Video content is having its day in the sun.
Video is the media type of the moment. Five years ago your average online news article would consist of text and images, but pay a visit to the Mail Online today, the world’s leading online newspaper, and you will see we have moved on considerably from then.
It is a response to our insatiable appetite for video content. Apps like Meerkat and Periscope are bringing us the ability to broadcast our lives, er, live, to the voyeuristic joy of intrigued strangers. Vine, Snapchat and Instagram give us bitesize video updates from our friends, while most smartphones and tablets are capable of streaming HD video, meaning there’s rarely a reason not to give a video a click.
And what better way to digest information. At the heart of any content marketing strategy is a key message that the content seeks to deliver to its audience, and the right video is more effective at delivering this message than any text or image-based medium. We are lazy beasts after all, and being fed our information through a video stream is much easier than having to deduce our own meaning from pesky words.
For brands, the future of marketing to an online audience will be video-based. Flexible, sharable and engaging, the power of video hasn’t gone unnoticed by Twitter. Their new Promoted Video service (aka native video) has been in beta testing since August 2014 and promises a fast, slick way to promote your video content on the social network.
Previously, promoting video on Twitter required a link to an external site where the video was hosted, such as Youtube or Vimeo, eating into your precious 140 characters and requiring an additional click or tap from the viewer. In an age of shortening attention spans and information overload, an extra click can mean the difference between a solid engagement or a more nebulous ‘impression’. With native video your content is hosted directly within your Twitter newsfeed and is available to be viewed by your audience with a single click/tap.
What is most appealing about this from a digital marketer’s perspective is the analytics this will offer. The new video analytics will be featured within Twitter Ads (alongside the usual metrics and measurements) and will track views, video percentage completion and other data breakdowns. This keeps your entire Twitter campaign all in one place without having to delve into analytics from an external site. This allows for deeper insight and easier reporting, which will help to clearly demonstrate the value of producing video content.
