By 2018, 69 percent of total Internet traffic will be video. Every minute, 48 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube. From 2012 to 2014, mobile video views increased by 400 percent.

aaaaaaa

These facts are hard to ignore when video is taking over the world as it holds the highest CTR of all digital advertising formats. But how can brands turn these statistics into forms of engagement with current and potential customers? How can brands constantly create content to combat the Internet’s flood of video content? How do brands master the infamous viral video?

So many questions yet so little time to create interactive, high quality videos! Videos have exploded on social media because they are so engaging, especially User Generated Content. Think about GoPro (Case Study), as the brand mission is to capture the user’s most exciting and extreme moments. Hours upon hours of GoPro footage have been uploaded to YouTube to share experiences with current and potential customers of the brand. These customers directly market the brand through UGC, which builds a huge momentum of exposure for GoPro to go beyond a restricted snowboarding or surfing brand. The views of the UGC turned branded content have directly increased with the company’s sales. Brands need to learn from companies that are using their trusted and personalized UGC and earned media for advertising purposes. If brands can accomplish that feat, they will thrive in the flood of videos taking over our social channels.

badbfj

Secondly, how do brands create enough content to stay current with the trends and compete with the billions of videos on the web? It’s not enough to simply be creating meaningless content, instead, brands need to be consistently creating and sharing great content. Unfortunately, there’s no quick formula to make amazing, engaging content. Brands must completely understand their own personality and how it can provide value to their potential or current customers. An audience analysis, content audit, competitive analysis and content planning are essential steps in the process to determine how the brand’s videos will positively reach the audience. All of these strategy and planning steps eventually lead to content creation that’s interactive and easily sharable. Check out these great examples of content marketing to get started!

aaaaaa

Lastly, brands can conquer the viral video by simply changing their approach. Again, UGC or ‘found footage’ must be utilized to humanize branded content. For example, Android’s viral “Friends Furever” was composed entirely of UGC of unusual animals interacting with each other and was the most shared ad of 2015. Brands can now find previously existing UGC that can be molded to fit a brand’s ethos. Instead of paying an agency millions to create a commercial with expensive celebrity endorsers, brands can now choose relatable, realistic videos.

A brand that does not use video marketing is like eating a PB&J sandwich without the jelly—it just doesn’t make sense and it gets you nowhere. Our digital world is expanding and there’s not much room for growth without video content marketing. Brands can easily reach and engage with their target audience if they take advantage of UGC, create a content strategy, and just possibly, conquer the viral video