townsend.bunksite.com

Category: Video SEO

Lights, Camera, Action: Add Video Marketing to Your 2025 Strategy
Transform Your Marketing Strategy With Video in 2025

Video content stands out by fostering connection, enhancing brand recall, and driving action.

With consumers exposed to an average of 5,000 ads a day — ten times the number from 50 years ago — cutting through the noise demands a more strategic approach than ever. That’s why it’s imperative to incorporate video content into your 2025 marketing strategy.

Videos compel viewers to action more effectively than static image ads. We’ve found that on average, video ads lead to at least 52% more conversions and generate over 20% more engagement.

While it’s essential on social media — where the share of time US social users spend watching videos will reach 58.2% this year — video is also an impactful content form on display ads, connected TV, and owned channels like websites and email.

If you’re hesitant about the time investment required for video marketing, we’re here to help you seamlessly integrate video into your strategy from campaign ideation to execution.

We offer:
1. Content Creation:
  From display ads and information montages to testimonial videos, our content captures your audience’s attention.
2. Production Management:
  We handle all aspects of production, from strategy ideation to managing logistics, including on-site shooting at your location.
3. Partner Selection:
  We help identify and select the best partners for your project, providing examples of previous work and inspiration to ensure alignment with your vision.
Learn how we can elevate your 2025 marketing strategy with impactful video content.

Contact us today to explore our advanced video marketing solutions.
October 24, 2024
How to Create Effective and Engaging Video Content on a Budget

In 2019, it’s impossible to deny the importance of video content for businesses. Visitors spend 2.6 times more time on pages with video, and websites with videos are 53 times more likely to reach the front page of Google than ones without. 95% of the message is actually retained from a video (as opposed to only 10% of information read via text) and a whopping 85% of consumers want to see more video content from brands. The evidence that video is going to dominate the marketing world for the foreseeable future is everywhere, and it’s exciting!

We’re going to give you a few tips below to help you create optimized videos that won’t break the bank.

Tip 1: Choose a Style and Tone for Your Video

The tone of your video can make or break how it’s received by your viewers and ultimately your ROI, and since some marketing professionals consider video to be the type of content with the best ROI, you need to choose wisely. If you’re making an informative video about wills and estate planning, you’ll probably want to take a more serious approach. This not only goes for the content of the video but the animation style, too. You don’t want to use an animation style that’s too playful for your subject, but you also shouldn’t use an overly professional video style for more fun and casual content.

Tip 2: Appeal to Your Audience’s Emotions

Instead of focusing narrowly on your product or service, you should also try to appeal to the emotional side of the viewer by focusing on the mission of your product or company. Focusing on a story will connect more to the user subconsciously, which is how 95% of all purchases are made.

Tip 3: Utilize Existing Content

Making videos in-house will save you a lot of money, and you don’t need to be an experienced filmmaker or video editor to make quality marketing content. There are plenty of resources out there that don’t require any special software to use. Powtoon, for example, is a great resource for creating animated videos. Multiple different animation styles are available to choose from that can work for any industry or topic.

Another helpful video creation resource is Promo. Promo provides free music and live action and animated video clips that you can combine with text or your own footage and audio. You will save countless hours by using what is already available to you on these and other platforms.

Tip 4: Focus on the First Ten Seconds

It is essential to grab your viewers’ attention in the introduction of your video. A fifth of all viewers will stop watching after ten seconds if their attention is not captured in the first ten seconds. You have until the 30-second mark to engage your viewers or you’ll lose 33% of them, and one minute until you lose 45%. You need to know your audience well enough to know what will stand out to them enough to stop scrolling and pay attention throughout your whole video. Once they do make it to the end of the video, a strong CTA is just as important as those first ten seconds. Choose something specific like subscribing to a newsletter or visiting a page on your site.

