The 4 Types of Online Video that Get the Most Views

The 4 Types of Online Video that Get the Most Views

Online video is a powerful marketing tool for any company, in any industry, in any size. Powerful content platforms allow an online marketer to directly target an intended audience and maximize the impact of their content. Furthermore, online video viewership is a large and growing target audience. In fact, Americans on average spend nearly two hours each day viewing digital online video. However, there is more than enough content online to meet consumer desires. So the question becomes: “what type of video gets the most online traffic?”

Videos that Get to the Point

Online viewers have incredibly short attention spans. It’s easy to click the “next” button on YouTube, and similarly facile to head over to Facebook and access virtually limitless content. As such, it’s not only important to have interesting content, but also to make sure that your content is interesting from the first five seconds. Those first moments are essential to capture the viewer’s attention. A video that doesn’t dive directly into the important and interesting content is sure to have a high drop-off rate as viewers switch to other content.

The use of introduction sequences on YouTube exemplifies this issue. Many prolific YouTube creators take the time to prepare a standard introduction sequence, perhaps a highlight reel or flashy animation, to start each video. While this makes the content seem more professional, it creates a risk of losing the viewer’s attention. The decision then comes down to a consideration of goals and of the target audience, and the tradeoffs must be closely considered.

Funny Videos

Despite the wealth of information-rich content freely available online, web surfers tend to be searching for entertainment, not education. Furthermore, humor is perhaps the most universal form of entertainment. A dose of laughter from a tasteful joke can make a promotional video more convincing, and certainly ensures that the viewer keeps interest in your content. Humor makes an audience more susceptible, and makes them more likely to share your content with their friends. That said, it’s not easy to make a video funny, especially while avoiding offending viewers who may not be part of your target audience. A savvy online marketer will be sure to watch out for potential pitfalls with humorous content and carefully evaluate the risks associated with negative response.

Shareable Online Video

With hundreds of hours’ worth of online video uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo every minute, it’s not easy to capture one viewer’s attention. So wouldn’t it be great to have them share your content with all of their friends? In fact, 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others. However, web surfers are far more likely to view your content if it is shared with them by a friend. Moreover, they are far more likely to afford it more of their attention. As such, it is important to make your video content shareable.

Shareability is derived from a few factors. First, the content must be widely accessible. Content that only makes sense to certain people is not interesting to a wider audience. As such, specialised content is not very shareable. Second, the video must be short. The longer your content is, the less likely your audience is to share it with their friends, as a longer video represents a larger imposition upon their friends.

Videos that are Well-Managed

You read that right. The best way to make sure that your video gets views is to post that video on a high-visibility platform, and follow optimization practices. This means choosing your video platform carefully, picking a (short!) list of relevant tags, and providing a keyword-filled description. All of these will make sure that more of your target audience will find your video. This, in turn generates more views, and allows you to get the most out of your online video content.

Videos that Have a Message

Perhaps one of the most common errors committed by online marketers in their digital video strategy is focusing on views. Ultimately, the goal of your video should not be a number of views. Instead, videos should be focused on a message. The most successful video content is that which leaves the readers somehow changed. This can help to drive all of the other factors discussed above. It helps to make the content interesting, it helps make the content shareable, and it certainly reveals a clear vision of what the content is and what the goals are for that content. As such, it is imperative that your online videos have a clear message that is communicated well to the audience.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going!

Don’t forget to monitor which videos see the most success and analyze what brought in the bacon. Share more ideas for video success in the comments section below. Do you have a clip you are particularly proud of? We invite you to show off leave the link, we’d love to check it out!