How To Make Business Videos People Will Watch

👎 If you’re already creating video to market your business, that’s not enough.

😑 Everyone is doing it.

🤔 So, how do you stand out from the sea of talking heads and boring corporate vids?

🎯 Well, you read this blog post and take action on the points I’m making of course.

#1 Forget the traditional way of doing video for business

For years there has been ‘a way’ of doing video for business.

Slightly awkward looking employees saying how much they love your company, a highly scripted and boring explanation of your company and how credible it is, heck, even some real-life actors if you’re fancy.

The thing is, people don’t go online to hear about your company.

Even ‘useful’ videos aren’t good enough if they don’t keep your viewers engaged.

Let’s look at some bad and good examples.

How not to do video marketing

This weird ‘Windows 7 Launch Party’ promo video from Microsoft is bad. Really bad.

The aim of the video is to encourage Windows 7 users to ‘Host a Windows 7 Party’ where you invite all your friends and talk about Windows 7. I’m not kidding.

The video is kinda awkward to watch, boring, inauthentic, highly scripted and just weird.

This is how not to do video marketing.

How you should be doing video marketing

This branded video by UNILAD, promoting the Badoo dating App is quality.

It’s entertaining, fun and most importantly it makes you want to take action (TAG your friends, share, like, comment etc.)

UNILAD totally understand how to create a video that ticks all the right video marketing boxes.

Here’s another great example from the guys at On The Tools.

Are you starting to see the difference?

Ok, more examples coming up!

#2 Understand the science of sharing

The #1 factor that influences the success of your content, including video, is engagement (shares, likes, comments etc). This is especially important to understand when sharing videos on social media.

Social media platforms don’t tell us ‘engagement’ is the #1 factor for success, but it’s a clear trend which has been identified by various credible sources (like Forbes & Buffer).

In Mike Stelzner’s recent Facebook algorithm podcast interview with Dennis Yu, Dennis states, ‘If a like is worth 1 point, then a comment is worth about 6. A share may be worth 13, a 3-second video view might be 0.25, and negative feedback (“hide this post, hide all posts, report, spam, unlike page”) is worth a minus 100.’

13 points for 1 share! This is why we need to understand the science of why people share content.

The interview is only focused on the Facebook Algorithm, but similar principles can be applied across other social media channels. It is well worth a listen.

Why do people share and engage?

The New York Times Customer Insight Group conducted a really interesting study which looked at why people share online.

I won’t bore you with the details, Coschedule have done a great job with rounding up the 5 main reasons in the handy infographic below.

#3 Develop video ideas (that trigger emotion)

Now that we understand that triggering someone’s emotions is the #1 way to make them share, it’s time to develop business video ideas that will trigger their emotions.

You don’t always have to focus on triggering positive emotions either.

Do you think Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ video got 114 million views because it triggered positive emotion? Exactly.

How to develop video ideas that trigger emotion

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here.

One of the best ways to come up with an effective idea is to get inspiration from other videos that are already performing very well.

No, I don’t mean copy someone else’s idea.

Learn from them and try and come up with new, creative, better ideas.

Here are some examples to give you inspiration.

Emotion Triggered: Amusement

Emotion Triggered: Fear

Emotion Triggered: Anticipation

Emotion Triggered: Affection

Emotion Triggered: Joy

Emotion Triggered: Pride

Emotion Triggered: Surprise

#4 Plan, Shoot & edit

Now you’ve identified some creative video ideas that trigger emotion, it’s time to plan, shoot and edit your own.

Planning

1. Create Your Video ‘Storyboard’

Being completely honest with you, we don’t create a fancy pants video storyboard for every video we do, but, we have some form of planned story board for all videos we make (even if it does involve badly drawn stickmen with notes).

Watch the video below to learn how to create your storyboard (it doesn’t have to be fancy).

2. Write Your Script

Again, we like to develop a rough idea of what we want to say and then say it ‘off the cuff’ in most of our videos.

However…

This doesn’t suite everyone and lots of people like to write a full script and learn it for their video. Also, a script is needed for longer, more complex videos.

Here’s how to create your script.

3. Get The Equipment You Need

Despite what a lot of people think, you don’t have to spend hundreds of pounds on equipment to shoot good video. Here’s a little secret…the content is way more important.

This ultimate live stream setup for £100 is perfect to shoot good video.

Yes, we do use more expensive shooting equipment, but still use this setup for videos, like our On The Tools Awards Video, Supernova Lithuania Video & Social Media Insights Bulgaria Video.

Here’s a more in-depth look into our budget video setup.

Shooting

There are 3 core things you need to focus on when shooting;

💡 Light

🔊 Audio

📹 Steady Shot

Rather than go into detail about shooting here, we’ve already written an article which is bursting with shooting tips.

