Video marketing is undoubtedly on the rise.
More and more companies worldwide are investing in corporate video production, and there are quite a few reasons for that.
According to WordStream statistics:
- 64% of consumers buy a product after seeing a branded video of it
- video content increases organic traffic from SERPs by 157%
- websites that are using video content have an average conversion rate of 4.8%, compared to only 2.9% for those that don’t
On top of that, WordStream also reports that viewers are able to retain 95% of the information from the video compared to other media. This indicates that videos can singlehandedly boost your engagement rates.
What do you need to achieve that result?
Of course, just posting a random video is not enough for successful video marketing.
Behind a good corporate video, there’s always a long preparation process. And an important part of this process is writing a video script, which will be the foundation for your video.
In today’s video, we will discuss a few tips based on science to help you successfully build up this foundation and have a high-quality corporate video as a result.
1. Follow the Structure
In screenwriting, there are two major components of every script – the content of the story and the form in which this story is told. You cannot just randomly spill facts, you need to give them a certain structure to make sure you and your viewers are on the same page.
The same rule works when writing a corporate video script – the structure of it will decide how your viewers will perceive the story.
What does science say about structuring a video script?
This phenomenon has a lot to do with how the human brain functions.
When learning new information, our brain is always looking for some kind of structure, even if it’s not there. There should always be a pattern to everything that we perceive because then it’s easier for our brain to memorize information.
Apart from that, researchers from the University of Florida discovered that such consistency is essential for the health of our brain. According to the study, even diverse activities should be structured to help the brain better adjust to them.
How to build the structure for your corporate video script?
Here are a few steps you can follow.
Step #1: Write a video brief
Before you start writing a video script, you need to determine the goals of your video in general. That’s why you need a video brief – a brief explanatory part that will include the answers to the following questions:
- What are the goals of this video?
- Who is the primary audience for this video?
- Which value will this video deliver?
- How will this video be distributed?
- Which action do you want your audience to take after watching this video?
With a video brief, it will be easier for you to proceed to the next step – building the structure for your corporate video script.
Step #2: Develop the structure
Once you have all the goals defined and explained, start by breaking down your video script into introduction, body, and conclusion.
Just with any other written content, the introduction and conclusion give a general overview and a sum-up of what the video will be about.
However, when structuring the body of your script, consider the following details:
- Assign the lines to the narrators right away. When writing a script, instruct your team on what you expect from the narrators to say and work with them on including these lines in the script right away. This way, it will be easier for you to follow the script during the video production process.
- Write in a conversational tone. In brackets, you can also add gestures the narrator should show in the video to make the flow of it more natural.
- Insert midroll elements right away. If you want to add any midroll links or other similar elements to your script, do it right away because they are essential for the flow of your video.
Don’t overuse passive voice and write in short paragraphs. Try to mimic natural speech as much as possible.
Step #3: Proofread
It is important to proofread every draft of your video script, especially if there are many people working on it.
To make proofreading less tedious for you and your team, automate it using editors from online writing services or tools like Grammarly and Hemingway App that also help you improve the readability of your corporate video script.
2. Try the 3-Minute Rule to Build Suspense
Now, let’s talk more about organizing your narrative.
Let’s say your video will tell the viewers about the launch of your next product. To build excitement and make them start craving your product, you need to build suspense around what your new product will be and how it will benefit your customers.
How can the 3-minute rule help?
This rule comes from neuroscience and is focused on maintaining the audience’s attention, especially if the video is longer than 3 minutes.
According to the 3-minute rule, you need to give your audience a break every 3 minutes. Such an alteration between tension and release, helping you successfully build suspense by postponing certain details.
Of course, this approach needs a good A/B testing.
For the initial draft of your video script, create two versions of it – one that has a natural flow, and one with suspense using a 3-minute rule, add different call-to-actions. You can even ask different narrators to read the script.
Once you have two versions of your script, divide your entire audience into two parts, and see how they react. It also is important to guide them through this process to observe their emotions and their response to every part of the script
3. Use Social Data to Find Creative Corporate Video Ideas
Sometimes, writing a video script is not as problematic as finding a topic for your next video. If this is the case, you can use some social listening to find inspiration.
The first place where you can start looking for corporate video ideas is social media. There, your followers share massive amounts of social data, which is a goldmine of topics for your next corporate video.
Social data is unstructured data, which social platforms collect and organize. This data involves demographic, biographic details of your followers, as well as all their likes and shares.
Where can you find social data?
If you have a decent following on your social media platforms, you can browse the Analytics tab. For instance, on Facebook, this tab has a section with the audience’s content preferences as well as their reactions to your latest posts:
Or, if your main audience is on Twitter, this platform uses machine learning to find, analyze, and predict audience interests.
All this data can give you valuable insights on the content your audience would like to see more from you and give you topic ideas that you can later use for your next corporate video script.
Over to You
As you can see, writing a flawless corporate video script can be a tiresome process. But once you add a little science to it, it becomes a piece of cake.
Hopefully, our insights will help you understand better what will make your next corporate video flawless and write a script that will help your video deliver the results that you expect.
Author bio: Dorian Martin is an editor and content writer working for well-known term paper writing services. He also has his own blog, where he teaches entrepreneurs how to successfully adopt different marketing strategies.
