Video is a hugely important marketing medium.
- Websites with videos keep site visitors for 88% longer than sites without video content.
- 57% of customers rely on product videos to help inform their purchasing decisions.
Video content is growing in relevance as the amount of visual content online increases, and it’s becoming not just a useful type of content, but a necessity, as more and more customers expect sites to provide video content.
If you’re looking to make use of video to market your brand (and there’s literally no reason why you shouldn’t), it might seem a little daunting at first:
- Most videos online have increasingly decent production value
- A low quality video can damage your brand’s image and reputation.
What’s more, there’s the big issue of time: making quality content requires a lot of man hours, so throwing a video together quickly may feel like a bad idea.
The good news is, video content is nowhere near as complicated as you might think.
- With technology that’s readily available and a small budget, you can create fantastic video content in a couple of hours.
Let’s go through the tips and tricks you’ll need to create killer video content with a high production value that does a great job of selling your brand.
Doing Your Research
As with all content, it’s important to carefully research before you begin production.
This includes:
- Finding out what your customers want out of video content
- Spotting the weaknesses in your conversion experience and planning ways you can use video to plug the gaps.
In addition to this, though, it’s important to do plenty of research into what kinds of video content will work well for your product.
- Watch lots of videos by other companies to get an idea of how your video should look and feel.
- Pay attention to the language of online film – just as relevant terminology and vocabulary are important in text content, editing tools and visuals are important to help your video feel like it belongs.
- In particular you should look at the video content your competitors are making – this will show you the kind of content that does well, but you’ll also be able to differentiate yourself from whatever they’re doing so that your content is unique.
Once you’ve got a feel for online videos and what your customers want, it’s time to start planning your own video content.
Choosing a Direction
There are a lot of brand videos on the internet.
- Many come in different forms – there’s everything from quick whiteboard illustration videos, through to large, big-budget masterpieces that rival the type of content you’d find online.
Most video content falls in between these two extremes.
A good brand video will do three things:
- Humanize your brand
- Show your product in action
- Encourage customers to buy something.
In practice, this isn’t too different to other types of content you might already be creating.
When you’re getting started, the easiest and quickest to produce video involves a piece to camera.
- This is the kind of video that has a single ‘host’ giving a message direct to the audience, talking them through an element of a product and how to use it.
- These videos can be simple, with a plain background (or some greenscreen if you’re feeling ambitious), and don’t cost much to produce.
I’d recommend starting with something simple like this, and once you’ve got the hang of it, branching out to try different kinds of videos with more varied content.
Getting It Done in Two Hours
If you want to complete everything in two hours, I’d recommend breaking things down like this:
- 25 minutes for planning and writing
- 45 minutes for filming
- 25 minutes for editing
- 10 minutes for posting online
- 15 minutes of flexible time for if anything goes wrong.
This setup means getting things done very quickly – and it can be a bit of a rush – but you’re better off leaving as much time for fixing mistakes as possible.
Planning Your Content
In creating your video, you’re going to want to pick a style that works for your brand.
- Ideally, your video content will match the rest of your brand content in tone and style.
- It’s up to you to decide whether your videos are relaxed, professional, or somewhere in between.
- Think about the inclusion of humor or props to spice things up, but only go with these elements if they feel natural – it’ll be clear on camera if something doesn’t quite sit right with your branding.
If you want to get your video completed in two hours, it’s important to fully plan for everything before you even touch the camera.
- Most movies have months of preproduction before they start filming to make sure that everything runs smoothly.
- If you have everything planned in advance, the filming and editing stages will be far less hassle.
At this stage, it’s useful to produce a script for your video, which should include the following elements:
- A brief introduction (possibly with a visual aid)
- A breakdown of your product or the message you want to include
- A call to action.
You may find that the best way to approach these videos is not just to demonstrate your product, but to give informative information about your field.
- You can treat your videos like text content, but with moving pictures.
That said, to start with I’d recommend creating a product demonstration to help you get a feel for making video content.
Getting Your Gear
To make a high quality video, you’re going to need decent equipment.
Don’t get me wrong – there’s no need to invest in an enormous, expensive film studio, but there are a few little things that you ought to pick up that’ll drastically increase the production value of your video.
