Ae you a part of the video marketing trend and using videos to connect with your audience and promote your brand? Video marketing is thriving on sites like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Many consumers find it enjoyable to watch short videos when “mindlessly” scrolling social media and popular brands are cashing in on that exposure. These videos are the perfect lead into long-form content and conversions.
It might seem daunting at first, but regularly publishing video content can help your business build engagement and gain new traffic. Here are tips and ideas for engaging video marketing that can showcase your teaching resources and expertise!
The Video Marketing Trend
First of all, why are videos so trendy right now? If you’ve resisted the trend so far hoping it was just a passing phase, I’ve got bad news for you… video content is likely here to stay, so it’s time to embrace it!
Busy consumers want to sit back and be entertained on social media. Videos are an extremely effective and easy way to do that while also promoting your resources.
- 66% of consumers find short-form videos to be the most engaging type of content on social media.
- Users spent 19 hours/week watching online videos in 2022 and 17 hours/week in 2023. (Statista). Can you relate? I’m sure you’ve found yourself wandering down the YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram rabbit hole before.
So, why do videos have such a pull over their print counterparts? Videos grab attention and stir up emotions in ways that still images and text simply can’t. Videos bring content to life and help people get to know the real people behind a brand.
Videos also spread like wildfire on social media as followers click, like, and share them with friends. It’s often more fun (and way less time consuming) to watch a 1 minute video than it is to read a 2,000 word blog post. That’s the true power of video marketing – it provides a shared experience and develops a feeling of community among your audience.
The Power of Video Marketing
Video marketing engages your audience by showing your products in action while building connections through storytelling. It also:
- Captures attention: Video is inherently more engaging and eye-catching than static images or text. Viewers are drawn into motion and sound.
- Conveys emotion: Videos evoke emotions like humor, surprise, intrigue, etc. This helps build strong connections with audiences.
- Demonstrates value: Products and services can be shown in action through demos and tutorials, building credibility.
- Induces higher conversion rates: Landing pages and ads with video can increase conversions by over 80%!.
- Improves SEO: Videos increase time on a site, a key factor in SEO. Transcripts and keywords also aid search engine indexing.
- Generates shares: Viewers are more likely to share videos over any other content on social media, expanding your reach.
- Lends itself to repurposing:- Existing content (like blog posts) can be reworked into videos to maximize the number of platforms you post on.
- Builds trust : Videos allow brands to highlight their purpose and values in a truly authentic way.
- Allows accessibility: Captions and the audio element of videos make them available to everyone.
The power of video marketing is almost endless. I encourage you to give video marketing a try, even if you only post a simple video each week to start. Then work your way up from there.
Cross-Promotion and Video Marketing
The number of influencers seems to be growing at an exponential rate. Creating associations and collaborating with them can significantly expand your reach and impact.
By teaming up with influencers and reputable brands that align with your mission, you can tap into entirely new networks of engaged followers. You’ll often find an endorsement from a respected influencer in your niche also boosts your own credibility and authority in the eyes of your audience.
Co-created videos tend to generate higher interest and social shares compared to solo content, since you have both creators promoting the video across their channels. Different collaborators also bring fresh, diverse perspectives that can take your video concepts to the next level with creative ideas you may have never thought of on your own.
Working together divides up the effort of brainstorming, producing, editing, and promoting the videos, which saves time and maximizes results. Most importantly, strategic partnerships strengthen relationships and often lead to mutually beneficial arrangements for future content and other joint ventures.
You can expand your reach, authority, and impact in a big way by joining forces with other talented teacherpreneurs, influencers, and brands
How to Create Engaging Videos
By now you’ve realized video marketing is a must for any online business, but what kinds of videos should you create?
The first place to start is your content pillars. These pillars are the basis for all content you create.
Once you define your content pillars, here are different types of videos to start brainstorming:
- Testimonials: Insert clips of students using your materials while you describe the impact in a voiceover to build credibility and trust. (Be sure to obtain appropriate permissions for these videos.)
- Quick tips: Share short videos with clever ideas for classroom organization, management, and efficiency to help teachers save time and energy.
- Tutorials and demos: Showcase your products by walking viewers through how to use them step-by-step. Provide tips and tricks to maximize impact.
- User-generated: Repurpose fun videos that students, teachers, or influencers have created using your materials. These can also make great testimonials!
- Book reviews: Give quick video summaries and recommendations of useful books for different grade levels and subjects.
- Teaching strategies: Demonstrate effective teaching techniques on video. This helps viewers visualize implementing your products.
- Personal stories: Let viewers into your world by sharing funny, inspiring, or challenging stories from your teacher experiences to build rapport.
- Behind-the-scenes: Give viewers a peek into your daily work life by taking them along as you develop new products, run your business, or tackle challenges to build a personal connection.
- Q&A: Have viewers submit questions ahead of time and engage your audience by answering their questions in a video session.
- Live streams: Broadcast live videos to interact with viewers in real time through chat. This authentic engagement helps humanize your brand.
- Sneak peeks: Generate excitement by filming video previews of new products before they launch. Reward loyal followers with pre-launch freebies for even more exposure.
- Motivational messages: Uplift fellow teachers with encouraging words in short motivational videos.
- Compassionate content: Create videos addressing the realities teachers face today to offer encouragement and discuss how your offerings provide helpful solutions.
- Challenges: Spark viral trends by tagging videos so viewers can film themselves taking on challenges featuring your products. This is great for user-generated content and community.
- Repurpose content: Take your most successful blog posts, lessons, etc. and rework them into a video format to maximize your existing content.
The length and style of your videos is also important and will vary based on the platform where they’ll be posted. Shorter, eye-catching videos work well on TikTok and Instagram Reels, while YouTube viewers tend to prefer videos 5-10 minutes long. Tailor your content accordingly!
Thumbnails and captions are super important too. While you can use a still image from the video, I recommend creating a separate thumbnail. Use bold images and text that grabs attention and conveys what the video is about. The more eye-catching the thumbnail, the more clicks and views you’ll get.
Use Data To Improve Performance
Just like you analyze data for blog posts and email marketing, you also need to analyze how your videos perform using built-in metrics for each platform.
Watch for trends in the number of views, likes, comments, sales, or follows. Analyze metrics like completion rates, clicks, and conversions to see what content resonates most with your audience. See when viewers drop off and what parts of videos are rewatched. This can signal what content is confusing or should be emphasized. It can also help you dial in ideal length.
Also pay attention to trends over time and how metrics vary across platforms. For example, Facebook videos may get more views while Instagram videos drive more conversions. Let the numbers guide you. Staying on top of trends will help you continuously attract more eyeballs!
If you see positive results in your metrics, explore which videos are sparking the most conversions and engagement. Then make more of that style. If you’re not getting the traffic or results you expected, experiment with different video types, lengths, and styles to improve results. Interpreting the data will help you refine your video marketing strategy and improve engagement.
You can get direct feedback by sharing your videos with fellow teacherpreneurs and asking for honest feedback on what they enjoyed or suggestions for improvement. Let your metrics and community steer your video strategy. The data will show you how to better educate and inspire your viewers and with some practice, you’ll be a video marketing pro in no time!
More Content Marketing Tips
A variety of content marketing strategies are essential for businesses to effectively engage their audience, generate leads, and drive conversions. Neil Patel (an SEO guru!) said, “Great content is the best sales tool in the world” and he wasn’t wrong! In this post, I cover six key content marketing strategies that can help you create valuable content and achieve your marketing goals.
