Top 5 Professional Video Tips for Beginners

Most of the time, marketers cut video from their content strategies because they don’t see a ton of ROI. What they don’t realize is that the problem is typically with their video itself, not video content as a whole.

If you don’t have a lot of experience with video, it’s easy to miss or ignore important parts of the video creation process. So we want to break down a few tips that will help you know what to look for (and what steps to take) when it comes to professional video. 

1. Always keep your goal in mind.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the video creation process and sometimes that leads to losing sight of the original purpose for your video. It’s important to establish a goal at the beginning of the video creation process, and to keep your video centered around that goal. 

If you’re not sure where to start, here are some goals you can achieve with video:

• Increase brand awareness.
• Drive traffic to a landing page/blog/website.
• Generate leads with a video ad.
• Convert users in a sales funnel.
• Increase engagement on social media.
• Improve SEO.

Your content strategy will depend on what goal you have. 

2. Don’t forget branding.

Branding isn’t just for branding videos. You should always brand your videos regardless of whether or not your goal involves brand awareness. While we can’t actually measure this, so many people will choose your business because they simply recognized it by it’s name or logo.

You should always have access to your brand assets (logo, color pallet, fonts) and use them as guidelines for your videos. You want all of your videos to have continuity and include custom intros and outros made from your brand assets. This way, people will recognize your videos and associate them with your business.  

3. Know your platforms.

Every social media platform is different, so you should treat them as such. The most common mistake marketers do is have the same distribution strategy for all social media platforms and forums. Don’t do that! 

Take into consideration what works well on each platform, and tailor your content appropriately. This means different lengths, formats, posting times, descriptions, thumbnails, etc. 

4. Use the right format.

While there’s a ton of information we could get into for this section, most of it applies to camera, editing, and export settings. So for now, we just want to focus on video orientation. 

There are three popular video orientations: square, landscape, and vertical. While landscape is the most common and most varsatile, the other two have a time and place. 

For the most part, you’ll want a landscape video. It works on websites, TV ads, social media, etc.

However, if you want to focus your efforts primarily on social media, you may want to experiment with square videos. Square videos have been popularized due to how social media videos display on mobile devices. It allows for your video to take up the majority of the screen space and get your viewers attention. 

Vertical video comes into play if you want to create content purely for Snapchat and Instagram. Snapchat took video to another level by basing its platform solely on the concept of sharing vertical video that was recorded straight from your phone. Instagram then followed suit with their Instagram Stories and IGTV features. So if you want your content to be used on Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or IGTV; it needs to be in the vertical format so it fits in naturally with other user-generated content.

5. Create a custom thumbnail. 

The video thumbnail can make or break your video. It’s the viewers’ first impression and how they decide whether or not to watch your video. A click-worthy thumbnail is visually appealing, branded, and may include some text to help provide context.  

The next time you go to make a video, or have a professional video made, keep these five tips in mind during the production process. They’ll help you get the most out of your video marketing strategy.