These include:
- Lighting gear
- A microphone
- A backdrop
These little things will make a huge difference to your videos and will make them look a lot more professional.
A backdrop is relatively simple to either throw up yourself using a sheet or a blank wall, or you can invest in a dedicated backdrop for relatively little.
What Camera Should You Use?
When thinking about equipment, it’s easy to get carried away thinking that you need a luxury, top-of-the-line, expensive camera to get Hollywood-quality video.
- The good news is, this isn’t an expense you need to shell out for.
Considering that your video isn’t going to be blown up to iMax size, you don’t need a hugely expensive camera.
Most DSLR camera are capable of shooting high quality video which will do the job, and they can be bought for as little as around $400 – there are plenty of makes and brands around this price or cheaper that’ll be more than adequate for your needs.
- To be honest, though, you don’t even need that – for filming for internet streaming, most simple digital cameras will have enough resolution to provide the kind of quality you need for a simple piece to camera.
In fact, there’s a growing number of digital cameras on smartphones that are able to shoot 4K video, which is more than enough to produce a solid, professional online video.
- There’s a good chance you’ve already got access to a phone or camera that’ll provide all you need in terms of video recording technology.
These cheaper options do come with downsides, but they’re the same roadblocks that you’ll run into with more expensive camera equipment.
Sound and Lighting Challenges
The two big problems you’ll face when it comes to quality recording is:
- Lighting
- Sound
A lot of cameras, even including more expensive options, can only do so much with natural lighting.
- Shadows or poor lighting are a dead giveaway that your video isn’t being recording in a dedicated studio with professional equipment.
Similarly, sound is going to be a real challenge, unless you want to sound like you recorded your video in a cave.
- Because you’re not talking directly into the in-built camera microphone, there’s going to be a lot of background noise and you’ll sound a bit muffled.
- This is particularly a problem for the cheaper camera options – pretty much the biggest difference between large, expensive cameras and cheap ones (apart from video resolution, of course) is the quality of the microphone that’s built into the camera.
I can’t think of a scenario where you’d be better off using any camera’s in-built microphone over a dedicated one.
These lighting and sound problems are actually really easy to overcome, though – the equipment you need to make them work for you is relatively inexpensive and adds a lot of production value.
The Must-Have Equipment You Need
Cheap lighting kits aren’t that expensive.
You can pick up a decent set of lights for under $100, or if you’re willing to splash out a bit more, you can get a backdrop included as well.
- A green screen backdrop opens a lot of doors for you from a technical standpoint, so it’s worth considering this, although it’s also possible to make one yourself – I’ll cover that in a second.
As with your camera, you don’t need to go overboard picking up the most expensive lighting kit you can find:
- You just want to be able to reflect some light around your ‘set’ a little to make things look a little more professional
- You need to properly light the face of the person who’s speaking so they’re not bathed in shadows.
Similarly microphones aren’t going to break the bank.
You’ll want a clip-on microphone – these are the kinds that TV personalities typically wear, and they hide comfortably on a speaker’s lapel.
Because they’re very close to the source of the sound (your mouth), you get much clearer audio from one of these than you’d get from a microphone inside a camera.
- This means you can be relatively far away from the source of the sound and still get the high sound quality you need to make your video sound fantastic.
Clip-on microphones come very cheap – for under $30 you can pick up the equipment you need.
I would seriously recommend getting a microphone with a typical headphone jack for its output:
- This makes it much easier to plug your microphone into a wide range of devices.
If the camera you’re using doesn’t support external microphones because you’re using something cheap to film, you can even plug clip-on microphones into your smartphone and record audio through an app.
- If you take this approach, though, be sure to use a clapboard at the beginning of each take
- The clap of the board (or a pair of hands, or anything else that makes a distinct bang) is used in filming to match up the audio with the video when the same device isn’t recording both.
Equipment-Free Alternatives
If you’re really not thrilled about investing in any fancy lighting kits or microphones, you’ll find your videos won’t have as much punch, but there are alternative options.
- To get the best possible light in your video, film somewhere with a lot of natural light – throw open the curtains, or if possible film somewhere outside in sunlight.
