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Video Marketing: How Short is Too Long

 

 

Have you ever wondered why social video ads seem to be all over the place? Some are over three minutes long, some are less than six seconds. Many of these social videos garnish thousands, even millions of views!

So what makes a viral video so popular? The answer is great storytelling.

A great video tells a great story, one that is engaging and fun – beginning to end. In our instant-everything era, Sightworthy is focused on helping brands tell their stories with short videos.

But what does it mean to be short video?

Google Adwords defines the difference between long form video and short form video by the length of the content – short form videos are less than 10 minutes, while long form videos are more than 10 minutes.

Most of our clients at Sightworthy refer to creating short form videos, but rarely create videos beyond a minute. The trend appears to be leaning towards original, impactful – but short (6 – 30 second) storytelling video.

And this is perfect for social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, which tend to favor video content that gets to the point quickly.

Because it’s not just dwindling attention spans that make it harder for marketers to advertise, our attention-span-of-a-goldfish is managing a surmounting quantity of devices that consumers are juggling.

Think about the phone, computer, laptop, television, or smart watch that you may own. Each one of those devices garners some of the 8 seconds of attention a consumer may have.

So what does this mean for Marketers?

It means that gone are the days that brand can just have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, accounts with minimal content. But also gone are the days that brands can get away without a video marketing strategy for social and expect results.

Consumers don’t have time to watch long form content from every single brand, influencer and content creator on social. It’s smart for brands to realize how to mix short video into their marketing strategy. In addition, can be an easier way to create more content, quickly.

Tips on how to make it happen:

• Stop making long commercials. On social media, you’ll get less engagement. Start sharing snippets of your brand story.
Make content short and to the point. With all the beeps and buzzes from our many devices under laps and in our face, videos should be quick – around 6-30 seconds (typically).

• Repurpose existing video, images, and voice overs to create videos on a recurring basis. For Sightworthy, many of our customers routinely produce a dozen videos a month, no big.

• Store and organize your final digital assets in an easily accessible place. Dropbox and Google drive work, but digital asset management (DAM) systems can also be a great way to access content without losing your hair.

• Share what makes you, you. Talk to customers like they are friends within your social feed, and not like you are talking at them, so customers remember you were the awesome brand that shared an original story.

• Use static images sparingly. Make every attempt to keep your audience focused, because they’re usually looking for an excuse to move on to the next piece of content.

To get an idea of what that looks like, here’s an example of short form video that we did with the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, which accomplished over 1,000,000 views on Instagram!

Check out more video marketing examples from brands like Mercedes and Pupperoni.

Interested in making more short form content for your brand?

Check out this link to our creative brief to help you get started today. Try filling out a brief for fun with an upcoming project and someone from our team will contact you!

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