Tip 5: Optimize Your Video for SEO & Mobile

Over half of all videos on the web are viewed on mobile. Of those mobile viewers, over 90% of them share video content with others. The potential shareability of videos viewed on mobile is not something to be ignored, and which is why you need to optimize your videos for mobile. The standard aspect ratio for videos viewed on desktop is 16:9, but this is not ideal for mobile as it does not show up big enough on the screen. Ideally, videos optimized for mobile would be designed with a 9:16 aspect ratio so that they fill the entire screen. To ensure your video is viewed well on both desktop and mobile, create a square video with a 1:1 aspect ratio. For Facebook, your videos should have both captions and audio. This is not required, but it is recommended, as 85% of videos on Facebook are viewed without sound.

Animaker is just one resource available to you that allows you to create vertical videos tailored specifically for mobile viewing.

According to the digital marketing institute, you should be hosting your video on your own domain: “enable embedding on your video as this will help you increase the likelihood of receiving inbound marketing links,” and make sure your descriptions and keywords are thorough and unique to the video you created. Video can drive up organic traffic as much as 157%, so you need to make sure your video is optimized for SEO.

These tips should help get you started on creating and optimizing your own video content in-house. If you should still need some SEO guidance on making sure the right people and customers are seeing your video content, the team at Search Influence can help. Contact us today to get started.

June 10, 2019
How to Optimize YouTube Videos for SEO
What’s your first thought when you think of YouTube videos? Funny pet compilations or cooking tutorials? Well, if so, then it might surprise you that YouTube is more than just a resource for entertaining clips or personal vlogs (video blogs); it’s actually the second-most visited website in the world, behind Google. More than 1.5 billion users log into YouTube per month. It’s even crept into the television market, and the time that people spend watching YouTube on their TV has doubled in the past year.

Still, only 9% of small businesses utilize YouTube. And, because YouTube is owned by Google, it pays to ensure that your videos are optimized for SEO just like your website. That might be the difference between a few views and a few thousand.

A Beginner’s Checklist to YouTube SEO
1. Title
Just as your company’s web pages need metadata that contains clear and concise title tags with researched keywords, your video’s title needs to clearly list the topic while also using keywords. It’s one of the few places where you can put keywords, so it’s important to do some preliminary keyword research to see how people are searching for your product or service. A word of caution though—don’t put keywords in your video’s title just for the sake of inserting keywords. As with Google, this practice will not help your position in the YouTube search results page (YSRP). The key is to make it relevant while describing what the video is about.
1. Description
A video’s description should be just that—a description of the video. You don’t need to transcribe the entire video or write a short story about it; you just need to give a relevant but brief description. In addition to your title, descriptions are a place where you can utilize keywords. Again, don’t go throwing keywords into your description hoping that it will make your video rank highly in the YSRP. YouTube is smarter than that. Use choice, relevant keywords.

For length, it’s best to aim for under 250 characters, or roughly 30 words. After this character limit, YouTube uses the “show more” prompt to hide the rest of your description. It’s also important to fit your keywords, a valuable resource link, and a call to action before this threshold. What’s a valuable link? Your company’s homepage can work just fine. But, you’ll get even better value if you can use a page deep in your site—think service pages, product pages, testimonials, limited offer pages, etc. Also, make sure to use “http://” or “https://” before the URL, or it won’t hyperlink in the description!

After the “show more” fold, you can add more useful links and information, including prompts to follow you on Twitter, subscribe to your YouTube channel, or like you on Facebook.
1. Tags
You’ve got your title; you’ve optimized a concise description; now it’s time to add tags. This is where you don’t want to be stingy. Add any keywords you’ve already used as well as other related keywords, as long as they make sense and are relevant to the content of your video. Also, YouTube recently starting using hashtags as another way to improve searchability.
1. Transcript
This is one that not everyone may know about. YouTube will automatically create subtitles for your video, but their automated transcription process can be unreliable. By uploading a transcript (captions) of your video, you’ll know that someone who watches silently on mobile (which, if Facebook video is a point of reference, a lot of people do) will see an accurate transcription of what’s being said.
1. Interaction on your part!
YouTube is similar to social media in that you shouldn’t use the tactic of “set it and forget it.” Just like if someone is interacting with your business’s Facebook page or Instagram post, you should respond in a timely, professional manner. YouTube is also susceptible to, how should I put it, lively discussions in the comment thread. If there are any negative comments or reviews, respond to the ones where you feel you can actually help remedy a situation, and ignore the ones that are simply trolling.
1. Promotion
So you’ve uploaded your video and interacted with users in the comments. Great job! But, you’re still seeing pretty low views. Paradoxically, one of the ways to get your video higher up in YSRP is through views, but it’s hard to get views if it’s not being found. Now is the time to promote it. Share it on your blog, social media channels, email marketing campaigns, and even tell your friends, family, or network associates. This can help bring in those valuable views. You can track viewer data through YouTube Analytics. To learn more about using YouTube Analytics, Hootsuite has a detailed guide here.

