I’m going to write a series of three blogs about Short and ultra short form marketing videos. The kind that can be posted on Instagram and Vine social media networks.
Until very recently Instagram only allowed you fifteen seconds of video, while Vine allowed six seconds. In the last week Instagram has changed its video allowance – previously advertisers were allowed videos up to sixty seconds in length and this has now been rolled out to all users. Sixty seconds may not seem like much time but most commercials made for television are thirty seconds or less and for the purposes of attracting the attention of potential customers via social networks, thirty seconds is a good target length to work to. Sixty seconds is the kind of length I would use for a short infomercial.
Six seconds, by comparison, may seem impossibly short for useful marketing but there is a lot you can achieve. I want to talk about why ultra short form video can be worth the effort and share some interesting information about Instagram that reinforces just how powerful a medium video is. In the next two blogs I’ll be concentrating on Vine and looking, firstly, at just how useful a platform it may be for you and then at how you can use six seconds to say something meaningful and attractive about your business. But first, Instagram and the power of video marketing.
When you think of Instagram you think of still pictures, mostly of people’s dinner but also of holidays or nights out or birthdays, but mostly of people’s dinner. However Instagram also does video and many top brands are embracing the possibilities that this affords. let’s start by looking at who uses Instagram.
Who Uses Instagram?
This graphic was produced by Sprout Social with data taken from page 7 of the Pew Research Center Demographics of Key Social Networking Platforms study.
What this tells us is that 57% of users are women, there is an even distribution of income across users, that urban and suburban dwellers are more likely to be users and that more than half of all users are under 29. What that data tells me is that if my business is targeting those over the age of sixty five I would be better served by putting my efforts somewhere else, but that if I want to attract young customers with whom I can build a lifetime relationship then Instagram is a fantastic platform to do just that. It also tells me that I can access any income group, so whether my product is high end or price sensitive Instagram is worth my time and effort. What may be most interesting though, is the idea that If I want to target affluent young women for my product or service there is probably no better platform.
[bctt tweet=”You’ll be amazed at the stats for video on Instagram – find out how it can work for your business.”]
In the title I made a promise to give you some information about the power of video on Instagram. But I’m going to give you more than that because when we look at some facts about levels of engagement it will tell you everything you need to know about the power of video in general.
Video On Instagram
Fact 1: There has been an increase in shares for instagram posts on Twitter of 37% since the video option was added (Buzzfork)
Fact 2: Lululemon is a sports clothing company. Their Instagram videos receive twice as many likes as their photographs and seven times as many comments (Simplymeasured)
These facts tell us something important. What they tell us is that people engage with videos. They engage with videos more than they do with still images. They like videos. They comment on videos. They share videos. When people share your marketing videos for you that is a major endorsement. It’s also free advertising. But more important than both of those is the fact that someone has taken the time to interact with your marketing material. Imagine if the next time you pay for marketing leaflets to be posted through all of the letterboxes in an area you discovered that some of the residents liked your leaflets so much that they were making copies and posting them to their friends. That sounds crazy and it sounds like the sort of customers any business would love to have. When people engage with your marketing material that is exactly what is happening and the figures show that for almost all businesses video marketing drives significantly more engagement than any other method.
This doesn’t mean that you can upload any old rubbish and expect fantastic results. In the third blog in this series I’ll be talking about making an ultra short form video for Vine, but the methods I’ll discuss will also be useful for Instagram.
Next time I’ll be looking at Vine. I’ll tell you about who uses it and how. I’ll be telling you about which businesses use it for marketing and how successful it is for them.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read this and feel free to comment, feedback, rant, rave or share your experiences and expertise.
