Video has become a highly influential marketing tool for reaching the global audience. If done right, video content can spread global awareness about your brand, help you achieve a closer connection with your audience, and take your business to the next level.
What makes video the best choice for the international audience is that the video audience is massive. According to research, 78% of people watch videos online each week, and 55% watch it every day. Being a favorable source of entertainment and information, videos can get you the desired attention.
To achieve your goals, you need to do more than to make and post video content. Effective video strategy demands thought-through decisions. That is why the following tips will give you some guidance for creating amazing videos for your global audience.
1. The First Few Seconds Are Crucial
What you present to the audience within the first few seconds is the determining point. If you know how to hook the viewers right away, you’ll have their attention until the end.
What can make the first scene memorable and luring is:
- Indication of a story
- Relating to a problem
- Mystery
- Emotional scene
- Important question
- Offering a solution to the problem
- Sense of urgency
- Evoking curiosity
- Humor
2. Choose the Types of Videos that Resonates with Global Audience
People from various countries and regions have different cultures, beliefs, ideas, and convictions. Using a customer persona won’t help you out in this case. You need to generalize your approach and make it globally acceptable.
Knowing the types of videos that resonate best with the global audience can be of great help.
These are the type of videos that are mostly used for reaching out to the global audience:
- Universally-relatable themes
- Global trends
- Cultural aspects that are of global interest
- Niche topics
- Trending content (for example, regional news)
- Topics that don’t demand words (for example, unboxing videos, DIY videos)
3. Moderate the Length
The length of the video can have a huge impact on audience engagement.
The research has shown that videos under 2 minutes get the most viewer engagement. After the 2 minutes, there is a notable drop in engagement.
This can be explained by people’s decrease in attention span. With social media and endless scrolling through content, our brain got used to fast changes and interactive content.
Long videos can seem like too much work for some people. Especially since we live in a fast-paced world.
If the content you are creating demands more time, try to keep the video length between 6 to 12 minutes.
4. Aim for Quality
Having a goal to attract the attention of the global audience surpasses satisfying the wishes of the local audience. The global audience is more versatile, has more options, and therefore, is more demanding.
One of the crucial aspects of video content for the international audience is quality. High-quality videos are a must if you want to compete for the audience’s attention.
Creating high-quality videos means that you have to have:
- Good camera
- Knowledgeable shooter
- Visually pleasing backgrounds and scenes
- Talented editor
- Creative script
In case you have a limited budget, it is preferable that you invest in the quality rather than the length. Short and high-quality videos will have a better response than longer videos of poor quality.
All in all, you should put the video quality above the length since that is what will help you to rank higher.
5. Create Interactive Videos
Interactive video is used by only 2% of marketers. However, 83% of those that use interactive video report that it is very effective.
Last year 43% of businesses expressed that they plan to start using interactive video in 2020. This shows that interactive video content has proved to have a good response from the audience.
Considering that interactive videos aren’t an exploited idea, this is your opportunity to stand out among a large number of competitors.
Interactive videos allow viewers to do more than just pause, play, and rewind. They give them the ability to interact or control the content. This type of video content carries some resemblance to a video game which is why they are so fun for the viewers.
The features it can offer are dragging, clicking, hovering, or scrolling. Interactive videos can come in the form of:
- Revealing hidden content by clicking on the screen
- 360-degree videos that can be manipulated around
- Personalizing the story by choosing among different options
- Live questioners
The videos can aim to entertain, inform, or educate. In any case, they can transform viewers’ experience into something memorable.
6. Provide Captions and Translation
Your video can carry a powerful message but if there is no translated version of captions, the global audience won’t be able to understand it.
First, you need to provide the captions in English, that is, you need to transcribe the video. Based on the transcription you can translate that content into any language you want.
To determine the languages in the second language translation, you have to know the target audience within your global campaign. Consider the countries you primarily want to aim and the languages that are spoken there.
When it comes to adding the captions, you can work with a video production company that can handle the whole process.
A more affordable option is to add the caption on your own and find a translation company that can translate the caption into languages you want. The best way to find a translation company is to check different options and reviews. You can find all of that on translation review websites such as PickWriters.
It is useful that you know that some video platforms such as YouTube and Facebook offer automatic video captions. All that is left to you is to proofread the results.
7. Optimize Videos
Don’t think that SEO is reserved for written content only. Optimizing videos is just as important.
If you want to make your videos easily reachable, you have to take some optimization steps that will bring you closer to the global audience.
The way to optimize videos for global reach is to translate the relevant elements of your video. These elements will lead the global audience who is doing the search in their language to your video.
What you need to pay close attention is translating the following video aspects:
- Video title (the translated version can be in the description)
- Video description
- Alt text
- Metadata within the original video thumbnail image
Stating the keywords in the non-English language (within the above-mentioned elements) will increase your chances of ranking higher due to lower competition.
Some Final Thoughts
Creating video content with international appeal can be a challenging journey. Without a specific persona to target, you are left with the audience with massive differences.
For the purpose of winning the hearts of the global audience, you need to create a solid strategy. The above-mentioned tips give you an insight into relevant actions you need to take in order to make your videos globally acceptable. What is left for you to do is to apply those tips and add a unique twist to your videos to make them stand out and beat the competition.
Kristin Savage nourishes, sparks and empowers using the magic of a word. Along with pursuing her degree in Creative Writing, Kristin was gaining experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy for publishers and authors. Now she had found herself as a freelance writer. Kristin runs her own FlyWriting blog. You can find her on Facebook.
