3 Important Factors To Consider When Vlogging For Business
Vlogging for business is a great way to increase brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. A Hubspot report states, ‘Video is the number one form of media used in content strategy, overtaking blogs and infographics’. Video can be simple, affordable, and interesting but at times we know there are hurdles with implementing video in your content marketing strategy.
This is where vlogging for business can enter the scene! It is one of the most simple, affordable, and authentic methods of content creation today. To get started vlogging, there are important factors to consider that will impact the success of your content marketing efforts. We share three important factors that you need to consider before vlogging.
Vlog throughout the day at your workplace
Vlogging is a great way to share your brand’s strengths with your customers. Your day-to-day operations, viewpoint and expertise can be on display in a video blog that is not only engaging to the audience but is also highly transparent. This transparency will increase trust in your brand and additionally it will create an interesting story around your brand.
A great way of setting up a routine for vlogging is through creating your own mini storyboard and content schedule. Think about what your audience may want to see, things they might not see in their interactions with the brand that is interesting, share personal insights and specialist knowledge, most importantly ensure that is of value to your audience!
Once you have these outlines, then schedule a few times throughout the day or week to create these videos. It doesn’t have to be an epic Spielberg production, just personable, professional and authentic.
Questions that you could ask during your own mini storyboarding
What do you think your audience wants to see?
What will be interesting to your audience? Think of questions they may have asked in the past and popular services or products
What things are interesting that your audience might not have seen?
This could be interesting employees that your regular customers may not see, anecdotes that are interesting and could reinforce brand values (example- staff member Tom who hasn’t had a day off in three years and is always smiling at work)
Are these clips of value to your audience?
Some brands make the mistake of creating vlogs not to share their product’s story or display authenticity. Instead they often make promo videos or commercials.
Promo videos are good for promotion, but not good for engaging an audience. For too many people, they come across as inauthentic and salesy. The importance is to have the audience trust and want to invest in your brand. You can do this by creating video content that mirrors the kind of content written in your blog posts. These are more genuine or authentic pieces of content.
A few Ideas for your vlog
Behind-the-scenes videos
- ‘A day in the life of’ your company
- Videos showing the team and their camaraderie
- Videos showing leadership and productivity
- Videos showing your customers and their experiences- eg- testimonials, live experiences.
- Videos showing specialist knowledge that will provide value to your audience.
If you wanted to see a great example (albeit professionally produced) of workplace vlogging, you can see it below. You could also achieve your own vlog series similar to this on a very low budget
Invest in quality-
This doesn’t mean that you need to go out and spend $20,000 on camera, lighting, and video production. Most newer phones have amazing quality lenses and filming quality which will have you rolling immediately.
Think about how you will film, where, lighting, and these little details that will make a huge difference to the final product. Will the video be horizontal or vertical? Is there enough light? Are there voices and can they be heard in the video?
Our professional tip- Ensure the videos aren’t too long! If you are sharing these on social media then you will want to ensure it’s under two minutes and depending on the content, try and keep the durations from 40 seconds to 1 minute. We have also created a handy infographic for Social media video length.
Think of the medium that you are sharing it on, social media users are highly distracted by content so can scroll quickly from content if it’s not immediate while website visitors will spend more time watching your video as they know your brand and are highly interested in your niche.
Once you have these details noted then you can decide if you will not edit the videos, edit the videos yourself, ask a team member to edit, hire a professional, or source a video content platform to edit and compile (like Vloggi which also offers a free trial!)
Introduce your customers
This is one of the most impactful ways that you can engage your audience. Introducing your customers into your content marketing strategy and vlogging will not only create higher engagement with your audience, but it will also share with them true and authentic experiences that they may relate to or hope to experience.
Why are customer video testimonials so effective?
We are in a time of hyper-targeting and over-saturation of advertising. You can receive digital advertising across your social media channels with paid ads, search engine advertisements, email promotions, content ads, video ads or influencers who are paid to promote products or services while appearing authentic.
A study by Kantar showed that 54% of UK consumers object to being targeted based on their past online activity and 55% are completely apathetic towards advertising content. All of this has created greater scepticism for consumers, the best way to counter this scepticism is by being honest and transparent.
Sharing your customers’ experiences is the best way to achieve this goal due to their real experiences and authenticity.
When your customers are addressing the camera, they are actually interacting with the audience, this interaction can inadvertently address the viewer with content that addresses similar concerns, experiences, and thoughts the customer may have.
Collecting video testimonials and distribution
You could collect video testimonials and send them to a content platform like ours for a compilation video. You may also want to hire a professional editor who could make an amazing compilation, or simply, you could upload a testimonial every few days or week to social media or share these videos on your website.
If you are unsure of how to collect testimonials, keep an eye out for our next blog which will provide some great insight and solutions to collecting video testimonials.
We know that Video is the most effective digital marketing method right now, the three above tips all had the same focus, a focus on providing your audience with value and quality through vlogging. If you focus on this within your content marketing, your chances of success will increase significantly.
