What Types of Video Content People Love to Watch ?

In 2021, consumers are watching more video content than ever before. Over the past few years, content marketing has undergone a huge transformation, and video has emerged front-and-center, especially in social media marketing. Now, it’s arguably the most effective strategy you can use to connect with your audience. Many smartphone users find engaging types of video content difficult to resist.

Video Content stats

Take a look at these numbers:

Each month, 85% of Internet users in the U.S. watch video content.
By 2021, the average person will spend 100 minutes every day watching online videos (a 19% increase from 2019).
93% of companies claim they got a new customer because of their video content on social media
63% of businesses say that video gets the beset return on investment (ROI) on social media.

For instance, the power and influence of YouTube have grown at breath-taking speed. It can even claim to be the world’s second largest search engine – after Google itself. Some of its statistics are quite staggering:

Total number of people who use YouTube – 1,325,000,000
Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute – 300 hours
Number of videos viewed on YouTube every day – 4,950,000,000
Average number of mobile YouTube videos per day – 1,000,000,000

How companies use video content on social media

Let’s suppose you have a successful Digital Marketing strategy, and everything is well and good.

But how is your video marketing performance? If you haven’t already made substantial investments in video content for social media platforms, then it’s about time to get started.

Videos are more attractive, engaging, and achieve a higher social media ROI — and these are all good reasons for you to incorporate them into your Digital Marketing Plan.

Of course, you can always post the URL to any old video that you already published. But as good old communication author Marshall McLuhan once said, “the medium is the message”.

Meaning that each platform demands a specific format that will allow you to explore all the media’s potential.

9 tips to get the most from video investment

1. Invest in the process, not just the product

2. Keep your end goal in mind

3. Write a script your audience will want to follow

4. Know when to host and when to post (Best time to post)

5. Set the right stage for social plays

6. Include a transcript

7. Tag your work

8. Push videos to influencers, subscribers, fans, and followers

9. Track attention span to evaluate value

Types of video marketing and related content

The truth is, video marketing isn’t as complex as it seems. It’s just about getting familiar with what video content people love to watch – and then offering more of that.

In this article, we’ll explore these engaging types of video marketing, giving you the insights you need to build brand awareness, captivate customers and influence people to take action.

1. Vlog

Blogs are great. Vlogs, or video blogs, are much better.

Most companies pump the brakes on video marketing after they splurge on a polished “brand introduction” video. Sure, it looks great on a landing page and does the rounds on social media, but when it fails to deliver a flood of new business, the appeal of video content wears off, along with the ROI.

What you need to realize is that not all video content has to be an Oscar-worthy production. Vlogs offer your brand a cost-effective platform to establish a unique brand voice and personable image that resonates with your target market.

It’s cheap and easy to shoot a short vlog, off-the-cuff, with nothing more than your smartphone or webcam, and maybe a basic script jotted down on the back of a napkin. This authentic approach gives your video content a relatable, human quality, instead of a super-slick, corporate production.

One of the best types of video content for vlogging is the simple concept of sharing your day at work.

2. Animals in different video content

It is impossible to avoid seeing funny animals on the internet – Facebook feeds, in particular, seem at times to be full of the critters. People just love seeing cute animals, particularly when they are doing something out of the ordinary – videos of cats sleeping aren’t the rage this year!

YouTube also has its fair share of funny animal channels, some depicting videos of real animals pigging the limelight, others – like Simons Cat – being animated.

There are also, of course, numerous serious animal channels, including National Geographic videos featuring the renowned David Attenborough.

3. Behind-the-Scenes content

Great brand storytelling can set a company apart from its competition, simultaneously motivating employees and captivating consumers. For this reason, one of the best types of video content you can use is a behind-the-scenes video that reveals your company culture.

These types of videos offer an immersive experience, pulling back the curtain on your business to allow customers and potential customers to forge a connection with your brand.

Viewers will put faces to the names of your team, including C-suite members. Your followers can see the design of your office, how you dress for work, what your personalities are like, and how your team interacts with each other.

A company culture video is the easiest way to do that – plus it can be a lot of fun for your team!

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4. Tutorials

There are three types of learning style: visual (by seeing), auditory (by hearing) and kinesthetic (by doing). Everybody learns using a combination of these styles, but most people find one of the methods easier than the others. Good teachers try to use a mixture of all three methods in their classrooms.

While it will always be hard to teach kinesthetically in a video, it is the perfect medium for those who love both visual and auditory learning experiences.

A well-structured video, that encourages you to work alongside the presentation, can even be useful to the more kinesthetically-inclined.

There are so many How To videos on YouTube, that you are likely to find something to help you do virtually anything you can think of.

These videos have an advantage in that they are almost timeless – the only reason that a video would date is that the activity itself changes or goes out of date.

5. Interview/Q&A video content

Interview videos are perfect for building brand authority for a few reasons:

They allow you to align your brand with a thought leader or an inspiring person.
This kind of videos help you establish authority with input from a respected voice.
They give your audience an intimate 1-to-1 experience, where someone in your business or market space answers hard-hitting questions.

Like a vlog, a good interview should follow a set of guidelines, but it shouldn’t feel scripted.

Your job, as the interviewer, is to keep the other person talking, gently guiding them to discuss hot topics, trends and, if possible, get them to reveal exclusive news or big secrets for the audience.

6. Product Reviews in videos

There is a clear trend, nowadays, for people to turn to the internet when they are considering making a purchase. They want to discover what other people think about products that interest them.

YouTube is no different from other social media channel in this sense. People flock to the channels of those they trust to see what they think about various products they have reviewed.

Polls have regularly shown that consumers are more likely to make a purchase if they see a positive review online.

It obviously depends on the product, but YouTube is the perfect medium for many products.

People find it so much easier to relate to a review if they can physically see the product being used, whether it is makeup being applied, a car being test driven, or the latest kitchen gadget being put to use.

7. Webinar

When it comes to offering actionable advice to and educating your viewers, webinars are one of the most valuable types of video content in modern marketing.

People attend virtual webinars as an easy way to learn from you and your guests about the topics that matter to them. Better yet, webinars are an excellent tool to promote with paid ads.

You can use Facebook ads to drive sign-ups for your webinar, then leverage that traffic to generate more leads and, eventually, make more sales from your product or service. It’s a win-win!

8. Celebrity Gossip Videos

People having an interest in celebrity gossip isn’t exactly new – newspaper tabloids have thrived on this for years, and indeed there are whole cable television channels focused around this topic.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that people come to YouTube to keep up-to-date with their celebrity gossip fix. Many of these videos do still seem like they are straight out of the tabloids, of course, and you certainly can’t believe everything that you see and hear in these videos.

Probably the best-known celebrity gossip YouTube channel is an offshoot of the TMZ celebrity news website.

9. Testimonial and video content

By putting the spotlight on an existing customer, you can show viewers just how happy your brand (and its products and services) make people.

The key here is to get real customers – don’t hire actors from Fiverr!

Instead, reach out to your satisfied customer base so that you can create genuine video testimonials. There may a little work in getting these testimonials, but you can encourage input by offering freebie gifts (did someone say one-month discount?) to anybody who records a video testimonial. You could even turn it into a fun competition to attract more entries.