We all know how much video has grown as a marketing tool over the last few years. Marketers and users alike moved away from long-form static content like blogs and towards engaging and short video content across all platforms.
2020 onwards especially boosted this growth with the pandemic forcing people to stay inside, sitting at their computers and consuming content. This led to an increase in self produced video content and of course live streaming. Between April 2019 and April 2020, live streaming grew by 99% as marketers looked for ways to engage with an audience they could no longer reach in person.
In this piece we’ll reveal some of the most important video marketing stats in 2022, as well as some of the different types of video you should be making to help grow your business.
This seems an obvious place to start. Attention span for humans is 8 seconds, meaning if someone is browsing social media it’s going to take a lot to get them to stop and watch your content, let alone consume it in its entirety. If a video is less than 1 minute long, 68% of viewers will watch the full thing. Whereas if it’s between 1-20 minutes this drops to 25%.
Short form video has seen a marked increase recently, with TikTok having over 1 billion monthly users worldwide; a platform created entirely for short form videos. Combine this with the introduction of Youtube shorts, which came with a $100 million fund for creators to encourage them to make Youtube shorts.
Short form video has the highest ROI of any social media marketing strategy, so it’s a sensible place to start if you’re thinking about creating more video content in 2022. Instagram reels are currently one of the best performing pieces of social media content, with Hootsuite proving that engagement stats rise after publishing a reel. And reels currently outperforming photos for the majority of Instagram users.
To switch things up, it’s not all about short form video, so it’s important to have some variation in your content. Another form of video content that has seen an increase is story-driven video. Viewers like to be able to connect with a brand or product on a more emotional level, so moving away from the hard sell with your video content can be the key to growing sales and engagement.
80% of customers want brands to tell stories. A perennial example of this is the John Lewis Christmas adverts. There is never a product shown or advertised in these videos, yet they are immensely popular and generate huge engagement every year. This is because they tell a story and engage the audience on an emotional level, making them connect with the brand.
Consumers in the UK don’t respond well to a hard sell, so find a different way to speak to your audience and you will likely see results.
As mentioned in the introduction, live video has seen a huge increase in recent times with a lot of audiences preferring live content to pre-produced and heavily edited videos.
A big reason for this is that live video feels more real and more relatable due to the lack of editing and often lack of polish. It can also be tailored to your audience, allowing you to be answering questions or delivering information in real time to your audience, helping them to feel more connected to you.
Live video that shows behind the scenes of your business also helps to humanise your brand, allowing customers to sometimes get to know the business on a more personal level if they feel like they’re speaking directly to a business.
We don’t need to go into detail about platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams helping businesses sell to a more global audience, but live video on social media should be something you consider if you’re wanting to build a more personal audience.
It’s been the most popular video platform for a long time now, but Youtube is officially the second most visited website in the world, second only to Google. This means that it is a huge opportunity to reach new, larger audiences and share your expertise around the world, with the platform boasting 2 billion active users every month.
Over 1 billion hours of Youtube content is watched every day, with more than 70% of this being on mobile. Keep in mind that many mobile video viewers don’t watch videos with audio, so having captions on your video or content that can be consumed without audio is very important. Youtube also accounts for 25% of global mobile traffic, meaning that vertical video is vital to give viewers an easier viewing experience. This of course doesn’t just go for Youtube, hence the popularity of Instagram reels and TikTok.
Although not the most popular social media platform in 2022, Twitter still boasts 2 billion video viewers daily so is definitely not a platform that should be discounted. Twitter is also another platform that loves live video, as it’s always been known for breaking news quickly.
On Instagram, 40% of the platform’s users create story videos daily, and even Facebook still generates over 4 billion video views every single day.
No matter the budget, there is video content that can help grow your audience and boost online engagement. Whether that’s simple self shot live Q&A content that helps your audience trust you, or high end creative adverts that blow away your competitors.
Social media video is an ever-growing medium for marketers that is getting more and more effective as each and every platform prioritises video content over static photos.
If you’re thinking of using video as part of your marketing campaign, whether for ongoing brand awareness or for a quick and effective product launch, then get in touch today and let our award-winning team take you through the process.
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