Video had been trending for a few years before 2020, with people finding video content more appealing than simple text.

The global pandemic has shifted things around a bit, with even more people enjoying videos than ever before.

An unprecedented amount of businesses and services moved online to survive these tough times, working on their visual communication to promote their products and services. 

From small startups and little shops to large enterprises, companies worldwide pivoted to being online and using video marketing to get to grips with the “new normal.” 

Video content has helped businesses build brand awareness and improve the relationships with their customers. 

Within a year, video has evolved and transformed, taking over social media platforms and turning into the most popular content out there.

Today, everything you do online as a small or a large company should concentrate on building and enhancing the relationships with your clients and customers.

Whereas marketers should keep a close eye on rapidly emerging video marketing trends and create consistent and original video content.

What Are The Best Kinds Of Video Content?

In 2021, all businesses have to work harder than ever at growing because paid ads and promotions don’t work if there is a lack of positive social proof. 

So, let’s explore the best video content types that people love the most. 

This knowledge will help you determine a winning video strategy, resonate with your customers personally, amplify your company’s message, and influence people to take action.

Vlogging

Video blogs allow you to:

• Tell authentic stories via video
• Build awareness about your company and product
• Increase trust and transparency
• Effectively engage your community 

A lustrous, professionally-made “brand-introduction” video will look great on your company’s website. 

Also, it’s a great idea if you use colourful backgrounds. It will significantly enhance your videos.

Still, it takes more than one video to show who you are, your company’s core culture, and what problems can be solved with the help of your product or service.

YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin are highly effective tools that help you build solid and lasting relationships with your audience through your personality, not through tired, overused tactics.

Behind-the-Scenes/Company Culture

One of the most engaging types of video content to use in your video marketing strategy is a behind-the-scenes video that shows your company culture. 

You don’t have to create such videos as often as your vlog videos, but consistency is key. This way your followers get a continuous immersive experience.

Some behind the scenes footage your could record:

• Show off your office design 
• How you and your co-workers relax
• Company events 
• How your team members interact with each other – in-house or via a collaboration platform

Such videos are essential for strengthening a connection between your customers and your brand.

Webinars

One of the most engaging types of video content is webinars. 

This allows you to provide actionable advice to your community, educate your audience, and present your website as an interactive hub that gives its visitors a good reason to return. 

Event Videos

Event videos have become outstandingly popular during the last year when people felt excluded from parties, social occasions, and fresh experiences. 

However, statistics show that shorter videos are more likely to be viewed entirely and shared. 

It’s also important to film as much as you can to make sure you don’t miss something exciting and unique during the event. 

After that, you can edit raw footage and create short and sharp snippets that will help you reach a larger audience and foster brand recognition.

Presentations

A visual presentation offers all the excitement of an event and mixes it with a webinar’s effectiveness to create a gripping, highly-shareable video. 

Tutorials/How to’s

2020 has proved two things: people enjoy watching videos, and people love valuable insights. 

Just look at some YouTube stars who have risen from virtually unknown to fortune and fame, showing how to create an excellent smoky eye or travel to beautiful places and document it. 

A lesson that we can learn from successful tutorial creators is that people value authenticity.

Your audience, especially millennials and Gen-Z, will not trust you and will not follow you if you sound too promotional. 

So, it’s imperative to put out actionable quality tutorials with a well-expressed focus on helping people. 

This approach will allow you to earn their trust, which will lead to a sale down the line.

Product Reviews

Another helpful type of video content that can be especially useful for prospective customers who consider buying a product but still have some doubts about it is product reviews.

If your followers trust you, they will listen to your opinion, advice, or recommendation. 

By reviewing products or services, you have an excellent opportunity to transmit the brand message and enhance the customer experience.

Animation

Small and large businesses can use animation apps to create:

• Fun and easy-to-digest how-to and explainer videos 
• Ads 
• Engaging social media videos 
• Animated GIFs 
• Anything else that helps move an audience to action 

Even if you’ve never used animation software before, a user-friendly video marketing tool like Vyond will help you transform any of your marketing ideas into dynamic and inspiring content.

Live Streaming

Depending on your business, you can drive higher engagement with your live streaming video on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Socialbakers – the leading marketing solutions agency, revealed that Facebook Live was by far the most engaging format on the platform in 2020. 

Live streaming videos generate up to 10x more engagement than any other type of video. 

Live videos create magnetic allure that attracts people. 

When your audience doesn’t know what will happen next, it gives them the feeling that they will miss something important if they stop watching.

Besides, viewers can ask questions and communicate with a broadcaster during live broadcasts, making them feel like participating in a real-life event. 

This forms a strong sense of connection and immediacy between the audience and the company that any other video content cannot cause.

Video Emails

If you send emails to your current and prospective customers, you should know that adding video can significantly amplify email’s natural power. 

It’s capable of capturing people’s imagination in a way that text just can’t.

