Every day, be it over LinkedIn, Facebook or even Instagram, we are always reminded about how important video content is. I know this in part because I am such a one myself that does a lot of said reminding. While some of you will, no doubt, be aware of what I espouse on almost a daily basis, I’d like to take this beyond a simple top-five breakdown today.
Let’s look at why you might want video content in the first place. Are you simply trying to drive more sales, gain more followers, promote brand awareness, hire more employees, train your staff, roll-out a new service? There are many things that video content can do and, if done well, can dramatically improve your business. However, if done badly, it can very easily have the reverse effect.
When I worked in recruitment, barely a week would go by when I wouldn’t be contacted by a Rec2Rec (recruiters for recruiters do exist) and although I would seldom be thinking about a move, naturally I would always check the website of the company on offer. One of the first things I would look for would be if the company had a video or not and, if so, what did it say about them? Had they really put in the attention to detail to show what they were like to work for? Did the video capture any kind of ethos? Could I glean any sense of shared values from what was there? Sometimes yes although more often than not, no. While many companies were and still are behind on the whole video front, many had opted for making it themselves. Since working for myself with Strategic Visual, I have seen this more and more with many other businesses.
This method, while expeditious and painless, 99% of the time always has me wishing they hadn’t bothered. Putting aside the fact that the production value is almost uniformly drab, most of the time it’s impossible to distinguish one from another. 99.9% of the time, if you make a video yourself it will look exactly that, homemade. Unless you have considerable experience with cameras, lighting, after effects and even the most basic understanding of sound quality, chances are the money you think you’re saving will be lost elsewhere; the customers that you won’t hear from because they are put off by your bad video. Moreover, there is a good chance you’re undoing a lot of the hard work you’ve put in already by paying no mind to this. It’s the video creating your first impressions these days and, like it or not, people’s attention spans are getting shorter and that is very unlikely to change. You don’t spend £1000 on your daughter’s prom dress only to drop her off in front of all her friends later in a beat-up Vauxhall Nova. That’s more or less what bad video does for your business.
Simply put, video needs to be shown the proper respect. In the words of my late aunt Gladys: “If a job is worth doing then it’s worth doing well’. Don’t think of your video content as something that needs to be crossed off a list. It’s the most accurate and revealing medium your brand can exist in, short of meeting your client face to face. It can say everything about you or nothing about you. It can be the difference between success and failure. The difference between meeting your sales targets or smashing them. The difference between being present in the market or being a market presence.