100 million…
That’s how may hours of video are watched on Facebook every day. Add that to the hundreds of millions of Instagram story users, and you begin to see a pattern…
Video is the undisputed king of content.
The success of your business greatly depends upon the marketing content you are putting out there; videos, blogs, ads, social media all play an integral part in improving brand recognition and boosting revenue.
Determine your goals
But behind the content, there needs to be a very clearly defined strategy. Every piece of content should be created with a purpose, with a specific goal in mind. For example, it could be:
- Getting more recognition for your products and services.
- Explaining the uses of your products.
- Driving more views of your website.
- Maintaining a relationship with your customers.
But how can you measure the success of your campaign and see whether or not your content is maximizing your ROI.
Engaging the viewer
Total view count (i.e the number of people who watched a given video) and shares on social media are important, but they are mostly surface-level data, and do not provide the in-depth insights most companies value.
A variety of elements factor in here, such as your video length and how you typically structure it.
In general terms, video engagement is considered the primary factor that determines how much information viewers will retain from the videos they watch.
In other words, the number of viewers whom both stay to view your content and don’t tune out in the middle of your presentation. It goes without saying, that the higher the level of video engagement, the higher the effectiveness of the video.
If your content has something of quality and value, people will love to share it on social media. Social sharing will further increase your views and positively impact brand awareness.
Depending on the kind of data your video host provides, there are a lot of other metrics that can be put into the mix to fine-tune the data output.
The key to accurately gauging video engagement is collecting the right kind of data. Different video hosts provide a myriad of analytical metrics that you can then use to measure engagement on your videos.
One thing to remember is that as you create your video content, you will be better off building engagement strategically. What you need more than anything is to find what your target audience thinks is relevant and discover new ways to leverage the information you already have.
A basic metric of video engagement is quarterly tracking. Once compiled, you can then use this data to create a report for each video to better understand which videos generate higher retention rates. It’s then possible to deduce which content and subjects are more engaging towards your target audience.
Beyond hardcore metrics, the kind of interactions that take place within the video player itself can give you some more insight into the minds of your viewers. If, or when, the size of the video player is changed and whether the video is shared on social media are elements that can be factored into the engagement calculation equation.
This information can then be integrated into various forms of marketing campaigns, such as paid advertising and social media outlets to bring in potential clients to your site.