Katherine Griwert, Head of Marketing Content & Communications at Brafton shared some tips and ideas on video at the 2013 Search Engine Strategies Expo in Chicago. The presentation is prelude to a presentation of 7 tips on video, which can be seen here.
Griwert notes that people are seduced by video without tying to results. Businesses do not map out what do they want the video to achieve. "The focus is get this done, put it up there - what does this map to?"
The end result is that many videos are not tailored to an audience to provide a real return. This is significant given that one in 10 people watch web clips before make a business or personal purchase decision, as noted on the SES Expo description for this presentation.
Video content should be "form driven rather than results driven." Some formats, like Vine and Instagram, lend to short formats, obviously, but the timing also means that business should highlight specific features. Thus businesses do not have to "pigeonhole video into one result." There are a number of ways to make nuanced subject video that speaks to a particular audience. For example, Griwert explained how Brafton provided a news format to better convey its message to its audience.
Check this video for a snippet of what Griwert shared with the audience.
One metric tip that is worth noting is examining the average time on the page against the length of the video. Griwert noted it in the Brafton case example, but I'll share the detail here: If the average time on page exceeds the length of the video, it is an indicator that you've engaged the page visitor with the video content. The opposite occurrence indicates that the video is not drawing visitors to review other content on the page.
Another mentioned metric tip addresses the length of engagement. If the video is a YouTube embed, you can use the analytics tool to see if there is a specific drop off point at which viewers stop watching the video.
Customer testimonials are also valuable for encouraging engagement. Having a customer to sit down and talk about what they liked about your business or service provide validation that the customer appreciates.
A major culprit in video engagement is having no measurement in place. Griwert noted that many clients come in with a notion such as "I want traffic and want people to know about my brand" or "I want to engage customers with my video". But to do so, the effort needs to demonstrate a measurement strategy to determine what is creating engagement. Griwert asks "What are you doing to measure?"
