Video is everywhere. It’s not going to go away either.
Instead of burying you in data and statistics that prove it, I’m going to politely suggest you take my word for it. For each of the hacks you see here, I’m going to tell you a story that proves my point and give you some pointed guidance to apply it for yourself.
The truth is, you are already seeing videos all over the place. Video ads, YouTube videos, Facebook Live videos, etc…
Let’s dive into the hacks:
You Don’t Need Fancy Equipment Anymore
I see people with these extensive video recording areas in their houses or offices with a green screen, expensive lighting and cameras that look like they’re designed to film movies.
For 90% of us, that’s not necessary at all.
If you want to walk around outside in an area with a lot of wind, a mic is helpful. If not, you may not need one.
Unless you’re planning on making movies, you don’t need an expensive camera. Your phone should be capable of recording in high definition. If I’m in my house, I’ll use the web cam attached to my Mac Book Pro.
Roughly 5 years ago, I recorded a video training product with a good friend of mine. We recorded every live video on our phones. We used basic video editing software.
Both my friend and I had expensive cameras, microphones, and expensive editing software.
Since we were recording a training program designed to help people record their videos faster, we decided to use inexpensive things we already had to make the product.
The videos looked great and the customers loved the product.
When recording videos there are two important things to consider:
- Background noise
- Stability of your camera
If you’re stuck in a noisy area with no microphone for your recording device, you should probably hold off on making your video.
Instead of holding your camera in your hand, get an inexpensive tripod (or monopod) on Amazon. Your video will look far more professional and produce better results.
While The Length Matters, It’s Not As Important As You Think
While it does matter in certain situations, content and sales videos can be as long as you need them to be.
Depending on who you choose to listen to, you’ll hear that most content videos should be around 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Many years ago, I had a video that ended up ranking #1 in Google for the term affiliate marketing. That video was 9 minutes and 46 seconds. Obviously, this was a long time ago. Still the point I’m about to make still applies today:
The length of your video doesn’t matter as long as people watch it until the end.
In other words, you need to have a reason for your video to run longer than a few minutes if you want people to watch it.
If people watch it, YouTube will see your video as valuable to people that watch it. If they see it as valuable, they’ll make sure more people see it.
When it comes to ads or sales videos, you want to limit the length of your video to exactly as long as it takes to get your point across. Most videos I see are between 15 and 30 seconds, but I’ve seen video ads that ran as long as 5 minutes and they were really well done.
Why Mass Video Uploading Died A Painful Death
Nearly a decade ago, there was a software that came out that pushed a single video out to every imaginable video hosting service on the web.
In fact, I had a less automated software that was capable of doing the same thing.
At the time, they worked. They worked really well.
Then, the video sites started to catch on and changed they way they do business.
If you think about it, there are only a few video sharing websites (like YouTube) that still let you create an account and upload videos whenever you want.
Now, many of them charge for the ability to use their sites.
This is because outside of video ads, it’s been really tough for video sharing websites to make enough money to offset the cost of bandwidth. Videos eat up data like a fat kid in a candy store.
The days of ranking multiple times in Google for a single search are over.
However, there is still value in posting your content on more than one video sharing site.
They key is that the content has to be good and valuable.
While only one version of your video will get attention from Google, every site has it’s own internal search feature. If someone uses it wanting to see something on the topic that your video covers, it is better to be there than to let a competitor get noticed.
Closed Captions Are Your Friend (Sometimes)
Just a year or two ago, putting closed captions into a video you uploaded online was a nightmare. It was a complex process that included having a special file created and uploading it.
Now you can add captions pretty easily in both YouTube and Facebook (for ads).
So, when should you use closed captions?
Only use captions when you’re posting a video of a person speaking into a camera. If you are using slides or already have words on the screen, leave them out.
The first time I used Facebook’s caption creation tool for an ad, it had text written on the video. It looked great until the very end of the video where it placed the caption directly above the final sentence I wanted the viewer to see.
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