Video adds measurable value to your emails, emphasizing new product launches, event announcements, sales, exclusive interviews, and more. 

Video is an exciting way to bring compelling content to your audience and is swiftly becoming a lead factor in running successful email marketing campaigns.

360-degree Video Content

This video content trend that provides a captivating interactive experience is on the rise in 2021. That explains why content is so evolving fast. 

It’s a terrific way to show off your product and services.

Statistics say that 360° video is becoming one of the dominant players in online video marketing because it simply helps create a profound and lasting emotional connection with consumers.  

Whether you cover a significant industry event or let your viewers move around your home office, you are adding one more dimension to your content, and your audience will love it.

Stop Motion Video

A colossal video content trend that we see in 2021 is Stop Motion Video – an eye-catching video format for creating highly engaging content using the stop-frame animation technique. 

It’s favored on Instagram and with TikTok, and now Reels is picking up steam, so it’s time to think about what you can animate in the real world around you that no one would expect.

Since we’ve mentioned “Reels,” it makes sense to add that it is Instagram’s latest video feature. 

It lets users record and edit together 15 to 30-second video clips set to music and share them to their Stories and Explore Feed. 

When creating a Reel, you can either choose to upload a pre-edited video from your camera roll or shoot video clips right on the spot.

User-Generated Content

Almost everyone with internet access and a phone in their hand can make a video and upload it online. 

You, as a business, can encourage your customers to contribute testimonials, and we can assure you that your followers will react with enthusiasm. 

That’s an excellent way to build trust and keep your audience involved.

But as we said above, people today value authenticity, and user-generated content, including video. It is the most authentic type of content, so here is where influencers step in. 

If you are not ready to partner with an influencer yet, you can still encourage people to share videos of themselves using your products or services.

Why Does Video Content Need To Be Better?

A decade ago, when video marketing entered the mainstream, it wasn’t accessible to small businesses on a tight budget. 

Today, in 2021, making a studio-quality video is not a problem anymore. 

It doesn’t require as much time as before, considerable investment, and a team of skillful professionals.

Video marketing is on the rise, especially on social media, since it became clear that video drives far more engagement than text or static imagery. 

The popularity of video-based platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, and Tik Tok has escalated tremendously over the last few years, setting (as the recent research by Biteable informs):

• 68% of marketers say video has a better return on investment than Google Ads. 
• 61% of marketers see video as a “very important” or “extremely important” part of their marketing strategy
• 36% of marketers make videos a few times a week

Statistically, almost 75% of customers would learn about a product or service through the video rather than any other way.

With all the marketers out there putting their efforts into creating eye-catching, captivating videos, the competition is high. 

However, it shouldn’t discourage you. 

On the contrary, with so many video-making apps and platforms, the possibilities for expressing your creativity are endless. 

We are happy to share a few actionable tips that will help you to take your video marketing strategy to a new level and build a relationship with your customers, community, and prospects a lot faster.

1. Set Goals

First, identify the main goals for your video marketing campaign. 

Consider questions like:

• What particular idea are you aiming to communicate with your videos?
• Who is your audience for your campaign?
• Where will you publish your videos (social media platforms, your blog/vlog, your website, etc.)?
• Perform target audience analysis.
• Think about how will you measure success (e.g., video views, session durations, exit rate, conversion rate, email open rate, etc.)?

Knowing well who your existing and prospective customers are, what they like to do on different platforms, and what channels they prefer to communicate.

This will allow you to choose the right networks for engaging with them in the most successful ways.

2. Identify the Scope

Before jumping into creating a video — whether you intend to make one video or a few dozens of them — you should take into consideration the following:

• Make sure that your stakeholders approve your budget and other important questions regarding video preproduction and production processes.
• Think of all resources you have available carefully, especially if you do everything yourself: scriptwriting, filming, editing. 
• Make sure you kick off the preproduction process with a helpful brief that includes:

• Video outline
• Objectives you are planning to convey
• Your team members’ responsibilities in a project
• Your duties if you work alone

3. Write the Script

As a marketer, you might be a pretty good copywriter who works with words daily, but writing a great video script is not the same as writing a great article. 

Since any marketing video conveys a message that persuades the viewer to action, to create such a video, you should write a script that provides direction for the entire process of video production. 

Your script should have information and guidance on the following steps:

• Recording the video
• Creating the graphics
• Creating the desired mood
• Transmitting the required messages through words
• Sounds, and visual elements

Creating scripts means being efficient. Even if you plan on making an unboxing video, writing a script will help you avoid confusing or unnecessary words that may turn your viewers off. 

And remember that you want your video to communicate your objectives; that’s why you should keep it simple. 

People can process only a certain amount of information at a given time, and on top of that, our brain filters out almost 90 percent of everything we are watching. 

If your video sounds stuffy or forced, it will not work well in delivering your message to your audience. 

Here is the best source for writing the perfect script that we have found for you on YouTube.

