VIDEO IN DIGITAL MARKETING

The Role of Video Content in Marketing Activities

As the digital marketing industry becomes an important part of business, finding ways to differentiate yourself from the competition will need to be an increasing focus. Interestingly, one of the most powerful and important mediums to accomplish this is the use of video marketing (Ali, 2017).  


  Scroll through any Facebook feed today and you’ll see videos where static posts and images used to be. Video is quickly becoming the preferred medium of communication by businesses and consumers alike – and for good reason. Video is a quick, easy, and effective way to convey information in a way that is multi-dimensional, interactive, and entertaining. According to CBO.me, live action ads are also more likely to be shared through social media outlets versus text based information. It's been recently rumoured that Facebook has updated its algorithm to favor video posts above all other types of content. A business now has the ability to reach a larger viewing audience by creating or sharing memorable or funny videos. Video ads and promotions will entice a person to an emotional response. Most often, a person will share information they identify with the most, allowing your business free exposure to a potential clients friends, family, and followers. If you haven’t gotten on the video bandwagon and are wondering if producing videos are really worth the effort, here are a few benefits that might help you to make your decision.

Video Content Promotes Brand Awareness

The sheer multidimensional nature of video in combining images, text, and audio allows for the quicker and more impactful communication of a message. It is easier for consumers to recall a video they watched (versus just a static image or text) – and when they remember your video, they remember your brand. In addition, people are much more likely to share a video within their social circles, especially if you are able to present information in an entertaining and engaging way. This increases your brand reach and extends the ‘life’ of a video much further than an image or text. It is worth noting, however, that people are much less likely to share an overtly ‘branded’ video – an ideal balance would be to make your video content as memorable and relatable as possible, while adding in nuances of company identity through colours, fonts, logos, and subtle script messaging. Eric Vidal, CMO at BMG, points out how today’s buyer puts the level of connection they feel with a brand over the function of the product when making a purchasing decision. Your product or service might be amazing, but you won’t maximize your reach without giving customers a reason to choose your brand. Storytelling is another one of the latest marketing trends. The art of storytelling is as old as humanity, and online video is the latest medium. Use video to tell the story of how your company got started. Here are some questions to ask yourself to get the creative juices flowing:

• What was my state of mind when I first got the idea for my business?
• What problem was I trying to solve when I first thought of my business?
• Who helped me in turning my idea into an actual business?
• How do I think my business is different than other businesses in my niche?
• What about my company has a direct positive impact on society?

The goal with a brand origin story is to show your roots. It helps build a connection that primes leads for conversion. Wrap it up with a strong call-to-action and put it on a landing page. Also, studies have shown that videos generate more trust in customers than blocks of text or infographics. This makes sense intuitively, since the production costs of a video would discourage a spammer or fly-by-night website from creating them.

Video Can Boost Your Website’s SEO

Simply the act of placing a video on a page in your website can boost its SEO ranking, regardless of content, as Google gives preference to websites that contain videos. This is especially true if you first post your video on Youtube and embed the video onto your website. In a more roundabout (but still effective) way, videos also cause users to spend more time on your page, thus signaling to Google that your site has quality content. This also contributes to boosting your SEO ranking. A word of caution, however – make sure that your embedded videos are not causing your website to lag while loading, as that is a surefire way to increase your bounce rate and negatively affect your SEO!

Video Can Increase Sales

Research has shown that consumers are much more likely to make a purchase after watching a video about the product. It is unclear as to exactly what it is about videos that increase sales, but it is likely a combination of factors. After all, videos are more attention-grabbing and thus more consumers may be aware of your product. Videos are also a great way to show the product in action and provide enough information to convince the consumers of their need for your product. When creating product-focused videos to increase sales, a good tip would be to try to pre-empt (and answer) questions which consumers may have about the product. In other words, use your video to overcome the barrier to purchase that consumers may have – and you’ll find a sale much more likely. Product demonstrations, FAQs, and product reviews are all great ways to use your video to increase your sales.  


  Over 50 percent of consumers look up a product on the Internet before they make a purchase. Consumers want to see how your product works so they can visualize it solving one of their problems. Your personality matters just as much as the functionality of your product. The more passion you convey in your video, the higher your conversion rate.

Dominate the Social Media space

According to TheMarketingScope.com, video dominated the social media landscape in 2017, and it shows no signs of slowing down in 2018 and beyond. Conduct an audit of all the social media profiles for your business. Which platform do you get the most engagement with your community? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat all have video in some capacity. One great way to use video on social media is to give consumers a behind-scenes-look at your brand. Have your employees do account takeovers to showcase their role within your company. Show the production process in action.  