It’s Never Been Easier to Create Quality Video Content

Since the launch of YouTube in 2005, not only has traffic within the platform drastically increased, but the quality of the content being produced has jumped leaps and bounds when compared to the very first video, a 19-second clip of YouTube co-owner Jawed Karim at the zoo talking about elephants.

But one of the limitations that used to exist, whether or not you had a nice camera or a crew to shoot your video, doesn’t exist anymore. With the capabilities of smartphones, it’s very easy to point and shoot a tutorial, video blog, company profile, or any other type of video content you want to share with the world. By utilizing these tips, you can be on your way to adding some bingeable video content to the YouTube community. At Search Influence, our digital marketing experts can help your business build and grow your brand online. Check out some of the many clients we’ve worked with. Want to chat? Fill out the form in the sidebar today.

Images:

Man With iPhone on Head

Youtube Logo

Stephen Colbert

Anna Kendrick
February 8, 2019
Harness the Power of Video on Social Media

To succeed in today’s competitive environment, companies have to convince us to choose their products and services in an instant.

What better way to do that than with videos?

Let’s face it, people love videos!

Sight, sound, and motion can be a powerfully positive combination. We’ve all felt it.

Videos are a very effective marketing tool, and businesses should make the most of them on different media platforms, including YouTube, Google Ads, and social media. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index on Forecasts and Trends, by 2019, global consumer internet video traffic will account for 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic. And this doesn’t even include the videos we send directly to each other.

People really love videos!

We also love to share them. According to Sprout Social, videos generated 12 times more shares on social media than images and text combined.

This Is Where You Want to Be and Be Seen

To really stand out today, business owners need to find ways to stay relevant in real time. That’s where posting videos on key social media channels comes in.

Facebook

When asked why his company was making enormous investments in video on a 2017 earnings call with investors, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied, “I see video as a megatrend.”

Mark was spot on.

Today, over 8 billion video views take place on Facebook every day.

We encourage you to upload videos directly to Facebook, rather than sharing videos from other sites like YouTube, to boost your ability to reach potential clients organically.

Instagram

Last summer, Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users, up from 800 million in September 2017.

Instagram and video marketing are a match made in social media heaven.

Videos on this platform can be highly effective at telling your brand’s story in 60 seconds or less. And storytelling is a sure-fire way to market your brand and create engaging content.

Hashtags are everywhere these days, from casual conversations to TV commercials, and hashtags on Instagram are a game changer. They help Instagram users discover new content and can help optimize your campaign.

Twitter

According to Twitter: “Research shows that people who view videos on Twitter are 50 percent more likely to be aware of an advertiser’s brand, and that videos on Twitter are 2x as memorable as those on other premium platforms.”

On Twitter, the length of your video is a significant consideration. Several studies have shown that a 15-second video on the platform is just as effective as a 30-second video, in terms of recall and impact. Since Twitter users are used to quick updates, it’s best to keep your video content brief.

We Are Here for You

Whether your business needs help with social media or video creation, Search Influence can handle all of your digital marketing needs. Start a conversation with one of our experts today.

