2020 is in full swing, and the demand for video content keeps growing. According to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey, 85% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool. On top of that, 86% of people would like to see more videos from brands in 2020.

Now, when the majority of businesses have moved online due to the lockdown, it is especially important to keep your video content relevant and timely in order to beat the competition. This is why digital marketers and content creators need to keep up with the latest video trends.

What are the key video marketing trends in 2020? How to apply these trends to your business? To figure this out, we conducted a series of interviews with the most forward-thinking experts in the field of video marketing, advertising, and social media. Read on to find out what they said!

1. Live Video

In 2020, more social platforms are introducing and promoting live video-oriented functionality.

To get on top of the latest live video marketing trends, we talked to Stephanie Liu, a digital strategist, live streaming expert, and the host of “Lights, Camera, Live” show.

Live Video Best Practices in 2020

1. Developing a pre-event promotion plan. A well-thought-out promotion plan is needed to get people buzzing before you actually hit the
“go live” button.

• Engage with your audience before the event. One of the sure-fire ways to do that is creating a Facebook event page where you’ll be able to communicate with the viewers before the live event.
• Prepare a lead magnet exclusive for the viewers of your live event. Spread the word about it to provide additional motivation for tuning in.
• Create teaser videos announcing the upcoming live event. Use a tool like Wave.video to do that easily!

2. Setting a content distribution plan. The recording of your live video has great potential – if you distribute it wisely.

• Share the recording through multiple channels of communication with your audience: on social media, your blog, via newsletter, etc.
• Create GIFs out of the funniest parts of your video and share them on social media to attract attention.
• Repurpose your video into other pieces of content: blog posts, images, short videos, etc. Pay special attention to the engagement graph – big spikes indicate sections of the video that viewers found the most compelling. These sections will make great material for other pieces of content.
• Make sure to answer all the questions in the comment section and check back for the new ones.
• Check if the description of your video is relevant and informative, especially when multistreaming to several platforms simultaneously. The description needs to be customized for every other platform.

Live Video Trends

1. Chatbots. Leveraging chatbots is a new “trendy” way to get more views and shares on your live video content.
2. Stories. Stories continue to be a monumental tool for promoting live videos before and after the actual streaming.
3. TikTok. One can’t argue that this platform became a real breakthrough for the video industry in the past few years. And keeping up with the latest trends is essential for life streamers!

2. Business Vlogging

Vlogs are one of the most popular forms of video content, and it’s no surprise that more and more brands are starting to connect with their audience via vlogging in 2020.

We invited Rob Balasabas, the utmost expert on corporate blogging from TubeBuddy, to uncover the value of business vlogging and guide you through all the pitfalls standing in your way to success.

Why It’s Time to Invest Your Time & Efforts Into Business Vlogging

• Unaccountable/”vanity” metrics: Vlogging can help you elevate your brand and attract some of that hard-earned attention we’re all seeking with our marketing efforts. By doing something out of the ordinary, you’ll get a chance of catching an increasingly shortening attention span from your customers. Yes, they do want useful content, tips and tricks, but they also want to see what your brand really stands for, some people behind your brand, and even share their own stories with a wider audience. Your business vlog can become that platform.
• Accountable/”business” metrics: The essence of business vlogging is the humanization of your brand. There may be thousands of other companies offering the same services as you do, but if you manage to build that deep connection between your company and your customers, you’ll see some impact even on such “business” metrics like customer loyalty and customer’s life-time value.

Where to Begin with Business Vlogging

Start small. Don’t go big on production – your smartphone camera will absolutely suffice. And only when you see some real impact and traction with your business vlog, start investing in more sophisticated equipment, visuals, lighting and so on.

Be consistent. When creating a vlog, be intentional and think of some consistency. It’s up to you whether you’re ready to post videos daily, weekly, or monthly, just as long as there is some consistency in your schedule.

Repurpose existing content. For instance, try turning your monthly newsletter into a video – just pick someone from within your company and ask them to read up all the monthly updates. This is a video diary of your company that people may actually stop and watch.

Tell someone else’s story. Yes, it may be hard at first to talk about yourself. So, “use” your customers. Maybe you helped somebody or had a really cool email coming back from a customer about how happy they were with your service or product, how it impacted their business or even their life.

Think outside of the box. Business vlogging is mainly intended for humanizing and putting a face to your brand, so don’t just speak about your business or your product. You can talk about something that your company did – like, hosted an internal event, brought everyone together for theatre production, or something your employees/colleagues do outside of your company.

