The Rise of Video

When Al Gore invented the internet, do you think he knew how big a deal video would become? Back in the day, images and text were the digital media we consumed, but in 2020, 82% of consumer internet traffic is video. This didn’t happen by chance; when it comes to engagement, video triumphs every time. Simply adding a video to a website’s landing page has been proven to increase conversions by a whopping 80%. 

As we’ve seen with the rapid explosion of TikTok into the American market, people are starving for visual content. Video is more comfortable for the average person to digest than, say, a short essay describing the same concept. This is because the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. That’s not all; we also remember that information substantially better. The typical viewer retains a mere 10% of a text’s message, but that number jumps to 95% for video. 

Regardless of whether it’s our ever-shortening attention spans driving us to seek out condensed visual information, or the added context of nonverbal communication that video can offer; video leaves static content in the dust. 

The Power of Video

If you’re wondering what you could possibly make a video about, look no further than your own company’s content. Almost any static messaging could be a video, and dynamic content is far more effective. Movement and noise grab our attention significantly better than a still image, and videos contain virtually all other types of content. According to RawShorts, videos receive 1,200% more shares on social media than images and text combined. The more people you can get to view your content, the more people they share that content with. 

Video may just be the most powerful tool in a marketer’s arsenal; they drive sales like nothing else. 64% of people say they are more likely to buy after watching a video about the product, and 90% claim that product videos influence their purchasing decision. Despite its known benefits, video is still a widely untapped market. Only 9% of small businesses are on YouTube, and many companies turn from video altogether because they don’t realize its importance.

Effective Video Marketing

Not all videos are created equally; when it comes to marketing, there are some general guidelines you may want to follow. A recent study found that the vast majority of Facebook users watch videos with the sound off. This could be for a number of reasons, such as noisy environments, hearing impairments, lack of headphones, or plain old laziness. Regardless of why people turn the sound off, our job is to make content people choose to consume, so it’s always a good idea to include captions in your videos. 

The length of a video also plays a huge role in its effectiveness. Unfortunately, there’s not a one size fits all answer for how long a video should be – it depends on the type of video and how you choose to share it. Short videos tend to excel on social media platforms; on Instagram, the ideal length for a video is under 30 seconds (anything past that – viewers begin falling off). Don’t let the time constraint deter you; on average, Instagram videos receive twice as much engagement as other video sharing platforms. 

Types of Video

Videos open thousands of doors for creatives; virtually anything can be turned into a video:

• Instead of shoving a 50-pound employee handbook at new hires, send a video! 
• If your cooking blog isn’t getting the views it deserves, try showing people the recipe (some of us need all the help we can get in the kitchen). 
• If your company newsletter can be used as a cure for insomnia, try adding a company culture video.
• If your reviews aren’t driving conversions, maybe a video testimonial will do the trick.

Videos serve three main business purposes: awareness, engagement and education. Which type of video is best depends on what you’re trying to accomplish (and who you’re trying to reach).  Awareness videos are all about attraction. This type of video is best for drawing in new people, those who have yet to become clients. Engagement videos appeal more to people’s emotions; they’re often designed to maximize shares, likes, and comments. Last are educational videos. This could take the shape of a video for existing clients explaining certain product features, or perhaps a general ‘what we do’ video to educate potential buyers. 

The Evolution of Video

With high-quality cameras readily available, the average person can now make a video in the blink of an eye. In this day and age, video is no longer elusive, and software companies are racing towards the next steps in the technological evolution: virtual and augmented reality. 

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented reality exists between the virtual and physical realms; it places computer-generated information in the user’s natural environment. Augmented reality has uses that expand far beyond video games and entertainment. Many advertising agencies have turned to AR for their print ads. BMW blazed the trails for AR’s commercial application with its 2008 magazine ad that displayed a car on the viewer’s computer screen when they held the article up to the camera. AR also has educational uses. Students could use AR to see botanical information about the natural environment around them, get historical information about buildings and monuments, use it to walk through a scaled-down version of our solar system… the list goes on and on. 

Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality is similar to augmented reality, but VR offers a completely immersive experience into the digital world – shutting out the physical altogether. When most people hear the term “virtual reality,” video games are the first thing to come to mind, but VR has many uses beyond entertainment: 

• Athletes can use VR to practice plays and perfect their form.
• VR can simulate situations to help people overcome phobias.
• Virtual meditation has been proven to ease anxiety and depression. 
• The USA and the UK both use virtual reality in their military training, offering soldiers a way to prepare for a plethora of situations. 
• Medical and veterinary students can use VR to practice procedures without wasting physical resources.

Video Review And Approval 

The Bottleneck Problem

The transition to video, AR and VR does present us with one major problem: how do we produce this type of content at the speeds the market demands? Contrary to intuition, the problem isn’t how fast we can make content (we’ve gotten pretty good at that step); the issue lies in the video review and approval process. If your proofing process isn’t a well-oiled machine, getting a video approved can take weeks longer than it needs to, causing a bottleneck between the creation and the public release of your content. 

Solving The Bottleneck Problem: Video Review And Approval With Ashore

Many of the most significant hiccups in the video review and approval process stem from unclear deadlines. Most projects have final due dates, but if you actually want to meet them, you’ll need to give your approvers specific deadlines as well. 

On Ashore, reviewers are always explicit when revisions are due; with our automated reminders, you’d have to try to miss them. You can also customize the reminder settings so that notifications go out as frequently or infrequently as you choose. 

It’s also important to define who is responsible for review and approval from the start, or you risk more confusion. On Ashore, you determine the order of review and approval. Once the current stage is complete, our automated workflows bring the project to the next phase (and the next set of approvers) in the review process. 

You can see the proof’s activity history via the audit timeline, which shows when a version is sent, when comments are made or replied to, when proofs are approved, etc. This is incredibly helpful when you have a ~difficult~ client, as it shows the timeline of communication on a project. Should something be approved and the client comes back unhappy, you have stone-cold evidence that everyone reviewed and signed off on the content. 

Video review and approval comes with some added challenges compared to text and images – but they can be eased by contextual commenting. In Ashore, you can attach a comment to a specific point on the page as well as the timestamp in a video. By doing so, you don’t have to guess the when and where for comments made by your approvers – their feedback is in context with the video. 

We also offer version stacking, as any robust proofing software should. This allows users to group multiple versions of a project, so you never have to worry about losing a particular draft in the shuffle. Version stacking also allows everyone to see past versions’ feedback and how things have changed as the project goes through revisions. This feature is incredibly useful for those who utilize our ‘approve with changes’ option – sometimes, a draft just needs to be tweaked, not flat-out rejected.

At Ashore, our goal is to save you from the frustrations of a bottleneck now and in the future. Ready to give it a whirl? Sign up for free today, and never get caught in the video review and approval bottleneck again.