2017 was the year of the video. In fact, over 500 million people watch videos on Facebook every single day — that’s right, over half a BILLION people, and globally, video traffic will be 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021, up from 73% in 2016. What’s more is the emergence of live streaming and its massive growth in popularity, characterised by 13% of Internet traffic being devoted to it by 2011, growing 15-fold from 2016.
Based on these statistics you can see how popular video is, but it begs the question: what are the online video statistics 2018 will bring? Will it continue to grow (most likely)? Will it prove to be the future of content marketing (that’s what it looks like)? Well, considering that video used to be optional — an extra that wasn’t needed but was still nice to have, and now is paramount for successful marketing strategies, it’s easy to see that the answer to these questions falls within the ‘yes’ category.
With that in mind, let’s switch the focus to the new year and the video marketing tips & trends 2018 will bring and you need to follow.
Opt for Native Videos on Social Media
Like videos, social media use is increasing every year. As such, don’t constrain yourself to one platform for your videos, post them everywhere your audience is likely to be! And by post I mean post, as in don’t just share them. Posting them as native videos for each platform will help you because they’ll be a direct feature in your audience’s feed, and if you upload them to, lt’s say Facebook, you’ll be able to create a video gallery where your audience can find every single one (you can even choose a featured video to show off).
There’s also a 135% increase in organic reach when you post a native video instead of a photo, and you can further edit them directly on the site itself by choosing a thumbnail, enabling autoplay, adding subtitles and CTAs, and so much more.
Transcribe and Translate Your Videos
A good way to accommodate your entire audience is by transcribing your video with subtitles and translating it for those who prefer to use a language other than yours. Apart from accommodating, people, plain and simple, like captions. In fact, 80% of people who use subtitles/captions have no hearing loss, but still choose to use them for better comprehension. And considering that you’ll most likely post the video on social media, it’s a given that your video will auto-play with no sound, so why not let your viewers know what’s going on before they click ‘un-mute’?
Including captions with your video also serves SEO purposes as well, and can help get your video rank because you’re giving search engines something to crawl for relevancy and indexing purposes.
Go Live
You can bet that for video marketing 2018 will be filled with live videos. Not only do they form a more intimate connection with your audience, but they’re excellent for engagement because what you see is what you get. In other words, it’s an unpolished finish without hours of editing that draws users in because of the real-time factor that live streaming entails. As for how you can make the best of live video, you can:
- Livestream the grand opening of your physical location
- Do a product demonstration for new releases
- Go behind the scenes into what goes into running the company on a day-to-day basis (this gives your brand a face they can attach associate it with)
- Upgrade interviews and Q&A sessions by allowing the audience to chime in via comments
As Neil Patel says: “Live streaming has become one of the best ways to forge an authentic, one-on-one connection with customers. Brands are using live video to build a larger, stronger presence and reach audiences on the fly like never before.”
Obviously Enough, Have a Purpose
Finally and obviously enough, always have a clear purpose with each and every one of your videos, and always include videos in your branding strategy and align them with what your brand stands for. For example, are you explaining how your products or services work? Are you demonstrating them in action? Are you establishing trust with a previous customer’s testimonial? Are you helping out with a how-to video? Whatever the reason behind the video, make sure that it (the video) does just that. Users are quick to lose interest, and it’s best to let them know exactly what to expect when they click play (or scroll by).
Final Thoughts and TL;DR
Video marketing gives brands an opportunity to connect and engage with their audience. It’s a powerful engagement tool that’s right there for everyone to use and benefit from, so go out and hit record. Anyway, to conclude let’s go over the video trends 2018 has in-store for us one more time:
- Opt for native videos on social media to increase their impact
- Transcribe and translate your videos for optimal reach and engagement
- Go live with your videos to forge a more intimate connection with your audience
Obviously enough, have a purpose that’s clear to both you and your viewers.