Around 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. It is content created by bloggers and ordinary people, large and small companies, celebrities, and youngsters. Even non-profit organizations resort to all types of video content striving to draw attention to a particular problem.
The list of content creators and their tasks is just limitless. So if you do not manage to create something authentic, useful, and interesting to your audience, the risk that people will close your video blog and go to your competitions is extremely high. To help you in this business, we have created this short checklist that will guide you.
Why Should You Post Videos on Your Blog?
There are many good things that we can say about video content. However, the most prominent features of video content are associated with the fact that it easily conveys information, is remembered for a long time, and establishes a close connection with the audience.
- It conveys information easily – Visual people cannot imagine their life without visual content. They (and many others) process information obtained from video 60 times faster than through any other communication channel. Let’s say you’re looking for a meringue recipe on the Internet. You can open any site and read the step-by-step instructions, or you can find the corresponding video, free your hands and repeat all the actions according to the video tutorial.
- It is remembered well and for a long time – In the mind of the viewer, the desired image is easily created and imprinted in the memory. In the context of other advantages, this feature of the video reinforces all the content received and motivates the target audience to take action.
- It effectively sells and promotes – The main marketing secret of videos is creating the effect of presence. You can imagine walking along a white sandy beach in Hawaii and looking at fresh coconuts on the palm trees. To do this, it is enough to watch one video with an advertisement for heavenly pleasure from a Bounty. In addition to the effect of presence, a video clearly demonstrates the advantages and features of the product, thereby strengthening the consumer’s desire to make a purchase.
With the above in mind, it is no wonder why video content is so popular today. Of course, to stand out from the crowd and offer something unique, you need to produce quality content. Video content experts don’t like to share their viral video secrets, but here are a few tips that will make your content rock.
Tips for Creating Video Content for a Blog
There are a couple of things to focus your effort on when creating video content for your vlog. Follow our checklist to create an outstanding video that performs at its best.
1. Make It Interesting from the First Seconds
As practice shows, you have no more than three seconds to interest the viewer. If it doesn’t work, your audience will simply switch the video and go to your competitors. Perhaps vloggers with millions of followers aren’t as obsessed with this rule as beginners. They are already loved, watched, and followed by many.
But if you are rather new to the blogging niche, are just trying to conquer it and make money with blogging, then you need to follow the best practice. In order to interest your viewers in the very first seconds, you should think over the structure of the content in advance and choose the appropriate strategy.
The right lead depends on the target audience. If there is no hint of the meaning of the content at the beginning of the video, this will negatively affect its success and user engagement. Run blog promotion in a natural way – produce interesting content.
2. Start with the Problem – End with the Solution
Most viewers are looking for solutions to any situation. Imagine that your iPhone is blocked by a child. We doubt that you will leave the situation as it is without trying to find the solution. This is what will definitely make you drive your problem into the search. If you start your video with a description of the situation and offer a solution afterward, be sure that a viewer will watch the video till the end. The problem-solution scheme is a condensed version of the well-known content creation formulas.
3. Give an Answer to the Question “Why?”
The most popular user queries refer to the “why, how, when” group. Why can’t we see the other side of the moon? How to cook Eggs Benedict? When can I get a tattoo? Basically, people are looking for answers to these questions in video format and want to get detailed and explanatory information.
The mistake of those who make video blogs is to start their videos by talking about who they are. Most viewers are not yet interested in you as a person or other people; they ask more pragmatic questions. According to marketers, disclosing the reasons and providing question explanations can make the video unique and attract more attention from the target audience.
4. Use Hashtags
Hashtags are social media keywords; they will help users find your posts easily and fast. With the help of hashtags, more people will learn about you, and some of them may even subscribe to your blog. It’s easy to add a hashtag to your post. It is enough to put # and start entering the selected phrase.
Instagram and Twitter instantly offer the most popular tags at the moment. You can place them at the beginning, middle, or end of the post.
Each social network has its own rules for the use of hashtags. For example, you cannot use special characters in Instagram hashtags. Letters, numbers, and underscores are allowed. You can publish up to 30 hashtags per post, but experts recommend using no more than 5-7 variations. Check here how to work with hashtags effectively.
5. Take Care of the Tech Side
You may need to publish a video on different platforms, and each of them has different requirements. This refers to the optimal video resolution, aspect ratio, video length, format, and video file size. Some videos may work for some platforms perfectly but fail and render poorly on some other social media sites.
Here are the key characteristics of videos for the most popular social networks. You do not need to know them all by heart; with specialized software, you can make sure that the video you are going to post meets social media platform requirements at 100%.
On Facebook, you can choose between horizontal or vertical video formats. Here are the recommended social media video specs for both:
- The optimal size is 1280 x 720;
- Width – minimum 600 pixels;
- Aspect ratio – 9:16 (vertical format), 16:9 (horizontal format), 2:3 (mobile);
- Video length – up to 240 minutes;
- Video formats – MP4 and MOV.
- File size – 4 GB.
Almost 71% of companies use Instagram to reach their main audience more effectively.
- Horizontal format – 600 x 315 (min resolution), 16: 9 (aspect ratio);
- Square format – 600 x 600 (min resolution), 1: 1 (aspect ratio);
- Vertical format – 600 x 750 (min resolution), 4: 5 (aspect ratio);
- The file size for any format is 4 GB max;
- Video formats – MP4, MOV;
- Video length – from 1 to 120 seconds.
There are two embedded video formats on Twitter that you can share with your subscribers: horizontal and vertical. These formats are only suitable for uploading videos directly to Twitter. Want to promote your videos with paid Twitter ads? In this case, the technical specifications will be the same as in regular publications.
- Landscape dimensions – 320 x 180 (256K bitrate), 640 x 360 (768K bitrate), 1280 x 720 (2048K bitrate);
- Vertical dimensions – 240 x 240 (256K bit rate), 480 x 480 (768K bit rate), 640 x 640 (1024K bit rate);
- The minimum and maximum sizes for both formats – 32 x 32 and 1280 x 1024;
- The aspect ratio – from 1:2.39 to 2.39:1;
- The file size – 512 MB;
- Video file formats – MP4 for web and MOV for mobile devices;
- Video length – 140 seconds (max).
YouTube
While YouTube users can download different types of media formats and use different video file sizes, there is really only one format for a video player. For all videos, the following condition must be met: the aspect ratio is 16: 9, but it is possible to download in 4: 3 format.
If the ratio is lower, frames automatically appear on the sides to compensate for the length of the side of the video. Here are some other important video specification parameters:
- Dimensions – 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p), and 3840 x 2160 (2160p);
- The aspect ratio – 16:9 (black bars will be automatically added to the side of the video if the ratio is 4:3);
- File size – 128 GB or 12 hours;).
- Video formats – MOV, MPEG4, MP4, AVI, WMV, MPEG-PS, FLV, 3GPP, WebM, DNxHR, ProRes, CineForm, HEVC (H.265) are allowed.
Final Say!
Video content is a powerful tool for an effective advertising strategy for brands and works perfectly for blogs of any type. Nowadays, many people are actively using video to promote on social media. So it is very important to understand the right characteristics and winning video specs in order to make video content of top-notch quality. We hope that this tutorial will help you create winning content for your blog.
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