Hey everybody and welcome to the #trending in video blog brought to you by Best Made Videos®. This is our weekly blog where we keep you up to date on all the latest tips and trends in the world of videography and video production. We are a Seattle based videography company focusing on the wedding videography and live event videography and today we are looking at two articles from our friends at Lemonlight. They are a national videography company who have hired us to do a lot of local work in the Seattle area in terms of corporate videography and they have put together a couple of blog series posts talking all about video marketing and video trends in 2020 and beyond.
The first one we are looking at is called the Complete Series Video Trends in 2020, they had posted this earlier this year and begin talking about how in the year 2020 many companies are going to start developing video marketing strategies for their content. Many companies are choosing to incorporate video content, taking advantage of the many benefits that video marketing has to offer and supplementing that video content with other written and more visually dynamic content to aid in the process. They are sharing their own analysis of video production trends that they believe are going to dominate the video campaigns this year.
The first trend they are talking about is authenticity in video content, which is something we've talked about a lot before on our video blog series. Viewers in this digital age demand authenticity from the video content they are interacting with online. Today it's more possible than ever to document the perfect video or photo without having any consideration at all for whether the experience is being accurately represented. People praise influencers for some of their idyllic video content, but others criticize it as they feel like it makes and other tangible lifestyle look more appealing than the reality actually is. Given this dichotomy, Lemonlight believes that many viewers would rather see ultra real content in their video in 2020 and beyond. They note that video is going to be a great way and tool for brands to accomplish this. They are able to build trust with their audiences by letting their guard down and using the video to showcase a more real experience on camera. Authenticity also has the added benefit of making the video production easier because it allows the companies to accomplish their video content without robust video equipment. A casual video is able to be filmed selfie-style and does not require an additional fancy backdrop lighting or audio equipment and many audiences are going to be drawn to the down to earth approach of that video content. On the other hand, if you have expertly produced video content, you can still make it authentic when the messaging is true and feels approachable to the viewer. Ultimately it's going to be up to individual brands how they will interpret this videography trend in the coming months, no matter how the video trend is applied. Prioritizing authenticity in your video content is a great way to create genuine connections with your audience.
The second trend they are talking about is vertical video and how it is going to continue to thrive this year. Vertical video uses an opposite aspect ratio than you would traditionally see, and that is what Instagram stories and Facebook live video is utilizing in their online mobile content. The benefit of filming video vertically is that on mobile devices, most people are holding their phones vertically and therefore the video accurately fills the screen. Even though flipping the orientation to watch horizontal video is an option on many platforms, audiences are simply not choosing to take this extra step when viewing their online video content. Many studies are confirming the importance of vertical video content and recent studies have found that vertical ads have a completion rate of over 90% while horizontal ads only have a completion rate of 14%. This is a significant decrease and it points to the unwillingness of a consumer to deal with the inconvenience of changing their video viewing orientation. Snapchat came to a similar conclusion and found that the best content on the app was video with vertical dimensions. Finally, they note that many of the purchasing decisions that people are making in 2020 are made entirely on mobile devices. In the past, desktop users had most influence, but nowadays mobile content is no longer secondary so you need to make sure you are producing video content to meet your consumer where they are viewing your content.
The third topic they are discussing is internal and external video production. Another trend they believe in the videography world in 2020 is going to be a mix of internal and external video content. This means that some of the video content is going to be produced by the company itself to supplement the video content made by video agencies or video production companies. The combination of these two types of video productions has implications for the scale of the content that is possible to execute. It makes it easier to support professional content with smaller scale internal video content. Companies will still benefit from having the expertise of video production companies and especially the equipment that they have to offer, but the scope of a brand's video content creation strategy often increases when they are able to utilize both video production options in conjunction with each other. They also talk about video first platforms, which means that the platforms are designed primarily for the consumption of video content. Facebook back in 2017 declare that it would become a video first platform and Mark Zuckerberg called video, a "megatrend" that the company would need to optimize their sites for. Video girst platforms have dominated 2019 already and they include YouTube and TikTok which were both platforms where users spent hundreds of hours solely consuming video content. The popularity of these video first platforms is telling as we move into 2020 as it hints for a need for the public perception to shift toward seeing video as the primary medium for consumption.
