If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Then Is a Video Worth a Million? ~ Greg Jarboe
Content marketing
Content marketing has become a central strategy for marketers as traditional marketing expands to encompass social media and the many platforms it entails From blogging to social networks to website landing pages themselves, content marketing is essential for SEO rankings, and therefore a brand’s visibility across the Web. As content marketing evolves, so do the many forms this industry essential takes. Content marketing, which started with the written word, has also transformed itself into the world of static and moving images.
Taking concepts that have long existed in traditional marketing, content marketing is moving increasingly into the visual space. From that traditional ad that captures the audience’s attention through visual appeal, the concept of the infographic has emerged, and from the idea of commercials comes to video marketing via many channels such as YouTube, and the newer Vine and Instagram video. As we have progressed in the digital age, this transition from the written page to the visual stage has allowed for new and creative forms of brand expression, allowing for content curation across multiple platforms.
Almost any piece of written content can be made into an infographic, followed by a video (if you link to each of these you can see how Social2B (now GlobalEdgeMarkets), a digital marketing agency, did this successfully with their content on mobile strategy).
Instant gratification
Generation continues to grow, the need to capture the audience’s attention in new and innovative ways is constantly at the forefront of content marketing strategies. From real-time marketing capitalizing on the NOW moment to the decrease of video lengths to 6 seconds via Vine in which you have to get your whole message in that span of time, it’s become more and more essential to capture an audience in the most efficient and captivating way possible. When it comes to social media, the key objective is to produce quality content that will reach the largest audience possible in order to achieve the highest ROI and highest SEO rankings, so companies are constantly battling it out to find the best way to achieve this.
Here are some stats supporting the move towards video content marketing
- More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month, spending more than 4 billion hours watching videos.
- 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others.
- 52 percent of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions.
- Only about 24 percent of national brands are using online video to market to consumers which means there is still a lot of opportunities to become a leader in this marketplace.
Video storytelling
Is becoming the advertiser’s dream with everything from YouTube videos to the shorter Vine and Instagram Video destinations which all act as a persuasive brand medium. While commercials have always been a way to reach people, as the consumer audience is increasingly moving towards mobile and online and away from traditional television viewing, these outlets allow these target audience members to be reached in a more personally engaging way.
Conclusion
By optimizing your content for the most platforms and mediums possible, you are increasing your chances of an appeal to audiences through variety and pure volume. Dynamic content grows audiences, which is why visuals are an important element of content marketing. Even when incorporating blogs into your strategy accompanying them with images, and ultimately infographics that help summarize the blog’s material, can help keep a reader’s attention. Strong text content connects audiences to brands through a more conversational outlet, while the visuals help keep their attention once you’ve reeled them in. Ensure that you don’t miss out on this next wave of marketing, and cover your bases with written, static images, and animated visual content.
By Jess Spar