Read it here: 10 Video Marketing Tips From 10 Video Marketing Pros

Editing

There is lots of editing software and editing mobile Apps to choose from, for all budgets (even free).

The first thing you need to work out is what software or App you will use.

I’d seriously recommend doing your own research to see which software is best for you though (YouTube is your friend).

Derral Eves is an awesome video expert to follow and he shares some insightful video software suggestions below.

How to edit

I’m no pro video editor (that’s what Lloyd’s for) which is why I’m going to guide you to some of the great resources and YouTubers Lloyd’s suggested you take a look at to up your editing game.

Peter McKinnon’s YouTube Channel

Derral Eves YouTube Channel

D4Darious YouTube Channel

Darious’s video editing for absolute beginners is a great place to start.

#5 Promote & Repurpose the shit out of your videos

20% of your time should be on planning, shooting and editing your videos.

80% of your time should be on promoting them.

Let me now share with you a bunch of ways to promote your videos.

Followed by examples of how you can ‘repurpose the shit out of your videos’.

In other words, create as much awesome video content in the small amount of time you have.

How To Promote Your Videos

✅ Share them natively (not as a YouTube link) on social media (more than once).

✅ Use Facebook Ads to get the videos in front of your ideal customers.

✅ Use YouTube Ads to get the videos in front of your ideal customers.

✅ Send them to your email List.

✅ Send them to your Pushcrew list (push notifications).

✅ Pin your video at the top of Facebook and Twitter.

✅ Include influencers in your videos and ask them to share.

✅ Promote videos in Facebook groups (you must be a valued member of the community).

✅ Ask your besties to share, comment like etc. as soon as you click publish.

✅ Contact relevant large Facebook communities and pitch your video.

✅ Get all of your employees to like, comment and share as soon as you click publish.

How To Repurpose The Shit Out Of Your Videos

THE biggest barrier I come up against when talking to business owners about creating video is…I don’t have time.

The answer?

Make the most out of the time you do have.

So, how do you do that? To help you, I’m going to share an example of how we would make the most out of the time we have to create video content whilst at an event.

Whilst looking through these examples, I’m hoping small sparks will be flying from your brain.

Little ideas popping out based on how you can apply these ideas to your own business.

From one event I speak at/ attend, we would…

Create a vlog for Facebook and YouTube

If Lloyd’s with me, we’d create a ‘proper’ vlog using our Cannon 80D which Lloyd will edit on his computer.

If Lloyd’s not with me, I create the vlog myself using my IPhone 7+ and edit it using the Inshot App.

Create short vlog teaser videos for Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn

Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn have restrictions on the length and file size of video that you can upload.

Therefore, we’d create short ‘teaser’ video cuts from the full vlog to share and guide traffic to the full length vlog on Facebook or YouTube.

Twitter Video Limits: 2 minutes 20 seconds | 512mb

Instagram Video Limits: 1 minute | no file size limit

LinkedIn Video Limits: 10 minutes | 5GB

Create Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat Stories & teaser videos

From the lead up to the event, all the way through to going home after the event party, I’d be sharing the best ‘behind the scenes’ bits on Instagram stories.

I’d also create Instagram story teaser videos where I download part of the story and share it on Twitter and Facebook to encourage people to go and watch the full story.

Collaborate with other speakers or people at the event

Collaborating with others at the event is a great way to increase exposure for your videos and build relationships.

Here’s an example of us collaborating with our marketing frenemies Andrew and Pete at Social Day.

Create mobile-edited storytelling videos

How can you tell your story in a creative way whilst at the event? Here’s an example of how we’ve used Inshot to create mobile-edited storytelling videos whilst at Social Day.

Create 5-10 1 minute video tips for Insta, Twitter & Facebook

From the vlog Lloyd’s shot, we’d cut the 5-10 most useful 1 minute clips and share them on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Create 5-10 10/15 second ‘tip videos’ for Instagram Stories & Snapchat

Similar to above, we’d create 10-15 second clips to fit Instagram stories.

Create 5-10 text-based LinkedIn posts around the tip video topics

From the 5-10 ‘most useful clips’ we’d create 5-10 text-based LinkedIn posts (using the format shown below).

Create 5-10 Instagram quote images from the vlog stills

Pretty self explanatory.

Create 5-10 GIFs created for Twitter & Facebook

We use Giphy (free tool) to create funny GIFs from segments of the vlog.

Create an event round up blog (including best Tweets and videos)

After each event we go to we write an event round up blog full with all the best videos, photos and tweets.

Create an educational blog covering the talk topic.

We’d also translate the talk I’m doing into a blog. Let me let you in on a secret…

This blog is based on a keynote I do.

Over To You

Now it’s time to take action. Follow the steps above and create a business video that your customers will actually want to watch.