Business Vlogging: Common Traps to Avoid

• You keep finding reasons not to do it;
• You put quality over quantity;
• You forget about your customer’s journey;
• You put emphasis on the platform your audience is not active on.

3. IGTV

IGTV is still a relatively new platform that hasn’t realized its full potential yet, but has quite a promising future.

To figure out where IGTV is heading at this point, we interviewed Dan Knowlton, Co-Founder of digital and social media marketing agency Knowlton that specializes in running creative social media campaigns.

What Video Formats Perform Best on IGTV in 2020

• Highly-produced content for IGTV only
• Selfie-style videos
• Repurposed content from other platforms

Tips for IGTV Success

Get inspired by other creators. Take videos that you enjoy watching and try to integrate the best ideas into your content strategy.

Show your personality. People have overused “being authentic” sort of phrases, although it doesn’t mean this is not a practical approach.

Leave behind stereotyped approaches. Try to think out of the box in the process of creating videos for IGTV. Come up with something unusual and unexpected to make a lasting impression on your viewers.

How to Attract an Audience to Your IGTV

• Stories. Make a video announcement in Stories and enrich its exposure by adding location, tagging people, or using hashtags for your regular topics.
• Instagram feed. Post up to 60-sec video-hook to your feed and encourage people to continue watching the video with your creative copy.
• Blog. Embed IGTV videos on your blog to turn your readers into viewers.
• Email. Add short video previews to your newsletters.

4. Video Advertising

With the decline in organic reach across pretty much every social media platform – from Facebook to Instagram, – paid advertising options are the “it” thing for video marketing efforts.

We invited Susan Wenograd, the CMO at Aimclear and a Facebook ads expert specializing in Facebook ad funnels, to walk us through some of the biggest video advertising trends in 2020.

Video Ad Trends for 2020

1. 3-second rule. You only have around 3 seconds to catch your viewers’ attention, so stop being concerned about what you’re trying to communicate to the audience, and worry a little bit more about what it is they’re going to care about. Your video ad needs to showcase why your viewers should care about the problem in the first place.
2. Experiment with formats. In 2020, you will have to double your efforts when it comes to video ad creation. Embrace the Stories video ad format, as they are the new prevalent place for video advertising, especially on Instagram.
3. Drop the branding, make it native. When your video ad looks heavily overproduced, the audience will immediately subconsciously know it’s an ad. So, you’re almost better off when you drop some branding and keep your video ad organic and native to the platform it airs at.

Things to Keep in Mind When Using Video Advertising on Social in 2020

• Be aware of what you run on Facebook versus what you run on Instagram. When it comes to feeds, use the preview feature on Facebook to look at how it renders on Instagram.
• Learn about your audience across each social platform. If you run everything as combined placements, then break out various social media by different parameters.
• Longer formats are alive but very specific. You can normally elongate your video the further down the funnel your audience goes.
• Build an involved & engaged audience. Embrace things like running ad polls to create a dialogue with your audience. Use this interactivity to make people engage with your ads.

5. New Video Platforms and Formats

As more social networks are becoming “video-first” and new video platforms are being introduced, we can expect that there will be even more things to consider when producing content for various distribution channels.

To go deeper into the matter, we asked a couple of questions about new video-friendly platforms and different types of content to Matt Navarra, Social Media Industry Commentator and Consultant.

Short- vs. Long-Form Video Content

The debate around short versus long-form video content isn’t going anywhere so far. In the last few years, Facebook has been traditionally pushing people towards longer videos, most likely because of its interest in promoting Facebook Watch. Other major platforms like Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter, give preference to the video content with higher engagement regardless of its length. Meanwhile, TikTok is soaring and, together with other short-form oriented platforms coming on stream in the next 12 months, ensures a renaissance for this dimension.

The Importance of Testing New Platforms

Platforms continuously roll out new formats to give their audiences “the next thing.” Unfortunately, the lifespan of digital innovations became drastically shorter. Converting one piece of content into all possible formats is now the worst creators’ nightmare. Marketers need to experiment with different platforms and formats to find out where their audience is and what type of content resonates the most. Despite the higher speed of the changes, the time-proved 80/20 rule remains effective:

• 80% of the content that you post has already been tested and proved its efficiency;
• 20% of the content is left for genuinely experimental things that can turn out to be amazing or go absolutely wrong but allow us to understand what our audience is ready to accept.