Images:

Heart Hands
Mind Blown
Social Media

January 31, 2019
How to Spiel Like Spielberg: Using Videos to Showcase Your Business
YouTube changed history when it was created in 2005, allowing businesses and individuals to upload personal videos that had the potential to impact the world. Today, video dominates with four times as many customers preferring to watch a video about a business than reading content about it. If video has that much influence, businesses should consider the impact of having customized ads on YouTube. In addition to having a greater social media presence, an investment in online advertising increases your visibility, often consistently delivering qualified leads for your business. This combination is ultimately the best of both worlds.

Grow Your Business With Our YouTube Ads Webinar

The Search Influence team invites you to join us for a new webinar on how to showcase your small business through YouTube ads. With such a large audience at your fingertips, it is incredibly vital for your business to have a presence on this platform.

In the webinar, you will learn:
- Best practices and how to use video for your business
- How to promote your business using video content
- How video influences purchase behavior
Grab the Attention of Your Most Ideal Client Base

Our experts will discuss content diversity and techniques for offering a variety of educational, thought-provoking, and engaging visuals for current and potential clients. We will also share resources and tools for creating high quality videos that fit your budget. Feel like you don’t know much about professional videography? Our webinar will discuss best practices for making your video, from concept and production to branding and messaging. We will even share information on the best places to publish your video once it is complete.

Finding your audience is just as important as creating the video itself. We’ll dive deep into the world of YouTube ads, providing you with details on how to target your client base, determine the stage of the customer journey they are in, and analyze and track leads. These tips will help you to generate buzz around your video content and capture your ideal audience across screens and devices.

Contact one of our experts to learn how you can enhance your current marketing strategies.

Image:

Mobile Video
September 18, 2017
Don’t Leave Your Website Buffering: How to Make Big SEO Gains with Video Content
Everyone likes watching videos on the Internet—funny videos, cute animal videos, cute kid videos, and cute videos with kids AND animals.

And while there will always be a place for these videos in our hearts and on the web (what would YouTube be without them?), video content has recently found a new, even greater purpose on the Internet. In recent years, videos have emerged as an integral part of any and every SEO campaign. Based on four main metrics, there are several ways video content can help your business and website gain more traction.
- With YouTube rising to the lofty status of the world’s second-largest search engine (behind only Google, which just so happens to own YouTube), videos are getting more screen time than ever.
- Videos have been proven to improve SERP rankings. Because YouTube and Google are in such close cahoots these days, videos from the popular video site are ranking higher than ever in Google searches. The more popular a video, the higher its authority, which affords a greater opportunity of appearing at the top of search pages.
  - A study conducted by Forrester discovered that pages with video are about 50 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results.
- For that reason, among others listed below, here is Search Influence’s latest video, a brief case study about our partnership with the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans.
- This is also why properly optimizing videos is so important—all video content (title, description, transcription, links, etc.) is crawled and processed by the search engines.
- Every business should have their own YouTube channel that is accessible via their website. But to make even better use of videos, embedding YouTube videos directly onto website pages has been proven to be even more effective.
  - Embedded videos can improve click-through rate with up to a 41% higher CTR than plain text, according to study conducted by Cisco and aimClear.
- Embedded videos can also reduce bounce rate. The longer a visitor spends on a website, the more authority it is given by Google. Unfortunately, the average online attention span is less than 10 seconds. Video content allows visitors to become engaged with something on your site for a longer period time. The average length watched of a single Internet video is over 2.5 minutes—all that extra time is crucial in the SEO world.
- Videos communicate a lot of information quickly, which lets people sample content without committing to reading lengthy text. Videos are also much more useful in establishing trust with potential customers than written content, especially if the video features the business owner or a client testimonial.
- Finally, video content is much more likely to generate social interaction and shares, which equals quality backlinks. Videos are easy to watch and share, therefore more appealing and likely to be watched (and allowing for more people to discover the video, and by extension, discover the business in general).
  - In a fascinating experiment, Gemma Holloway at Koozai compared two posts covering the same exact topic—one featured a short video introduction and the other had only text. The video post received between 200% to 300% more page views and shares on social media than the text-only article.
So don’t leave your website or your business buffering. Incorporate videos into your SEO and Internet Marketing strategy and watch the benefits play out on your computer screen!
October 14, 2015