Is Video The Future Of The Internet?

Video is quickly becoming the most important kind of content on the internet. It's rising at an incredible rate, with Cisco predicting that by 2020 it's going to cover as much as 82% of all consumer internet traffic.

The transition from text and images to video is natural, and will touch every business that is based on sharing some form of content (which, at this point, is pretty much everyone). As such, it's not particularly surprising that companies are doing everything they can in order to meet the demand. Industry giants such as Facebook or Snapchat were quick to develop their own means of conducting this sort of communication on their platforms, with Mark Zuckerberg calling video a "mega trend, almost as big as mobile".

This change is further propelled by new emerging technologies, such as AR and VR. They have a chance to significantly impact the way we view content, from 2D to immersive 3D, practically enforcing the change from images to dynamic videos.

If you still have doubts whether video is something you should be concerned about, then I'm just going to remind you that YouTube's reach among people aged 18-49 is larger than any TV network's. And that's on mobile alone. Let that sink in.

When it comes to promoting your business or service, the case is also simple. Customers are 4 times more eager to watch a video presenting a product than to read about it. Not only does it offer a better explanation due to visual clues present in them, but also takes less effort than spending the same (or larger) amount of time reading about it.

But doesn't video marketing require significant time, effort and funds?

The thing is, not really.

While professionally created videos can be quite breathtaking, it's not always necessary to create proprietary footage and hire a professional editor and social media specialists to conduct your communications. Entry barriers for marketing have been significantly lowered by platforms such as WeVideo or Promo, which allow you to use external, professional videos for reasonable prices.

If you are just starting with promoting your business, than Facebook lives and even certain kinds of YouTube videos can be reliably recorded with a decent phone camera and a handful of basic equipment, such as mounting and decent internet connection.

Should videos be kept short?

Kind of, but it's not always a requirement.

While people's attention span is considered to be constantly decreasing, leading to rise in popularity of shorter videos, they might not always be the preferred choice for your strategy.

A study by Wistia tells us that the optimal mark for video length is under 3 minutes, resulting in highest average engagement. A sharper drop can be seen between 3 and 7 minutes, after which it plateaus all the way to the 12 minute mark. While the total loss between 3 minutes and 12 seems to be around 20%, it goes to show that there is still plenty of space for longer videos on the market.

However, according to Facebook's data, things like brand awareness, ad recall and purchase intent actually increase along with duration. On the other hand, even short viewing (under 10 seconds) resulted in improvement to awareness and purchase intent.

Regardless of what length you choose, you pretty much need to make sure that at least one video is visible on your website. 1 in 4 people will lose interest in a company if it doesn’t have one (Animoto). This shows just how engaging this form of content is.

Social WiFi’s Client Panel allows you to easily incorporate visual content on your welcome page. It’s as simple as inserting a YouTube link in the Content Management section.

Using videos as a mean of promoting your business can significantly impact the numbers of customers you receive and the amount of information they are willing to receive from you. Make it easy for them, and they will make it easy for you.