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You need a high quality video content strategy if you plan on standing out.
Video content marketing is more than just the norm these days; it has become essential to incorporate this medium into your strategy. Thankfully, the barrier to entry is no higher than having a smartphone and something to say, along with a clear understanding that creating a high quality video doesn’t mean you need the best equipment or a trained on-screen personality to perform for you.
So, how should you proceed to develop a video strategy that achieves the results you want if you’re part of a lean team that already feels pressed for time, money, and resources?
Read on for a simple blueprint you can follow to start producing more vital video content marketing resources.
- Put together an effective video content marketing tool stack to save time
- Leverage relationships, strategic ads, and free resources to maximize your budget
- Empower everyone on your team to contribute
- Incorporate a strategy of recycling your best content to maximize effort
Put together an effective video content marketing tool stack to save time
It’s no secret that the most productive teams rely on smart software, equipment, and accessories to streamline their duties and get more done faster, often with fewer people in the mix.
According to a new report from Wibbitz, those who produce between 1 and 50 videos each month only use 9 to 14 tools on average to get the job done.
On the flipside, prolific teams that produce between 50 and 100 videos per month rely on an average of 30 tools to make their video content marketing magic happen.
Here are some areas of your video content marketing tool stack to consider bolstering.
Feel free to feature smartphone footage – and use lenses to amplify the experience
Using a multi-thousand-dollar DSLR camera mounted on a tripod isn’t going to make or break your video content strategy in today’s marketing climate. That’s due to authenticity reigning supreme, so a slightly shaky smartphone video can often provide the human element that viewers crave.
Don’t sweat it if your team doesn’t have fancy camera equipment or a budget to procure it; you’ll still be able to produce high quality video content marketing materials with someone’s iPhone or Android.
One way to elevate this kind of video content is to use special lenses and mounters for smartphones, such as these accessories from Moment, to augment your productions with multiple shot styles and stabilization.
Source quality stock footage, stills, and user-generated content
The beauty of video content marketing today is that you don’t even have to shoot all the footage yourself to produce a high quality video.
That’s because you can tap into platforms like Getty Images, Shutterstock, Storyful, and Pond5 to source beautifully shot stock video footage that aligns with their brands.
Instead of having to brainstorm a shot list and spend time shooting, you can search for the types of stock footage you need in these libraries and save your team from having to learn potentially new skills and putting them into action.
Make it easy to optimize your video content strategy across every platform
Video content marketing is especially crucial to use on social platforms, but each platform seems to use different standard dimensions for video.
That means your video content strategy should include optimizing for each platform if you want to maximize ROI and engagement.
Landscape videos, shot in 16:9, are always your best bet for a primary video format because they can be uploaded on YouTube and many other places. But these kinds of video don’t always perform best other platforms.
Consider Instagram, where Stories uses vertically shot, 9:16 videos, and videos in your feed are best when square.
To make it easy for your team to make videos in as many formats as you need to effectively promote across your desired platforms, consider a software like Wibbitz that allows you to create and edit multiple formats of video content – and source images and clips from all of the above stock footage libraries – in one platform.
Leverage relationships, strategic ads, and free resources to maximize your budget
We already discussed how using a smartphone is perfectly acceptable for launching your video content marketing efforts, effectively opening the doors for teams of all sizes and budgets to dip their toes into this rushing river of high ROI.
But there are several other areas you can tap into to reduce your marketing video strategy spend — and even help your allies do the same in the process.
Create strategic partnerships to boost the visibility of your social posts
According to Hootsuite, commenting on Instagram posts helps boost their visibility, and it increases the likelihood of future engagement with your brand.
To amplify your social standing without throwing down on paid promotions, create a network with peer companies that have similar target audiences but aren’t direct competitors. Agree to like, comment on, and share each other’s videos on social. Start compelling conversations in the comments of their posts, and ask them to do the same in yours.
By building a culture of reciprocity on social media among your industry allies, you’ll leverage the power of partnership against the algorithms to effectively build up everyone’s presence without having to shell out cash to the platform.
Throw your money only where it counts most
While we hope that all your video content marketing endeavors result in big wins, the law of averages will likely surface when it comes to your projects.
If it looks like you’ve hit a home run with a particular piece of content without putting promotional spend behind it, consider throwing down on some premium exposure.
Utilize the Boost feature on videos that you find are performing very well organically. And if you already run paid social ads, double-down your use of video within them, as 62% of those surveyed in the recent Wibbitz report found video ads to be the most effective format for social.
Use the most powerful free video content marketing tools available
If you have over 10,000 Instagram followers and want to generate more site traffic, consider using video to create compelling Stories on your account and leveraging the swipe-up feature.