  Improving trust and humanizing your brand can Increasing sales with video marketing isn’t always about generating sales directly from a video. Sometimes the goal is to improve trust and humanize your brand through transparency, which indirectly increases sales.

Conclusion

Videos are also able to make a compelling pitch more quickly than reading would. Instead of allowing the visitor to read or skim whatever part of the page they choose to, a video can be hyper-focused to get the specific points you need to get across as quickly as possible. So if you haven’t already started producing videos, give it a try and see what they can do for you! And if you’ve already dabbled in video-making, try experimenting with different video ideas and formats to make sure the effort you’re putting into making your videos is paying off in the best way possible! Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing and develop a great landing pages for your website? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

Unlock the Potential of Social Learning in Your SumTotal LMS

Unlock the Potential of Social Learning in Your SumTotal LMS

Your people seek to improve their skills and grow in their careers, and they do it best in a social collaborative setting, where they can learn from each other.Seventy-six percent of employees are looking for career growth opportunities and 87% of millennials claim that professional development and career growth are very important. 

               "What we learn with pleasure we never forget."

                                                                  -Alfred Mercier

When your people find it hard to communicate and collaborate, they feel pressured not knowing where to find the answers or resources they need. They lose momentum. 

Weak communication can lead to a drop in the levels of engagement and retention. Eighty-six percent of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures. 

While most learning takes place in experience, much happens through social learning – but formal methods have the least impact on learning. Helping your people communicate, collaborate and learn on the job can unlock hidden learning opportunities. 

Tapping SumTotal Social for a Training Advantage  

In SumTotal 18.2, we have a wholly re-engineered social platform – one that can help your organization adapt to social learning now.  

Social learning is the process of learning from interactions or conversations with peers, leaders, social media channels and communities. Blogs, wikis, online forums, and social media have become centers of learning where your people go to get what they need when they need it most.  

Integrating social learning tools with your learning systems can help you maximize your training efficiency. It helps your learners connect with peers and leaders, draws in knowledge that improves performance, and sustains learning across your teams.  

Allowing users to comment on threads and poll users, it gives you options to set up and designate these features to all users or to a specific group of users. This brings all your users together and helps you learn their needs.  

BYOD for Greater Learning Flexibility 

SumTotal LMS supports the Bring Your Own Device approach, which can improve learner engagement as they tap into their own devices to accomplish learning. When your people learn using the devices they are comfortable with, they can learn at a faster pace without the hurdles of learning a new system. It creates efficiencies and allows you to realign your device budgets towards content for your learners.  

Networking for Collaborative Learning 

Initiating learning through informal styles like behavior modeling, browsing social media channels and peer-to-peer and peer-to-leader interactions in the workplace gives you better learning outcomes. 

SumTotal Social allows your learners to build communities, post blogs, initiate and respond to discussions, share files and integrate standard styles into workflows. These options enable learners to reach their targeted learning content faster and interact with peers and managers. 

Integration with Messaging Apps for Social Learning 

Messaging apps now have over 5 billion monthly users worldwide. SumTotal now is planning integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack to build on the existing integration with Yammer. 

Making learning available on your enterprise collaboration platforms not only brings learning into the flow of your work but also keeps your learners engaged, efficiently sustaining the learning momentum.

Social Tools for Continuous Learning 

Social learning is continuous, unlike the formal method that happens within a set time frame.   

When you socialize your enterprise learning, it puts your learners in a collaborative setting that speeds up learning and gives your business a competitive advantage through learning agility. 

Our Previous Blog: https://blog.pixentia.com/how-chatbots-give-you-a-recruiting-advantage
Our Next Blog: https://blog.pixentia.com/maximize-your-employee-experience-with-an-hr-intranet-portal

Social Media for Your Business

5 main benefits of social media networks for your business

Did you know that 78% of businesses now have dedicated teams for their social media? This is up from 67% in 2012, demonstrating that increasingly, organizations are acknowledging the power of social media network marketing to attract and engage customers. Below we explain 5 key benefits of social media for your business:

Increased Brand Recognition

The use of various social media networks has a positive correlation with the number of users being aware of your business and their products or services. Businesses can utilize different ways of business advertising, including the creation of a business page and launching paid ad campaigns. If your potential customers will see your business on two or more networks, they will remember and recognize your business in the future, when looking for that particular product or service you offer. According to statistics, people spend on average 2 to 5 hours per day using social media networks, indicating that this is a great marketing channel.  By offering them a perfect combination of engaging information and branding content, you can achieve significant growth in your lead generation. One of the interesting examples of how social media has become the main contributor to brand awareness and brand recognition of the company is the Youtube campaign by BlendTec.


