The success of an online video is usually measured from the number of views it receives from your target audience.
With 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute! If you want your video to be SEEN, it has to grab people’s attention immediately. Like it or not, we video producers need to accept that viewers have total control and will click somewhere else in a nano-second if they don’t like what they see.
So here are 5 tips to remember when producing your online video…
Audience
Make your online film interesting, think about what messages you are trying to convey and who to! Defining your audience is the first thing you should think about. What can and can’t you get away with, what approach should you take? Make sure your video has a clearly identifiable message as you want viewers to finish watching your video and then understand exactly what it was about, especially if it is a marketing video.
Concept
Create an engaging story for your film, brainstorm ideas and see how you can play with them. People like to see something new or at least an old idea shown in a new way. If you are intending your film to go viral remember most virals either use animals, comedy, sex or all 3!
Keep it short
The best videos tend to be those from 30 seconds to a minute or two in length. Think about TV commercials which are normally no longer than 20 seconds. Any longer and people just lose interest and look elsewhere.
Quality
Successful films vary greatly in production values. Sometimes you can play with this for effect, i.e. making something look like it was shot on a mobile phone (maybe for a viral). HD cameras are affordable now to buy or hire. So the look of your video should be dictated more by creative considerations than by financial constraint.
Distribution
Knowing where your video is going and how it will be distributed is crucial for the success of your film.
The two main options for uploading a video onto the internet are:
1. Uploading directly to a website in a standard video format (i.e flv, h264, wmv).
2. Uploading to YouTube and/or one of the other main video sharing sites (the video can be subsequently embedded in a website, blog advert, listing or any form of social media). The main advantages of the second are ease of use, no bandwidth considerations and they can be easily embedded in a multitude of other online locations, a must if you’re intending to spread the video widely.
There should be appropriate time and budget allocated for things like a viral marketing campaign, hard copies to be distributed, SEO, video tagging, uploading to video sharing sites.
YouTube is by far the most popular site though the others all have their advantages and are well worth uploading to for maximum distribution. Facebook can be particularly useful especially if the video can be tagged. Tubemogul is a free service providing some in depth analytics for the viewership and demographics of your videos.
Visit our other blogs on SEO, social media and viral. After all, the success of many online videos these days is measured in hits and analytics.
Summary
These 5 tips should help get you on your way to producing a more successful online video. One that people will watch, remember and maybe pass on to a friend or colleague. Any tips to add? Please use the comments area below!