This perk of reaching the 10k-follower milestone is a powerful tool for freeing consumers from the stranglehold of social feeds and getting them onto your page.
Upload the same content to your Facebook Stories to expand your reach.
Empower everyone on your team to contribute
Let’s face it: video is still very new for some, and not everyone is comfortable “putting themselves out there” on camera.
Not to worry.
While showing face on film can help, doing so is certainly not essential. What’s more important is giving your team the power to quickly and easily create a high quality video within the constraints set forth by your brand.
Here are a few ways to tap into the power of your personnel to move the needle with your marketing video strategy.
Create a simple, repeatable video content marketing workflow
Wibbitz found that those who produce videos in-house are far more productive than their outsourcing peers, creating between 3 and 10 videos per month compared to just 1 to 2 videos, respectively.
Still, that doesn’t mean an agency or freelancers can’t be part of your plan, as 35% of the leaders surveyed answered that their marketing video strategy relies on both in-house and outsourced labor.
The real secret to success for the most prolific video content marketers is having a solid team workflow that can be constantly repeated.
On the leanest of teams, you can divvy up the execution of your video content strategy between the Content Manager and Social Media Manager (extra points if they’re the same individual at your organization).
The Content Manager should define the goals for each video content marketing project, setting the tone and strategic direction for the rest of the team to follow.
Together with the Social Media Manager and, if you have one, your dedicated video producer, you should brainstorm ideas. Then, put together a timeline and social calendar with the team and get to work.
First, write a script – aim for short, digestible content that ranges from ~40 to 90 seconds – and plan your storyboard.
Figure out the concepts and emotions that you want to have resonate in your video to inform how you shoot it and search for stock footage. Then, make the magic happen – even if you’re shooting on an old G3 – and then ruthlessly edit your video until it’s as refined as can be.
After that comes the real work: Distributing your video across every platform you operate on so that it reaches as many eyeballs and, hopefully, ears, as possible. Just make sure you turn off autoplay on social channels.
Get the whole company involved
If you don’t have a dedicated video producer on staff, you may very well have a capable individual lurking elsewhere in your office, but you just don’t know it yet.
That’s why it pays to let your entire company know when you’re planning on developing a video content strategy; you never know if there’s someone in another department who’s a passionate video hobbyist.
While we’re not advocating taking someone away from their day-to-day duties, you can tap into the expertise of these employees no matter their assigned company role. Someone in accounting or finance might have a successful vlog on the side, and they can help you figure out where the best lighting is and what angles to use when filming. Heck, maybe they’ll even let you borrow their DSLR camera and tripod if you ask nicely enough.
You also never know if you have a natural extrovert in your organization who’s been waiting for the opportunity to use their charm on camera to help the company.
Ask around the office or on Slack to see if anyone would be willing to go on camera to do a video for the company, and don’t be afraid to offer incentives. After all, this would be going beyond their job description in a big, unexpected way, and if someone is willing to share a natural talent for the benefit of the company, it should always be recognized and rewarded.
Incorporate a strategy of recycling your best content to maximize effort
When you’re working with limited resources, it’s not necessarily in your best interest to use your team’s precious time to create brand new material.
Instead, we suggest opting for a marketing video strategy that emphasizes recycling content you’ve already produced and repurpose it in new ways. This will help to expand your reach and save your team from having to come up with fresh ideas and execute on them constantly.
Here are a few ways you can recycle content to simplify your video content strategy.
Distill top blog articles and social posts into high quality video
You’re probably familiar with the Pareto Principle in sales, which posits that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your clients.
This 80-20 principle also surfaces in content marketing, where most companies find that the success of their blog or social channels is derived from roughly 20% of their posts.
When planning a marketing video strategy, do a deep dive into your top-performing articles and most-liked and most-shared social posts. Then, try repurposing them into short, high quality videos that summarize their ideas, and use a tool like Wibbitz to easily create optimized videos for every platform you post on.
Cut up any long videos you’ve already produced into digestible clips
Most content marketers are already producing at least one or two videos each month. So, if you have any that are longer than two minutes, consider a video content strategy of chopping them up into several short clips to multiply your output.
Having more video content marketing materials on hand will also help you in other marketing areas, such as SEO and social engagement.
You’ll be able to experiment with different headlines and descriptions that can help you stand out in organic search on Google and social platforms. Plus, you’ll have more material for posting on social that can potentially resonate with your target audience and expand your reach.
by Sarah Hughes
Abridged and re-published with kind permission of Parse.ly, the insights company that empowers media owners to understand and improve digital audience engagement through data
