Is video the king of content?

Videos, blogs, podcasts, infographics, articles. Content is king, content is everywhere – and sometimes a little overwhelming from the sheer volume. This is why brands have to be clever and inspiring to cut through and reach their target market.

So how do you stand out from the crowd? Well it was announced recently that when a brand posts images on Facebook they are 7x more likely to appear in a fan’s home feed. Pinterest (yes we know, everyone’s talking about it) has now taken this to the next level -focusing predmoninantly on images.

Then we have the classic video – are videos still engaging, interesting and worth the budget? We say yes. 60 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute, an increase of 25% since May last year and 4 billion videos are streamed each day, also an increase of 25% in the last 8 months. YouTube is currently the 4th most visited site in the UK (after Facebook, Google UK and Google) according to Alexa. This shows the importance of video as a content type, and people’s affinity with it.

Professionally-produced video content can be pricey but that’s not always the case – a clever idea simply executed can sometimes be even more effective than a Hollywood production. No campaign demonstrates this more effectively than this recent video released by The OCD Foundation. The video is just one second long, so the user has to constantly click ‘play’ again and again to read all of the information displayed so briefly. This can be frustrating for the user, in the same way it’s frustrating for a sufferer of OCD to deal with the associated symptoms.

We believe in the power of video. According to Forrester Research, a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. We’d like to invite you to see if this is true through this show reel.

 

Is Video the New E-mail?

When you need to communicate with a client or colleague, you probably automatically tap out an e-mail. It’s estimated that 2.8 million e-mails are sent every second of every day, and 90% of these are believed to be spam and viruses. So with all this communication going on, how can you be sure that your message stands out from the crowd?

According to Dr James McQuivey, a video is worth more than 1.8 million words. So when you compare this to other content mediums, such as white papers (which tend to span 6-8 pages), video is streets ahead of the competition. A whole raft of surveys have shown its effectiveness at driving sales and increasing user engagement. For example, in comparison with Flash, rich media ads containing video drive success four times more than Flash animation.

At Volume we’ve long believed in video as a cut-through communication medium, that’s why we created ‘NewsGem‘ in 2009. NewsGem was a one-stop-shop for all the latest news at Volume with a very special host – our Head of Creative Services Gemma Hood; you can see all the old episodes on YouTube in the NewsGem playlist. Now, After a well-earned break, we’re excited to say that NewsGem is coming back!

At Volume we have over 100 employees operating from four different sites. NewsGem is just one of many ways we bring the Team together, communicate our successes and share knowledge: it’s effective, engaging and easy to use, and it means that we can work as one team, wherever we are based.

Of course, we won’t keep it to ourselves. All of the videos will be on Volume’s YouTube channel so you can all have a look!

How is your company opening up communication? We’d love to hear your success stories