In a world where content is king, your website and video can and should live together.
Media Images made its debut solely as a video company. Web and other services joined the program as a result of our need to supplement our video services and bring our expertise of high quality, creative media online. Plus, many of our clients live stream, which gives us the opportunity to build customized live streaming platforms (or integrate existing solutions) to help them reach a broader audience. Needless to say, we know web and video are better together. Here are seven reasons to prove it.
1. Videos convey content quickly and easily.
Video is your best friend if you want to send a message quickly and easily. If you’ve ever seen a movie trailer, you know this method is tried and true. Movie trailers take what can be two to three hours of footage and whittle it down to two and a half minutes. They get right down to the point and still leave you wanting more.
Or, consider the elevator pitch. When you have only an elevator ride with a potential employer or client and they ask, “Why should I choose you?” you’d better have a 30-second speech ready with only the most relevant and captivating information about you.
While our audience’s attention span gets shorter, companies don’t have anything less to say about themselves. That leaves you with the serious challenge of saying a lot in a little bit of time. Video is perfect for this.
When your website’s visitors don’t have the time or attention span to read through copy, you have an opportunity to use video to grab their attention and keep it long enough for them to receive your message, remember you, and maybe (hopefully) even respond to your CTAs.
2. Videos convey content in a unique way.
Have you ever been in a text conversation that went back and forth so many times, with so much frustration and misunderstanding, that all involved parties gave up and walked away defeated, or worse, angry? That’s a common problem with written copy. But video eliminates the ambiguity often found in plain text and, instead, illustrates with spoken words, eye contact, body language, and tone of voice.
Because language is much more than just words, video is a unique mode of communication—probably the closest thing we have to delivering a message in person. While words carry meaning, the slightest change in tone can shift mood and meaning, and body language can determine whether your audience believes you or questions your motives.
3. Videos trigger emotion.
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words—now use motion picture and you’ve got endless commentary. There is so much more a person experiences when they see something happening in video. Every split second has the capacity to be packed with feeling, even a single frame can make you feel something. That’s the difference between words and moving images. Video offers an experience that’s close to real life—you can use that to your advantage on your website. However, beware of overdoing it. You want to balance emotional with rational. And if emotion is what you’re going for, avoid being cheesy.
4. Videos increase and strengthen engagement.
Video can be a powerful, intriguing, and memorable facet of your website. Use video and your site’s visitors will likely remain on the page longer and spend more time watching before they move onto the next module. Plus, depending on your video platform, you can use analytics to measure the effectiveness of your video. Analytics software can help you easily and accurately gauge viewer response to your videos so you can give the people more of what they want.
Using analytics, you can learn how many people watched, how long they watched, where they dropped off, whether they rewatched or skipped certain parts, and more. If you have multiple videos on your site, you can even see which videos got the most (or least) views to help you determine when and where your content was most relevant.
5. Videos allow your visitors to interact.
While we’re talking about strengthening engagement, video is a great way to keep your visitors interested because of its interactive nature. Much like clicking a CTA, your site’s visitors have to click a button to hear and see the content waiting for them. This factor immediately takes them from someone who is passively scrolling to someone who is actively interacting with your content.
Why would you want someone to interact with your website? Because visitor interaction increases visitor traffic, length of stay, and likelihood of responding to your CTAs.
6. Videos extend the reach of your content.
Because video is so quick, it’s shareable. Rather than explaining the story to their friends, people who view the videos on your site can simply send the link to their friends via text, email, social media, you name it. If your content is good, your viewers will practically do the advertising for you.
Video also tends to attract more visitors to a website, thus, more visitors plus longer stay equals the rules of engagement. Recently, the focus in SEO has shifted from optimizing your site for particular keywords to your site’s ability to answer the user’s questions. And, if ranking on Google’s first page is an SEO top priority, and Google prizes quality content over keyword optimization, then video is worth your consideration.
7. Videos can serve as design elements.
You can also further the diversity of your brand’s design elements with video. Video gives you the ability to showcase your brand’s color palette, typography, iconography, and more in the videos on your site. Not only does this nicely and uniquely display your brand’s design elements, it shows cohesion across your mediums and adds variety to your design artillery while strengthening your brand.
We’ve been providing full-service video production for 20 years. Ready to take your website to the next level? Contact us and see how you can enhance your website with video.