- A cheap alternative for decent sound is using the microphone in a pair of headphones or a hands free kit – it’s not the best possible audio, but it can work like a clip-on microphone in a pinch and it’s possible to clean up the audio (a little) in editing.
These alternatives aren’t great, but if you’re determined not to spend any money on slightly more professional equipment, they’ll make the best use of your situation.
Ultimately, the content of your video will keep people interested, so if you can’t produce something with solid lighting and sound, just make sure your message is decent and your video will be the best it can be.
Filming Your Video
Now we get to the crux of the matter: actually filming your content.
The specific ins and outs of how this goes depends on the kind of content you’re producing, but there are a few important points to consider:
- Your content shouldn’t be longer than five minutes total – perhaps in future once you’ve had more experience you can explore longer videos, but even then, most internet video content is short and sweet.
- It can take a while to get used to the camera, so be sure to practice plenty before you start filming, and record your video multiple times.
- Film your footage from several angles, making sure to get a few good close ups. These will help make your editing appear more natural.
- The more shots you can get, the more footage you’ll have to choose from – although this will also mean that editing will take longer.
Editing Everything Together
Once you’re happy with your footage, it’s time to take it into an editing program and cut it down to size.
There are plenty of editing programs available, and while some can be quite expensive, other programs are absolutely free.
If you’re looking for something particularly powerful and you’re not worried about price, there are plenty of options available such as Adobe Premier, but for a quick two hour video this will probably be too complex, so let’s look at some more basic alternatives.
Free, Quick and Easy
First off, there’s the editing software that comes pre-bundled with your computer.
iMovie
All Mac and iOS users have access to iMovie, and for beginner video editing there’s not much more you need.
You’re able to:
- Cut together footage
- Add in music and outside audio
- Insert graphics, text and other elements.
To be honest, when you start out you shouldn’t need too much more than this. If you are looking to learn more about this, there are plenty of tutorials and resource packs available online.
Windows Movie Maker
If you’re a Windows user, the Windows Essentials alternative to iMovie also lets you do all of the same things.
- It’s not quite as advanced, but a little practice can get you to a point where you’re making swish videos in no time.
Lightworks
If you don’t feel that either iMovie or Windows Movie Maker quite has the right feel for you, it’s worth checking out Lightworks.
This program is a free download and comes with a variety of settings and options, including color correction which might be very important depending on the environment in which you shot your video.
- Basically, if your video was shot under fluorescent lights the colors can end up behaving a bit strangely, and color correction helps you to take out the yellow tint you might spot in some footage.
Adding in graphics and other elements is fairly easy in this program – with a bit of practice you’ll be able to create high quality edits in no time.
Posting Online
Once you’re happy that your video has been fully edited, it’s time to post it online.
To get the most benefit out of your video, it’s important to put it everywhere you can, including:
- Your company website
- Social media platforms
YouTube is particularly important – the platform will automatically push people who are viewing similar videos towards your video, so it’s important to make sure people can see it.
To get the best exposure, you need to pay attention to your meta data for the video.
- This will mean that YouTube will know what types of videos are similar to yours, and will know when to recommend viewers watch your video so that you get the most coverage possible, and your video is seen by all the right people.
To make sure your video travels as far as possible on YouTube, it’ll need:
- A snappy title that grabs attention
- A well written description which thoroughly explains what’s going on in the video
- Relevant keywords that will help YouTube to know what kind of content is in your video.
It’s important to be as thorough as possible in filling in this data – especially the keywords. You should enter as many relevant keywords as you can possibly think of.
To help ad videos do as well as possible, YouTube provides a keyword suggestion tool – if you’re going to pay for advertising on YouTube, this tool can help you find keywords for all videos, not just paid ads.
Alternatively, it’s worth throwing in every possible word that could be relevant to your video – this will give YouTube more to go on as it seeks to pair up your video with recommendations for people who might want to watch it.
Getting Into a Rhythm
Once your video’s gone live, it’s time to start work on the next one.
I’ll be honest – with your first video, it might take a little longer than two hours to get into the swing of things.
