young children are the most likely to click but the least likely to buy once they have done? Building a profile of how your audience uses video and acts on it will help you create better video offerings.
Tell a Story
Videos are supposed to tell us a story. Ideally you should include the “3 Tells” strategy as part of your story too. e.g. Tell people what you will tell them (an intro), tell them (the body of content), and then tell them again (a summary before the outro). The better you tell your story – the more engaging that the content will be.
Author/Copyright holder: Magenta Rose. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
Connect With Your Audience
One of the key objectives of video content is to get that content shared. To do that you need to connect with your audience. They are most likely to share material that:- Evokes an emotional response
- And/or answers an important question for them
- And/or is on a hot or trending topic at that moment
- And/or enhances their sense of self or other’s perception of them
- And/or helps them develop relationships
And they’re least likely to share:
- Advertising that is clearly advertising that fails to fulfil the criteria above
- Material that feels unduly negative or which invokes negative reactions
- Material that is unsuitable for minors or their professional lives (e.g. avoid nudity, sexual content, violent content, etc.)
Keep on Topic
Believe it or not; the best videos are the shortest videos. People are too darned busy to watch a 30 minute marathon on YouTube – so keep it short. You will find that if you can keep your videos under a minute – they’ll be shared more often than longer videos are. Ideally, video should accompany other content on a similar topic. Video is better when it supports other material rather than substitutes for it.
Make it Easy to Find
Author/Copyright holder: pozaristul. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC 2.0
SEO may seem like something that only applies to text but there’s a reason you get to give your video a title and add keywords to it – people can only find your video via search functions of some kind in most cases. That means ensuring that you label videos clearly and add the right relevant keywords to them. Don’t overdo this – titles still need to be simple and adding 200 keywords is a waste of time. If you find you have to do either of these things go back and revisit the video and try and separate it into smaller chunks.
Header Image: Author/Copyright holder: Karl Gude. Copyright terms and licence: All rights reserved. Img