Growing Demand for Authentic Content

The word ‘authenticity’ will continue to pop up in conversations a lot more frequently. There is no need in creating a very polished content to build a connection with the audience. The TikTok-ish kind of videos has successfully established the demand for more relaxed, genuine content that allows imperfections. All the steps taken last year to be more real, human, and relatable are starting to pay dividends.

Private Groups and Communities

People now have so many different options of where to consume news, buy products, or check their friends and family. Many of them are searching for a confined place with fewer people and a stronger focus on a particular topic. This tendency has laid the ground for the growing popularity of WhatsApp and Telegram groups. These smaller clusters and private communities will continue to emerge and turn into a highly-potential field for experiments. The important thing here is to provide helpful and exciting information rather than choosing a broad range of topics and turning a channel into a repository of irrelevant news.

6. Educational Videos

In 2020, brands are showing that they have more to offer than just their products and services by making more educational video content.

We invited XayLi Barclay, a visual content creation coach and Thinkific expert, to discuss what makes a great educational video and share tips on attracting and converting customers with knowledge-based content.

4 Brackets of Educational Video Content

1. Foundational videos guide viewers through specific processes. These videos might be great for an online course or series.
2. Functional videos demonstrate your product and help it get found by potential customers.
3. Financial videos help to actually sell your product.
4. Fun videos introduce viewers to your brand culture and help to build trust for your brand.

Making Educational Videos Work for Your Business

Give something for free. Prepare a free video course and promote it with an email sequence that you deliver successively.

Stick to a schedule. Make a schedule that will structure the way your audience perceives the series of videos (for example, every Tuesday and Thursday at 1 pm EST).

Interact with your audience. Conduct live masterclasses to interact with people and understand more of what they want to learn about.

“Sell” your free videos. Marketers often think that free content can distribute itself, but that’s never the case. You need to write a decent sales copy by explaining what people will be able to implement after watching your course and promote it repeatedly across all channels.

7. Stories

Ephemeral content continues to gain prominence as even more social platforms introduce Stories. More and more businesses start making use of Stories, and it becomes harder to attract users’ attention to your content.

We invited Alex Tooby, Instagram Strategist & Educator, to share effective ways of making your ephemeral video content stand out and discuss best and worst practices for creating Stories in 2020.

Top 5 Things That Will Help Your Stories Stand Out

Branding. Just like with any other marketing channel, the colors, fonts, and other aspects of your brand identity should be consistent and help people distinguish your content from the endless parade of photos and videos. Save the picture of your branded color palette to your camera roll and import it to your Instagram Story. This will allow you to easily use a color picker to actually choose your brand colors, or your text, or any sort of drawing and extra elements afterwards. 

Consistency. Post at least one Story a day to always stay on top of your followers’ feeds. 

Graphics, GIFs, Motions. Due to the number of distractions that fight for people’s attention every second, you have to use any possible way to make your content stimulate people enough to keep watching. That means stepping aside from solid photos and sticking more to videos and motion elements. 

Relevant behind-the-scenes. The tone of Stories allows you to publish less polished content and open up to your followers more. By showing how your business actually functions and who creates the product, you get a great opportunity to educate your followers on what your company really is about.

Complementary text. By skipping the step of adding subtitles or supporting text to your videos, you miss the big part of the audience that can’t turn the sound on due to different circumstances.  

3 Ways to Increase ROI of Your Instagram Stories

1. Consistent call-to-actions. You have to explicitly tell your audience what to do: swipe up, click the link in my bio, send me DM, etc. 
2. Screencast of the user flow. Record all the actions you want your followers to take and add it to Stories. Thus you give users a visual cue of what they supposed to do and make them feel more comfortable and familiar with your webpage afterwards.   
3. Arrows. If you want someone to swipe up, you should have an arrow that goes up. If you want someone to click the profile picture in the top left-hand corner, have an arrow that points to that or to the message box at the bottom of your Instagram story. It’s a very simple way to direct people’s attention. 

The Biggest Mistake with Stories

The biggest mistake most companies make is posting irrelevant content. It often happens to those people who love being on camera and start posting too personal information. It’s important to stay cognizant of what your goal is on social media. People follow you for a specific purpose of your account and can easily unsubscribe if you stop matching their expectations.

Over to You

So, have we missed any video marketing trends that you noticed growing this year? Let us know in the comments!