- There’s a lot to learn and practice with, and you may want to experiment with trying different approaches to your video content.
That said, if you keep things nice and simple, it is possible to get everything completed in under two hours.
Beyond that, as you take the lessons you’ve learned from your first video, you’ll find yourself getting quicker at producing solid content, and you’ll be able to add in additional ideas and techniques for making more varied, interesting content.
At the end of the day, experimentation is part of the process of creating solid content, so as long as you keep trying new things, you’ll find the perfect system for making videos that works for you.
Got another tip to share when it comes to making brand videos? I’d love to hear it. Leave me a note below in the comments section with your best recommendations:
Images:
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Your actual full of absolute malarkey.(b.s.) it takes a lot longer than 2 hours to produce a video of any sort of any short length. More like 10 to 25 hours
This article is totally misleading. It
contradicts itself from the header to the last word. Producing is hard. Being creative is a talent, as is an ability to write compelling and engaging script. And it’s time consuming. This should not be on b2commumity, it’s misleading and false.
Aaron you seem like a well meaning guy but you clearly know absolutely nothing about the subject.
This is absolute rubbish. The author has clearly never actually produced a video in his life. 25 min for editing? Good luck with that.
This article is entirely wrong in every detail. If you want a professional looking video, hire a professional company with a proven track record. Following this guide will give you results worse than that of a first time media production student & will destroy any current/potential future brand recognition for your company!
I’ve never read such rubbish. It would take almost 2 hours to upload the video. I could only imagine what your video would look like if you followed these guidelines.
Whoever wrote the ‘how to’ content has never shot a frame of video in their life.
You’re talking rubbish. 2 hrs to write, shoot and edit a video? What a joke. And you say it will be of reasonable quality? I like the part of being able to edit your content in 25 minutes. Laughable. I have worked in the video industry for nearly 30 years, and this is tripe. If you want a decent video then get someone who has experience to do it, and pay them for their skills amassed over many long hours and years. And shoot it on a phone for a ‘killer’ brand. Joker.
This is a joke of an article. Was it written on April 1? Obviously the author has never produced a video before in his life. Editing done in 20 minutes? 10 hours including rendering would be a very quick job. Let’s get real, please.
Is this a late April fools?
Total and utter rubbish that devalues a trade by making people think they can get good results by doing it themselves. Show me a business that makes their own video and I’ll show you one that is doing it wrong and could make more money.
25 mins for editing and 10 mins for posting online. Berk.
This article is typical web-clickbait-bs. While the author should be commended for the length of the article and the time he took to put it together the idea that a decent video can be made in 2 hours (other than a single-take talking head) totally belittle the skill and craft it takes to put quality video production together. It’s very safe to assume that the author knows noting about the editing and post-production process since he both misspells the name of one of the top editing tools on the market and recommends a tool that is much more complex than the one he misspells.
If you can produce a quality video in under 2 hours, that means you actually know what you’re doing. And if you know what you’re doing, you can’t create a quality video in under 2 hours. Quick, on the spot, roll to camera and simply upload, sure. But something that’s planned, executed, shot well, edited well and uploaded no way that happens in 2 hours.
You may work in social media and I see you have some brands to your name, but I have 25 years experience in broadcast and digital media. 13 Emmys and 2 Peabodys are among my many credits. Fortune 500 companies are among the many clients I have served. Mom and pop operations are among the many clients I have served. I would be doing any client a grave injustice to claim that I can produce something that will properly represent their brand in just two hours.
And you recommend Lightworks for people who have never edited? Oy vey. There are so many things wrong with this article I’ll just sum it up by saying if people want a really good video produced, even at low cost, hire a video professional in your area.
My marketing friend…as a long-time video professional, may I suggest you retitle this blog post: “How To Create A Short, Tolerable Video With Low Production Value, In 2 Hours (If You Do A Ton of Preplanning, Work With Experienced People, Fully Understand Your Equipment And Software, Keep Your Message Very Short, Nothing Goes Wrong…..And Bust Your Butt).”
A company’s video is a reflection of it’s brand. It should not just be rushed online, but rather given the attention that a brand deserves. A quality video need not be a expensive & long endeavor, but a rushed production begets a video product that is off-mark, sloppily executed, and usually unwatchable.