  The viral video efforts of manufacturer BlendTec gave the company a huge return-on-investment in terms of its worldwide brand recognition and sales. Blendtec founder, Tom Dickson, debuted on YouTube marketing channel in 2006 to promote his premier blender and prove that it could blend just about anything. Known as one of the most successful internet marketing campaigns in history, Will It Blend? garnered six million views in the first six days. Dickson has since uploaded over 150 videos blending marbles, Apple products, glow sticks, neodymium magnets, Bic lighters and many more. "I started Will It Blend? with just a $50 budget," said Tom Dickson, Founder, Blendtec. "The results have helped propel Blendtec onto an international stage where our blenders have been showcased for their powerfully advanced technology and premier blending ability."

Improved Customer Insights

Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in and how they behave, via social listening. For instance, you can monitor user comments to see what people think of your business directly. You can segment your content syndication lists based on topic and see which types of content generate the most interest—and then produce more of that type of content. You can measure conversions based on different promotions posted on various social media channels and eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue. Bora says the unstructured data on social media contains countless insights that can help an organization to understand its customers. However, to engage with this information in a tangible way, it is essential to have the right methodology, technology, and expert assistance to provide the structure and insight.

Improved Customer Loyalty

According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social media channels with their audience enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. The report concludes “Companies should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting with their audience. A strategic and open social media plan could prove influential in morphing consumers into being brand loyal.” Another study published by Convince & Convert has also found that 53% of American citizens who follow brands in social are more loyal to those brands. TVibes is a unique company that allows customers to create their own TV channels using their own mobile videos (stored in the cloud). They’ve come a long way since their humble beginnings back in 2014 (they launched a successful iOS app in 2015) and are best known for allowing users to choose their own audiences to view the channels.


  The main target is to establish loyal and engaged app users. The goal of the TVibes campaign was to encourage customers to use their app for mobile video storage. Since Facebook is an intuitive platform for lead generation, the founders of the company used the social media giant to try and gain more sign-ups and get more followers. Uri and Gilad - the founders of TVibes - instinctively knew they should integrate a social site like Facebook into their social app. This made it easy for followers to create accounts, log in and explore channels created by their acquaintances, all done conveniently from their Facebook home pages. To help encourage signups based on targeted audience groups, the founders made use of mobile app install ads. By sorting their audiences based on reactions to video ads and with the clever use of lookalike audiences, they had a brilliant strategy of optimizing their campaign. What were the results?

• 50% of new app installs driven by Facebook
• 10% higher loyalty and conversion from those Facebook-driven installs
• 20% higher engagement rates from Facebook user

Improved Search Engine Ranking

SEO is the best way to capture the relevant traffic from search engines, such as Google, but the requirements for success are always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media presence could be almost mandatory.

Richer Customer Experience

Social media, at its core, is a communication channel like email or phone calls. Every customer interaction you have on social media networks is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers. For example, if a customer complains about your product on Twitter, you can immediately address the comment, apologize publicly, and take action to make it right. Or, if a customer compliments you, you can thank them and recommend additional products. It’s a personal experience that lets customers know you care about them.


  With more than 4 million followers on Twitter, to say Nike has a huge social following is an understatement. The company recognizes just how important customer service is, especially on social media, which is why Nike created a separate Twitter account just for responding to customer inquiries and issues: @NikeSupport. Nike Support is dedicated to all things customer service, making it easier for customers to reach out when they have a problem or a question they want answered. And Nike Support is very active, and like other companies with great social media customer service, very quick to respond. If you look at the account's Twitter feed, you'll see replies every few minutes. This shows customers that they can trust Nike to provide them with the help they need, when they need it.

Conclusion                   

The importance of social media for business cannot be underestimated. Digital marketers all around the world are exploring new opportunities offered on social media arena on a daily basis. Despite the high competition in the modern business world, companies have a chance to stand out from the crowd by offering the highest possible level of engagement on social media. Do you remember the case of BlendTec? The company uses Youtube channel to promote their new products by showing how their blenders can destroy IPhone and other devices. Millions of views have been gained due to one key reason: this is something users have never seen before. Offer your audience something that they don’t expect, but will definitely fall in love in when see it. Use social media networks marketing as a basis for your creative marketing ideas and anticipate enormous amount of new customers! Do you want Blueninja.io to help you? We are waiting for your call! Our social media marketing (smm), search engine opitimization (seo), and search engine marketing (sem) services will help you to be on the first page of Google Search and social media network newsfeed! We are looking forward to meet you!