Artificial reality and virtual reality in video have also been shaking up the video industries since their inception and advertising has only just begun to scratch the surface of what might be possible with the technology moving forward. By incorporating dynamic components into what would be normally considered standard video consumption, audiences are able to feel like they are more part of the action and it helps create a more memorable video viewing experience in the minds of the consumer.
In conclusion they note that only time will tell which of these video trends takes hold in 2020 but no one can deny that it's going to be an exciting year for video content creation. Lemonlight, which is a national videography company is going to monitor these trends over the next several months and looks forward to sharing more video innovations as they unfold.
The second article we are looking at from Lemonlight is talking all about why you need to nail the first eight seconds in your video. They begin the article noting that we have all heard the famous stat that our attention spans in watching video has reached an all time low, averaging just eight seconds. Though this myth has been virtually debunked thanks to bad research and weak sources, the concept here in its basis still holds more true than ever. If you want to make your video marketing be effective, you have to capture your audience's attention as soon as possible when they're viewing your videos.
This really has nothing to do with these short attention spans of our society, but rather with the sheer volume of video marketing content we are bombarded with on a daily basis. If you think about it, how many different brands are you seeing every single day? When you look at Facebook ads, commercials, radio segments, billboards, sponsored links and brand packaging in supermarkets, there are a lot. We are exposed to over 5,000 brands a day, every single day. According to a 2014 study, we are specifically exposed to 362 ads a day. And of those we can recognize 86 and we engage with 12. That to you as a video producer needs means that you need to make your video ad stand out from the rest of the competition if you want to get more interaction.
How are you supposed to get started on the right foot you might ask? You need to focus on the first eight seconds of your video. In order for a video ad to be successful, it needs to have two different things. It needs to engage and it needs to persuade. The first eight seconds of your video are your best chance as a video creator at engaging your user before they move on to the next piece of video content. Then you need to use whatever remaining time you have in your video to persuade your user towards a purchase.
Especially on sites where there are lots of ads shown, video ads move by in the blink of an eye. On your Facebook feed. Video ads are only watched for an average of 5.7 seconds. To put it bluntly. If you are not capturing your video, to put it bluntly, if you are not capturing your audience in the first eight seconds of your video, you are not going to capture them.
They list some steps here in the which to best utilize the first eight seconds of your video. The first is to focus on the visuals. Whatever your video is about, it needs to do one specific thing and that is to stop your audience from scrolling. By using bright colors and movements, happy faces and closeups in your video, you need to hope that you can shock your viewer so they literally stop scrolling and begin watching your video.
The second tip they give to best optimizing your video is to boil down what you are offering into one sentence. Obviously your video can be longer than a single sentence, but if you boil down your brand mission or product offering into one clear and concise sentence, that is a great exercise. This not only helps make a more focused video, but if you are struggling to get your brand messaging down to one sentence, it could mean that your brand mission needs some refining.
Number three is to use text to communicate in video, not sound. This is something we've also talked about on our video blog recently, which is how many people nowadays are consuming videos without any sound on while they are at work or school place. You cannot expect for people to ever actually stop and do click on the sound in your video. That's not to say that sound is not a crucial element of video, but when constructing your video ad you cannot rely solely on sound to get your message across.
The fourth topic they bring about is the use of shock and awe. Nothing is going to stop it user from scrolling faster than a weird moment and that's not necessarily a bad thing. You need to think creatively with your video content about creating something strange or curiosity inducing that you can use to capture your viewers audience right away.
The fifth topic they bring up is not to forget effects in your video. Effects are a great way to captivate, especially if you don't have the biggest video budget for actors and locations. You can use simple videos or even stock video footage and create beautiful and engaging pieces of video content with effects that will attract the audience that you deserve.
In conclusion, when you are looking to create your next piece of video, don't necessarily focus on your audience's short attention span. Instead, focus on how you will deliver a message through your video that will resonate more strongly than the messages delivered by the other brands you are competing with every day. Whatever the hook that you're going to go for, you need to go all in for those first eight seconds and after that, use your video to take a deeper dive into what your brand or company is all about.
Thank you again for checking out the blog today. These were a couple pretty fascinating articles talking about some different videography tips that we can incorporate into our Seattle video production company. If you are interested in learning more tips and tricks about the world of videography and video production, be sure to keep tuned in here to the £trending in video blog as we will bring you more tips and videography trends in the weeks ahead. Take care and stay safe.