Video is, and probably always will be, one of the most powerful tools to create and share content. No doubt about it.
There’s no wonder, more and more businesses search to create better, more engaging and useful video content and also capitalize on the power of having a strong Youtube channel. Easier said than done. We kind of learned this the hard way.
Today we’re sharing with you some of the secrets behind adding video to your existing content strategy and combining it with a solid SEO and PPC strategy. A secret recipe if you will. A tried and tested video content strategy by us here at Flipsnack.
Are you ready to go behind the scenes of this entire process with us? We’re giving you tips and tricks you can fully apply for your website. And in return, maybe subscribe to our Youtube channel (wink, wink).
Let’s get started:
For those of you who don’t know much about Flipsnack, here’s a little summary.
We’re an online catalog and magazine maker. Basically, everyone can create, share and embed online magazines, catalogs, brochures, reports and more, transforming PDFs into online flipping books. With over 4 million people using Flipsnack, our communication has transformed a lot over the past few years.
Which takes us back to the main point of this article. How to create a powerful video content strategy?
For many years, our content marketing strategy has been all about writing articles and optimizing them on a regular basis. The classic recipe. But, we saw a pretty big opportunity to take things to whole new levels. That happened a little over a year ago.
Like I told you, here at Flipsnack, you can basically create all sorts of publications. From magazines to catalogs and so forth. But you can also create digital zines.
With big zinester communities out there, I saw an opportunity to make some content around this topic. So, I did. I wrote an article answering the “what is a zine?” question. Which, slowly but surely started gaining traction and it’s currently one of the most visited articles on our blog. See in the screenshot below.
That’s when we noticed this could be a nice opportunity to do more. And we did. This is when we started truly working on our video content strategy, which eventually paid off.
Here’s what we did:
Here’s the final result. All made in-house. Click the image below to watch the video.
The recipe: loads of research, a good script, voice-over using a good text-to-speech software, and a talented motion designer. Oh, I forgot something essential: creativity.
On top of being creative and converting a blog post into a more visually appealing format, the goal behind this move is pretty simple. Grab another opportunity to appear in Google search results.
Today, the first page for the query “what is a zine?” looks like this:
Of course, we embedded the video within the article which helped with the overall average session duration.
All in all, you might ask yourself if it’s really worth it to add video to your existing content marketing strategy. We’ll be the first to admit that it’s a rather long and complicated process. Nevertheless, we have 4 big reasons to convince you.
Ok, now, you might ask yourself how long did it take to produce this type of video in-house?
Because we were just starting out in this video journey, we took our time and created a little in-house advertising agency with a team of 3 creatives. A copywriter, a designer, and a motion designer. Sure, not every business can immediately invest in forming a team of creatives to handle video marketing but maybe think about investing in good equipment, acquiring professional video editing software, and looking for in-house talent who can take on this challenge.
For making this “What is a zine?” 1 minute and 38 seconds video, it took us approximately 2 working days. But we fine-tuned the entire video-making process and used this experience to learn a lot along the way. Like what it means to SEO optimize the titles for Youtube ranking, making thumbnails, adding subtitles or adding captions. More on this, a bit later.
TIP: Even if it takes a lot of hard work, resources and energy, invest in a good video content strategy. It will surely pay off. Take our word for it!
For now, let’s move on to one of the most important steps in our video content strategy which is:
It may sound a bit surprising what I’m going to tell you now, but writing a blog post and developing a good video script are two totally different things. And it took us a bit of time to figure this out. Why?
Think of it this way: if you are converting your blog post into a video script, your ultimate goal should be to make it engaging and maybe entertaining in some fashion.
Here’s how to write a video script in 5 easy steps:
If you are not using a person as the main character of your video, make sure you have enough material to visually represent your script. Here’s a tip that might help: open a spreadsheet and for each section of your video, put down bits of visual information (images, videos, graphs, etc) that will be representative of the text. Don’t worry if you don’t have a budget for this type of resource, websites like Unsplash or Pexels will be your best friends. Just get creative and experiment!
