Combining long and short-form video content is the key to a personable, well-rounded online marketing strategy. Video puts faces to the name and has multi-channel appeal, allowing for effective repurposing across platforms.
To achieve the best results from video marketing, it’s essential to understand the pros and cons of both types of content. This will ensure an effective online marketing strategy using long and short-form content on your website and social media.
What is a Long-Form Video?
“Long-form video” refers to in-depth pieces of content that delve into the details of a selected topic. It’s a highly effective method of complex, visually interesting information communication. Video can express several pages of words in only minutes, making learning about your brand far more effortless for your potential customers.
Why Should I Have Long-Form Video?
Long-form video opens the doors to detailed demonstrations, thorough brand narratives and numerous SEO benefits. It allows you to showcase your products, explain your services and authenticate them with high-quality footage.
Show, don’t tell
Although informative dialogue is helpful for your video content, the real focus is the physicality of what you offer. There’s little use in just talking about that machine you use. Show an operative handling it to prove your expertise. Verify the quality of your products by dynamically presenting them from all angles.
Compared to long-form content, short-form video is somewhat restrictive. Its quick, snappy visuals don’t allow for minute detail or comprehensive explanation and are generally discouraged for website posting.
How Does Long-Form Video Benefit SEO?
Long-form video boosts search rankings and engagement on your website.
- Google rewards original, self-produced content and views it as a signal of expertise and authority
- Video increases on-page time, reducing bounce rates and improving rankings
- Long-form videos naturally include target keywords through spoken content, which Google can index via transcripts and captions
- High-value videos are more likely to be shared, generating backlinks and increasing domain authority
- Timestamps on YouTube videos can help Google display specific video segments in search results
What is Short-Form Video?
Short-form video is a commonly used type of content on social media. Its fast-paced, bite-sized content appeals to the shorter attention spans expected of social media consumers.
Short-form video is highly effective in boosting brand awareness, improving trust between you and your audience and driving action. Social media users are receptive to personal, relatable content. Short-form content allows you to communicate your brand values and show your business off in a more human, less “manufactured” way.
How Can I Best Utilise Short-Form Content?
Setting a regular posting schedule and integrating various content types on multiple platforms is the best way to utilise short-form content. Posting different types of content often keeps viewers engaged and helps to establish a trusting relationship.
Many of the essential improvements our SEO team makes to your website often go unnoticed. This is because much of it is done in the background, and your returning site viewers don’t notice at a glance. This leads to an impression of stagnation that can cause prospective customers to become wary of your business. It can be especially true if it’s paired with little or no social media presence.. This impression is furthered by an outdated appearance detrimental to customer perception.
“Is this business actually active?”
“Is this business actually real?”
“Is this website just for show?”
Rather than visually updating your website regularly, you can show your potential customers that you are active through short-form videos on social media. You can repurpose snippets of your long-form content for coherency across your platforms and have a content bank ready to use.
Why Should I Use Long and Short-Form Video in My Marketing Strategy?
A combination of long and short-form video ensures a comprehensive marketing strategy. Video is the connecting factor between all of your channels. It assists with SEO efforts, accompanies content, elevates the interactivity of your website and increases engagement on your social platforms.
Fundamentally, it allows you to reach a wider audience to drive performance across the board. Although the two types of video content are better suited for particular channels, you should consider incorporating both into your marketing strategy.
At Pod Digital, our videographers are experts in long and short-form video production. We repurpose your content between platforms, considering multi-channel optimisation to achieve the best results for your business. If you’d like to learn more about our video production services in Leicester, enquire now and book your free, no-strings consultation appointment.