The article contains some good info. However…do you have an example of a video that was planned, scripted, shot & edited in 2 hours? I’d like to do a quality check.
Even if you have an experienced team and decent equipment, the setup & teardown alone would eat up most of your time. Only the most rudimentary video could be done in 2 hours…and, I assure you, the result would be far from “killer”. Nor would you be able to represent a brand in any professional way. And isn’t that the point of a “killer brand video?”
Do your readers a service: refine this article. They won’t get a ‘killer brand video’ that’s scripted and shot in 2 hours. Tell them how to make a simple video in 2 hours, then have additional sections that describe what additional time will get them. Things like green screen and external audio recording will add time. Stay focused on the main point of the article, level their expectations, and give them options at the end. And don’t clickbait the title; keep it interesting and honest. Good luck!
You’ve probably noticed you’ve faced some criticism here, nearly all of which I agree with.
So now what? Well, many of us probably came here as the result of a Reddit post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videography/comments/4d6gmr/how_to_create_a_killer_brand_video_in_2_hours/
I would highly recommend consulting with people from the site to create a less misleading article. Hopefully everyone can put their egos aside long enough to create something better for everyone.
What an insult to go on line with this dross: Go away and learn something about production you stupid boy.
normally I would ignore articles like this, certainly not comment on this, but this article is appalling. it does not actually have anywhere near enough to say for the word-count and has been packed with generalizations and complete and utter BS in the opinion of someone working as a filmmaker for more than 10 years. Just another clickbait article written by someone trying to promote himself, trying to hit a specific word-count with nothing to say. if this is a serious website you should remove this article and apologize for wasting people’s time.
Wow, great to see all the conversation this article has generated – good and bad.
A few things I want to add, because I understand where a lot of these comments are coming from. Is two hours reasonable for a commercial-quality piece of video content? Of course not. Is it enough to shoot a simple product demo video with a logo intro and a background track (which, for many brands, in many industries, is enough to constitute “killer”)? I’d say yes (although, as many commenters have pointed out, this does presume some experience with video editing tools).
What I think is a far more important point than arguing over numbers, though, is that – in my work – I see so many brands that are afraid of vldeo. They think that because they aren’t Hollywood producers, they can’t take advantage of video marketing – which is BS.
Working with video professionals – as it’s clear many of you are – is great, but my goal with this article was simply to demystify the process of creating video content and show that it’s accessible to all brands, regardless of the specific timelines required to create it.
And with that reply Aaron, you’ve enabled a whole shit-ton of crap out on the internet that might hurt some brands just as much as it might help others. And that’s just what the internet needs … more crap.
I can see your point, Aaron. But adding and animating a logo can take a fair amount of time. Music needs to be found and added and mixed in properly – and you need to make sure there are no copyright issues for your intended use. Where would you add these times in your estimates?
Your page says you have worked for coca cola and target – I have not worked for those companies but companies of similar sizes and I would suggest that making a video and releasing it online with the company name and logo on your official youtube channel without going through various levels of authorities is unlikely.
maybe if you could write a blog about an example where you were involved in creating video with a link, people would be less angry at this article. I don’t claim to be a search, content and social marketer, so I wouldn’t think it’s a good idea to write about it to raise my profile and guide traffic to my website by writing this kind of BS.
I would be intrigued to hear your comments.
I was intrigued and realized this article is still online. whoever is running this website should probably read some of Aaron’s other amazing articles about marketing and blogging and website traffic – Aaron has surely mastered the clickbait headline writing skill and filling an article with generalizations that people can skim over and assume they have learnt something new. seriously, if business2community.com is serious, how about looking for people who know what they are talking about and let them write articles that are worth the time of the people reading them and worth their own time to promote this. why have a website that seems to mainly post dribble? instead, aim high, be ambitious andbe creative. modnay afternoon rant over. have a great day everyone.
This is a good article. I have been seeking this advice and had not had any luck. Thank you for your expertise and helping us who are not video experts and who are not interested in spending a lot of money to make 2 minute videos.
LoL!!!! Sounds like you’ve never produced a video before.