When it comes to the soundtrack of your project, things can get a bit more complicated, but you still have plenty of options in this area as well, so do not worry!
You can find free music on Youtube’s Audio Library. Use it freely as long as you don’t monetize the video. But if you plan on doing that, then you need to buy the music you’re going to use. And there are plenty of websites you can go to for that: Epidemic Sounds or Soundstripe are just two valid options.
Now, moving on to another example. I told you we’re big on magazines, so a few years ago, we wrote an article about what it means to design a fashion magazine like Vogue. I highly recommend you read it, it’s full of insightful tips. The article soon started gaining traction and climbed in the top 10 most trafficked content pieces on our blog.
But, as you already imagined, we didn’t stop here. Because the topic is so generous and visually appealing, we took things further, making a video out of it using an online video editor tool to make it high-quality. And it proved to be a good strategy.
We went through the entire process: did a brainstorming session about the most important elements we should include in the video, and wrote a script that went into production and the actual production. Because this was a lengthier project, it took us longer than our first experience, but we already had a system in place that helped build a more solid video content strategy. Here’s the 3-minute video:
At first, the main part of the traffic for this video came from the video embed within the blog article. But at the beginning of this year we saw a spike in traffic which, of course, made us happy. Why did this happen though?
It surprised us to find out there was a Tik Tok challenge going on. And it was all about, well, you kinda guessed it, making yourself a magazine like Vogue.
It surprised us to find out there was a Tik Tok challenge going on. And it was all about, well, you kinda guessed it, making yourself a magazine like Vogue.
We saw the opportunity and immediately jumped on the bandwagon. So here’s what we did. Analyzed everything we could find on the topic. And there were tens of videos, most of them made by teenagers who manually created a Vogue magazine design like publication, printed it and made a Tik Tok with the whole experience.
Even if our first video answered the question, it did more in terms of content. However, people were most likely interested in a one, two step tutorial. And so, this is what we gave them.
Made a short, 36 seconds video about How to make a magazine online, Vogue Style. Having more of a Tik-Tok style, the video is easy to understand, fast-paced and informative as it answers the question in a simple manner. We basically gave people an easy to use alternative to creating their own magazine.
But we did not stop here. We wanted to make sure people see this video when looking for similar queries. Here’s what we did:
We had finished working on the video within a day or two as we wanted to capitalize on this trend as soon as possible, using it in a campaign. At first we did only the mobile version of it, but later on converted it into landscape as well.
We started running the ads on May 15 and used custom intent audiences of people who use Google to search for terms like: create magazine online, make your own online magazine, fashion magazine template, create fashion magazine.
And content on youtube related to: Vogue cover challenge, create magazine like Vogue.
The campaign was a true success with over 12 purchases being made and 30k views for that video alone. Not to mention the subscription rate went up.
Even if we started making videos on our channel a little over a year ago, it wasn’t until recently that we had developed a stronger Youtube marketing strategy.
In the sense that we started taking advantage of Youtube as a powerful search engine after having experimented with the videos we already talked about. And today, besides the tutorials we’re doing, and the content video strategy we developed, we’re also answering questions related to Flipsnack. Queries like: How to create a PDF Catalog? Or How share catalogs on social media?
Instead of answering these questions in a text format, or even if we’re doing it in our help center, we’re also taking advantage of the video format that is much easier to follow.
The main keyword that will answer the question is “strategy”. Knowing how to tackle Youtube as a medium and experimenting a lot. However, if we were to share a few tips with you, here we go:
We will be very subjective on the matter, since we’re just wrapping up an article trying to convince you to do so. YES. If you have enough resources to convert some of your content into video format and take advantage of Youtube marketing, I highly advise you to experiment with video and see what happens. Of course, you will not see great results at first. No, chances are, you won’t get viral after having posted your first video, but you can slowly learn new things and expand your boundaries. After all, what does being a marketer mean? Loads of trial and error.
What do you think about our experiment so far? Let us know in the comments down below.
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