4. Plan and Edit for the Right Length

Keep in mind that different platforms have different length requirements for different types of video. For example:

Instagram Video Length 

• Stories – 3 to 15 seconds (stay visible for 24 hours before they self-delete)
• Reels – 3 to 30 seconds
• Posts – 15 seconds x 10 (if combined in a Carouselcx Post), and they don’t self-delete 
• IGTV (Instagram TV) – 15 seconds to 10 minutes
• Ads – 3 seconds to 2 minutes
• Instagram Live – up to 1 hour

Facebook

• Regular feed video –  up to 240 minutes long
• 360 video –  up to 30 minutes
• In-stream video ads – up to length 15 seconds
• Carousel video ads – up to 10 videos  (total maximum length up to 240 minutes)
• Instant Experience (IX) video – up to 120 seconds
• Facebook Collection cover video – no maximum length listed
• Facebook Live – if you are broadcasting from your computer— up to 8 hours. For broadcasting from mobile – up to 4 hours

Linkedin 

• Native video – between 3 seconds and 10 minutes 
• Video ads – between 3 seconds and 30 minutes

Snapchat

• Single video ads – between 3 and 180 seconds long
• Long-form video ads – minimum 15 seconds long (no maximum length)

Twitter – maximum length 140 seconds

YouTube – maximum length 12 hours

Even if you are new to video creation, you can engage your audience and boost your marketing efforts with the right approach and the right software in your arsenal. 

Whether you choose to start with eye-catching Instagram stories, compelling Facebook video ads, or original LinkedIn videos, we can recommend a few easy-to-use yet  comprehensive video-making tools:

• Vimeo – a platform that will help you supercharge your video marketing and turn viewers into customers
• Write-on Video – a trusted user-friendly app that provides a great way to start a successful video marketing campaign
• CorelVideo Studio – a powerful tool that has all the necessary features for creating different types of video content, including high-quality 4K videos and 360-degree VR

5. Use Keyword Analysis

While video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) most effective practices are slightly different from those for text-based pages, it revolves around effective keyword research. 

YouTube and other videos appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), so video optimization is becoming incredibly important. 

You should pay special attention to text overlays and closed captions in combination with your video’s description, its title, and file names.  

Luckily for us, there are many powerful keyword research tools out there that can help marketers identify the best terms for optimizing their videos. 

We are happy to recommend three of them:

Google Ads – a valuable tool that will make it easy for you to  optimize your content for the most popular search engine

Ubersuggest – a great tool if you need more keyword ideas

Semrush – with Semrush SEO keyword research tools, you will be able to do much more than all your competitors

6. Get Your Video Transcribed 

It’s always a good idea to have a text version of your video. 

Just look what can be done with it:

• If you have your YouTube video embedded on your website, you can publish the transcription text to it for better rankings
• You can use transcription as subtitles on your Facebook video 
• With a bit of editing, your transcription can quickly become an article if you compliment it with some still imagery
• Have you ever thought about podcasting? You can also use your audio alone to expand your audience

7. Use Human Psychological Hooks

These five key characteristics provide the foundational ingredients for captivating and memorable video:

• Emotion
• Humour
• Conversational
• Easy to follow
• Relatability

If you want your viewers to feel something about your videos, you should make them in such a way that they will kindle warm feelings like empathy and joy. 

We all have seen videos about rescued dogs and abandoned kittens who get a second chance, drowning deers in freezing water saved by random guys, or tiny little birds that fell off from the nest. 

Usually, we watch such videos till the very end because we want to make sure that everything will be ok with a helpless creature who desperately needs help. 

Your videos should always carry a human component. Show people you care – about the planet, the oceans, the air quality, climate change, etc. Inspire them with hope. 

Today, brand preference is an emotional decision rather than anything else. 

People will follow you if they see that you have the same feelings they do and try to make this world a better place. 

Humor is a vital aspect of our life. If you make your viewers forget about their problems for a moment and smile, you are going in the right direction. 

Engaging video evokes the viewer’s curiosity and provides them with valuable answers – just like in a good story. 

Just spark your audience’s curiosity within the first few seconds by cutting right to the chase, and tell them a story enhanced by lively graphics, great music, and footage of real people. 

If your story is good, your followers will naturally project themself into it, and your ideas will become their ideas. 

Let’s Wrap it Up

So, there you have it – our definitive guide to the best types of video content that you can’t ignore in 2021. 

But what does it take to create video content that addresses real business objectives? We have defined it for you:

• Define your video marketing goals
• Research your target audience and identify the platforms you will use
• Decide what type of videos you will make
• Set a budget
• Establish who is responsible for video creation
• Get the stakeholders’ approval
• Write the script
• Make sure you have the right tools at your disposal
• Create a video using human psychological hooks
• Start running your campaign
• Measure your performance and make all the necessary adjustments

By following these steps, you will be able to put your video marketing strategy in place and make sure that you will meet your goals.