Color and Typography in website Design

There is no doubt about it – color and typography that we choose for a website design has a huge impact on multiple aspects of our website including readability, mood, perceived article length, user experience and much, much more. It is absolutely essential that designers know and understand about color and typography that create a pleasing design, in order to properly portray the vision and mood of the website they design. Lets start with color.

Color Matters a lot

Color represents emotional response :

Color is the most critical visual element of most user interfaces. And that’s because color has associated meanings that create emotional responses and those emotional responses will either drive us to what is intended or it will drive us to something that was not intended. Either way you have to be aware of how the color is influencing your behavior. Everyone of us are aware of primary,secondary and tertiary colors.

Using them accordingly in our website is the important thing, let us learn some basic features about the usage of colors.

Take a look at this interface design, This is for a sleep meditation app.

Its goal is, a sort of help to make you relax and get into a meditative state so that you can sleep better.

Here, Do u see a ton of contrast ? Do u see stark (sharp) black and white colors? Do u see bright ,day glow, screaming colors? No…..

You see sort of this nice peach orangey type color with a nice tan background and baby blue. Header up here and a typeface that is sort of very friendly and welcoming and says sleep, goals. Everything is very sort of sedate and subtle, and pleasant. This shows the instance where color use is very much inline with the intended emotional response.

Usage of meaningful colors ( Color conveys meaning without saying):

Color also delivers symbolic meanings that support and enhance the visual experience in the elements of a design. There is an intended idea or concept that meant to be communicated, and color goes a long way in helping reinforce that. And of course , the idea to be communicated almost goes through the meanings of colors without saying.

Red Promotes                            : power, importance, youth

Orange Promotes                     : friendliness, energy, uniqueness

Yellow Promotes                      : happiness, enthusiasm, antiquity (darker shades)

Green Promotes                       : growth, stability, financial themes, environmental themes

Blue Promotes                          : calm, safety, openness (lighter shades), reliability (darker shades)

Purple Promotes                      : luxury, romance (lighter shades), mystery (darker shades)

Black Promotes                        : power, edginess, sophistication

White Promotes                       : cleanliness, virtue, simplicity

Gray Promotes                         : neutrality, formality, melancholy

Beige Promotes                         : traits of surrounding colors

Ivory Promotes                         : comfort, elegance, simplicity

 

Evaluating proper colour use for your website :
Evaluate color in your design by asking these questions.

• Are colours used sparingly ?
• Do my colors reinforce or interfere with hierarchy and content?
• Is my color scheme used consistently?
• Is my color used functionally or it is just decorative?
• Does functionality depend on color?

Typography

Remember, the primary goal for choosing your font should be readability. Since Internet readers have little patience, you’ll want to make their experience on your site as easy and pleasant as possible.

Bold vs regular fonts:

When the information is different you use different style.
Same thing can also be done with font weight.
Bold fonts are regularly used for titles and subheadings, but they can also be used to highlight key words and phrases. But, if you start capitalizing entire sentences, your audience may feel like you’re shouting at them.
This example shows the several differences in font weight that communicate the hierarchy of information.

Heading is separate from the categories appear below. Gray subtle faint dates are associated with month and year. Here weight of font follows the hierarchy of heading, text, dates, month and year. The weight of font represents visual weight which allows us to discern between on type of information and the next.

Evaluating proper use of typography:

• Identify different types of content: headlines, body bullets, charts etc.
• Create specific styles for each : font, weight, colour.
• Apply these styles consistently on every screen
• This consistency enhances usability, increases comprehension and improves overall user experience.

Finally, experiment with color and typography! Use digital image tools such as Photoshop and try to apply different colors and typography to your images. Don’t necessarily settle on your first choice. Study websites which you think that they use colors effectively and take note of the combinations used. Being aware of color and typography and its use, will give you the confidence to create effective, aesthetically pleasing websites.

Pixentia is an enthusiastic family of individuals, fervent to make lives simpler through effective use of technology. Our mission is to implement solutions that drives business results. Know more insights from our thoughts and experience.
 

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