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Best Practices for Online Images and Videos

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We all know visual content draws attention online. Pay attention to composition, tone and content to make the most impact with your images and videos.

Graphics and videos that are helpful and meaningful have the most impact. With that said, small details in visuals can impact user interest as well as their perception of the content.

Get to the Point Quickly

People’s attention wavers quickly. While text allows users to read at their own pace, videos progress at a set speed and holding people’s attention for any length of time is difficult. Videos that provide information quickly and clearly do best. Research shows that under 30 seconds is a good goal.

Keep Out Distractions

Be sure your image or video doesn’t have any unnecessary details that distract from your message. That can be anything from something unidentifiable in the background to a loud pattern in someone’s clothes. Make sure nothing distracts from the intended focus.

Be Accurate

Make sure the image or video is accurate for the message you want to convey. If you are talking about electric cars, don’t use a visual of a car that people know has a regular engine. The visual has to be a proper illustration. Inaccuracies can kill your message.

Create Brand Consistency

Make sure your images and videos share a consistent tone, coloring, etc. that make them clearly from the same source. Look at the social posts for major brands and you will see a consistency that unites all of their visuals no matter the specific topic or message. This is subtle but has an important impact on your viewer.

Effective Video Tips Gleaned from the Best

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Pew Research Center recently examined YouTube channels with at least 250,000 subscribers to gain insights. These popular channels alone posted nearly a quarter-million videos in the first seven days of 2019, totaling 48,486 hours of content.

YouTube is a global phenomenon. Just over half of these channels (56%) posted a video during the first week of 2019, and the majority of these active channels (72%) posted at least one video that was partially or completely in a language other than English.

Videos aimed at children were highly popular, as were those that featured children under the age of 13 – regardless of their intended audience. Videos featuring a child or children who appeared to be under the age of 13 – regardless of whether the video in question was aimed exclusively at children or not – received nearly three times as many views on average as other types of videos.

Content involving video games also popular. Content about video games was one of the most popular genres of content as measured by total views during the seven days of the study period, and these videos also tended to be much longer than other types of videos.

Certain video title keywords were associated with increased view counts. Videos mentioning words like “Fortnite,” “prank” or “worst” received more than five times as many views at the median as videos not mentioning those words. The word “Trump” in video titles was associated with a significant increase in median views among videos about American current events or politics.

Cross-promotion of videos with other social media channels increases views. Seven-in-ten of these videos mentioned other prominent social media platforms such as Instagram or Twitter in their description (either in links or in the text itself), and those that did received more views than videos that did not link to other platforms.

Read the complete analysis.

Content Marketing Beyond Words

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Is your content marketing all about words? It’s often easiest to create content in article form:  a headline, a few subheads and a couple of paragraphs of text and you are done!

The problem is that this is boring! Research by the Content Marketing Institute consistently shows that interactive, non-static content grabs attention. Content that moves beyond static words is effective at getting the attention of people at all stages – from those just getting to know you to those who love you best.

Create Short Videos

More than 100 million hours of video are watched daily on Facebook alone. Most people recall content from video more readily than content they have read.

The popularity of video content has lead most social channels to add support for video. And, they give more play to video-based posts.

The ideal is about 30 seconds. All you need to do is grab your smartphone, record something interesting, and post.

If you create long-form videos such as webinars, you can snip smaller segments to use on social media. Dividing longer videos into short, shareable clips is an effective way to generate a library of content.

Illustrate Your Point

Infographics and illustrations can be great ways to make a point visually. The human brain processes images much faster than text. Retention of visual information is better than text-based.

Poll the Audience

Quizzes, calculators, assessments and contests all consistently attract attention. I know my Facebook feed is filled with results of quizzes and assessments that my connections have taken. People can’t seem to get enough!

Think about ways to present your content in these interactive formats. Pose a question and let people pick the best answer. Set up a tool that let’s them test their knowledge or find out something about their own interests.

Talk About It

Consider adding podcasts to your content mix. Talk about a topic, either as the sole expert or bring one or more guests into the conversation. There is no better way to inject personality into your content marketing than to let people listen to what’s on your mind.