You must have heard the hype about video content by now if you’re not caught in it already that is. However, the question you must be asking yourself if the first statement does not ring true for you is whether it’s all true. Is video the future of content?
In our line of business as a digital agency in Kenya, we cannot guarantee things to be what they’re hyped up to be. We are, however, risk takers who’d rather dive in and see what happens rather than not dive in at all. After all, experimenting is a principle of social media and more so, social media marketing. If it goes well, whoop whoop for all of us. If it doesn’t, well, it’s a lesson, not a failure.
Back to video.
It is estimated that 3 million Kenyans were subscribed to YouTube in the year 2016. (Source: YouTube Audience Profiling Survey 2016)
Now, if the penetration of smartphones and internet connection has been a steady rise in Kenya, we can guarantee that this number has significantly risen over the years. To bring things into perspective, YouTube is now the second most visited website after Google. People are watching videos a lot.
Quick question before we proceed, and reading books doesn’t count, for other types of content, would you rather watch its video or read about it?
Click here to vote.
Studies have shown that 4x as many people would rather watch video than read a post about it. They also prefer videos with subtitles. You know, for those moments when they’ve forgotten their earphones and they don’t want to broadcast the video to the whole mat or the office. To top it all off, 2/3rds of YouTube users prefer videos under 60 secs. You have to give it up for those 5 secs unskippable ads no matter how annoying they can be sometimes.
Obviously, we don’t want to box you into a corner where you’ll feel forced to have to do video hence the facts. We like the principle of freedom of choice too. However, you’ll be fascinated to know that it’s not that people, and by people, we mean marketers don’t know or haven’t experienced the power of video. They have. But this is what we have to say, and consequently, agencies response to those claims.
In addition, here’s what to keep top of mind.
- That video is mobile first. What you create must be viewed on mobile. After all, more than 85% of people consume content on their phones.
- Start experimenting with vertical video formats especially if Instagram is a prefered channel for your brand. Vertical videos gain more impressions on other platforms as opposed to the horizontal format.
- Use sub-titles.
Bonus tip:
Data consumption is a big issue for consumers. This has resulted in developments such as Facebook Lite and YouTube Go which are lighter versions of the original platforms.
What does this mean for you? Your video content needs to be light enough for it to load fast and use as few bundles as possible. Please do not compromise on the image quality though 🙂
Ready to dive in now?
