A lot of content creators and publishers have been able to create highly lucrative and well-trafficked sites without really using video. There’s plenty of traffic and revenue to earn through written content, and it’s a proven strategy for many successful publishers.
However, video content has been heavily favored in the past several years of content creation. As you’ll see, social media channels and search engine algorithms have jumped on board with the video content marketing wave, and have demonstrated plenty of evidence that video content is becoming the new king of content.
When you incorporate video content into your existing content — be it on your blog, in your emails, or on social media — odds are, you’ll see more traffic than if you hadn’t. Probably a lot more. The latest, most popular form of content: video.
Internet activity changes over time, and human behavior reflects different interests and preferred methods of information consumption. We’ve always liked consuming loads of information, be it through newspapers or smartphones.
Today, attention spans have become shorter than ever. Video content is uniquely suited to address these shorter spans, and the most popular social media platforms typically feature videos 60 seconds or less (a long video is around ten minutes). Tweets with video typically see up to 10x more engagement than those without. Don’t worry if you wouldn’t call yourself a “video person” with a ton of technical know-how; some of the most popular video content is simple live streams on smartphones with little to no video editing required.
Here, you’ll learn some of the biggest benefits publishers should know about video, and some practical steps on how to create high-performing video content.
Audiences Watch, Share, and Engage With Videos More
Videos typically experience an enormously higher level of engagement than simple text or pictures. A recent Facebook study found that videos on Facebook received a whopping 135% more organic reach than simple photos. In fact, social media platforms of all kinds are rewarding video content by prioritizing it over almost every other form of content. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri recently said in an interview that video is “driving an immense amount of growth online for all major platforms.” Pinterest has changed their entire platform layout to prominently display videos through Video Pins when users first enter the site.
In short: video works, and the world’s biggest social media platforms are contorting their layouts and algorithms to consistently display more video content than ever, usually far more than non-video-related content.
Content creators and publishers might not feel that comfortable in front of a camera, and may think they have no business trying to become a “video creator” all of a sudden. It’s easy to feel nervous about implementing a whole new content strategy. But this is the way the market is shifting, and content creators who don’t go with the flow are liable to lose enormous amounts of traffic to publishers who choose to learn savvy video marketing skills.
Fortunately, it’s not hard to start. All you need is a webcam or even just your smartphone. Influencers with millions of followers routinely post live streams or video content using just their smartphone, and it works — you don’t need to invest in high-end video equipment or expensive video editing software to effectively reach your audience through this channel. Start small, and you can probably see an immediate difference with your audience’s engagement once you incorporate video into your content.
Video Is One of the Easiest Forms of Content to Make
If you study the social media channels of your field’s top content creators, you’ll invariably see an enormous amount of videos. But you may be surprised to realize how simple these videos are to make, and how easily you can start creating your own video content.
The smartphone makes everything incredibly simple for publishers. In the past, you had to purchase some high-end video equipment like an HD camera, a microphone, even lighting hardware (not to mention the mess of cords and cables you needed to connect all of them). Further in the past, before everything was digital, creating video content definitely required a team of professionals and experts to publish even a simple video segment.
Now, you can do all of that from the comfort of that phone in your pocket, and social media companies have made it even easier by incorporating live stream and video editing software within their app itself, entirely for free. Influencers and experts often have a great idea for content, whip out their phone, record themselves speaking about their idea, and publish the video in a matter of minutes.
Think about other forms of content. Text-based blog posts take a certain amount of writing skill, which can take years to hone and craft. Recording audio posts like podcast episodes also take a lot more editing work to craft a high-quality piece of content. But video? You practice speaking about your content all the time with your friends and family, and odds are you probably consume a lot of video content about your field on a regular basis. All the ingredients are there, and your technology and social media channels are all optimized to make the process as easy as possible.
It’s truly a win-win — video content performs among the best in the content industry, and it’s the easiest type of content to make.
You Can Repackage Video Content to Every Possible Traffic Channel
Perhaps the biggest benefit of video content is how easily you can repackage it and break it up into other forms of content that fit extremely well on every other traffic channel.
Let’s say you record one piece of video content, a 10 minute video about something in your field.
You can transcribe the video into text and post that as a written blog post on your website.
You can upload the audio as a podcast episode and post it as an audio-only file.
You can take bits and pieces of the video and share it on social media channels.
All this from one 10 minute video! Most content creators feel the overwhelm of trying to manage and maintain five to ten traffic channels of their brand, posting new pieces of content for each channel. It’s exhausting, time-consuming, and not very effective.
But one live-streamed video can be broken up countless ways, maximizing the output of your content for the energy you invested into making it. Different people prefer to consume content in different ways; some people prefer reading longer blog articles over lunch, others prefer to listen to podcasts on commutes, and others consume social media posts throughout the day. You can reach all these audiences with one piece of video content.
How to Use Video to Create Extra Income
Video is simply another traffic channel, and you’ll find that audiences who read your content will also watch your videos, giving you the chance to see far more views than usual. This helps create more opportunities for ad revenue, sales pitches, and promoting other related content that also contributes to increasing your site’s overall revenue.
Although it’s impossible to tell for sure (YouTube keeps their revenue model metrics private and it constantly changes over time), recent data suggests you can earn the equivalent of about $18 dollars for each 1,000 video ad view, or about $3 to $5 dollars per 1,000 video views. As Mint recently explained, with an “estimated pay rate of $5 per 1,000 views, a YouTube video with 1,000,000 views can make upward of $5,000, which makes being a modern-day influencer a pretty lucrative job!” This is just from video content alone, and some of the world’s most popular video creators make a mind-boggling amount of revenue from their videos:
Source: https://mint.intuit.com/blog/relationships/how-much-do-youtubers-make/
You can also add other revenue streams to your video, like including affiliate links in your video description, selling merchandise, and promoting any products/services your website offers.
This is all in addition to your site’s content, where you can easily embed videos into your site to eac both ad revenue from third party video sites like YouTube and your own site’s ad revenue. When you combine video content with your written content, your video income and site revenue increase.
In Conclusion
Content creation trends and market behavior are always changing. For now, video has become the newest and strongest form of content, and it’s only continuing to grow.
Fortunately, content creators and publishers can ride this wave to the full, easily creating an enormous amount of video content and repackaging it across all their relevant traffic channels. You don’t need high-end equipment or mastery of complicated video editing softwares…you can gain a massive following through your video content with only your smartphone or laptop webcam.
Of course, not every video is a guaranteed winner, and you still need to consistently produce quality content to your audience. Just posting more videos isn’t guaranteed to get you a ton of traffic (although social media channels are definitely helping that to be possible for content creators). Be real with your videos, and take the time to learn how to implement videos into your brand. Try different video styles and see what works for you. Study your field’s top creators, and model their work.
Incorporating video content might take a little time, but the ROI of this strategy is unmatched in the content creation field. If you’re looking for the best use of your time for content marketing strategies, you’d be hard-pressed to find something more effective than video marketing.
