In today’s era of digital marketing and remote business, one of the most surefire ways to connect with customers and target audiences is through digital marketing – and a big part of modern digital marketing is video content.
As a business, it is very important to have high-quality content that catches the attention and imagination of target audiences, as this will endear them to the brand, and make it easier to convert leads into customers, and customers into loyal advocates. We spoke to TechQuarters, who rely heavily on digital marketing to promote the business IT support London companies have been coming to them for since 2010. TechQuarters agree that video content is a big part of modern digital marketing. But if you’re a business that’s just trying to get into make your own content, you’re probably wondering how to do it right.
A lot of organizations opt to hire videographers and professional marketing companies to help produce high quality video content, but this is not the only way to do it. In fact, it is probably easier than you think to Do It Yourself!
Planning Content
When it comes to producing impactful video content for your business, you can’t just start anywhere; you need to have a plan in place.
The first step should be to figure out what type of content will be most effective. To do this, you need to look at what other businesses similar to yours is producing and publishing, and also look at the content trends, and what types of content is getting the most attention from online audiences. Luckily, the latter is easy to do; in fact, most social media and video streaming platforms readily offer stats on the most successful content on their sites – you just need to look at what the trending posts and videos are to find out. All it takes is some investigation and analysis to figure out what content works, and what does not.
Capturing Footage
So, once you have an idea of the type of content that is impactful, and you have planned some original content for your brand, you need to be able to produce it.
This starts with capturing footage, but how do you do this? Many business invest money in purchasing, or perhaps renting, high quality camera equipment – most commonly DSLR or mirrorless cameras. If you have already been having some success with your video content, this is not a bad idea, but could chalk up to an unwise investment if you haven’t.
Start small by producing video content on your phone. People are making high quality video content – even short and feature length films – using just their phones. What is more, there are even apps that unlock features in your phone’s camera to help you capture even better footage. The FiLMiC Pro app, for instance, was even used to shoot several feature length films – and it only costs around a $20 one-time fee.
As for capturing audio footage, the availability of USB mics makes it very easy to purchase an affordable sound recording solution. What is more, it is surprisingly easy to set up a make-shift recording studio that insulates sound, and helps you to capture clean audio even on a basic setup.
Editing Content
Once you have your video and audio footage captured, you need to be able to edit it. There are lots of options for free editing software that can allow you to cut and arrange both video and audio in a competent way. One option for video editing is Adobe Premiere Rush – this younger brother to the famous Premiere Pro is a stripped down, lightweight editing solution that is free, and designed for beginner video editors that is great for online video content such as vlogs and YouTube videos. It comes with a range of template effects for titles, subheadings, filters, and more. As a free and easy-to-use solution, this is a great place to start, but as you get more experienced, you might want to try some more advanced programs.
If you have the budget for it, and a desktop with the right specs, you could invest in a subscription to Adobe Premiere Pro – this is arguably the best video editing software in the world currently and is used by professional videographers worldwide.
Stock Footage and Music
While you’re able to capture your own original footage, it is also very common for video content to feature stock and archival footage as well. This is a great way to fill out the video and provide more variety in the visuals. Just be careful to only use royalty-free footage that is approved for commercial use.
One of the best royalty-free stock footage services is Storyblocks, which features more than 100,000 stock videos that are free for all kinds of usage. Other services include Artgrid, RawFilm, and Adobe Stock.
But what if you need music for your content? Luckily, the royalty-free music market is thriving, and there are plenty of services that offer high-quality music for commercial usage. One of the largest sites for royalty-free music is Epidemic Sound; it has a library of more than 30,000 tracks, and even allows you to download different parts of a track if you want to.
