May 14th, 2010 | Samantha Montano, Customer Relations

When I needed a video done, I did some research and tried a few companies before deciding to place my large order.  Granted, I work online and understand that good quality takes time, so I was patient.  But as I waited and waited and waited, I just gave up and did it myself – the “faster route” was just not worth the wait.

I actually love creating high quality videos, so it was not a big deal, but I wanted to see what was possible from other online companies.

We I finally got their videos, they were very plain and  the color schemes and music were outdated.

I asked why they were not like the examples on their site and their response was:

Our program is limited but I’ll see what we can do.

Through my persistence, I was able to get almost twice as much text in my finished videos.  I decided to use their low quality graphics because I didn’t want to wait for them to be “re-done” with the same program…again.

But still feeling ripped off I felt I needed to educate myself on what a high quality video actually was before making any final decisions on the videos I just paid for.

I analyzed how long users were watching the videos before clicking away and found it to be between about 30 to 60 seconds. The length of the video was a really important factor for social media which was probably why they tried to stick me with such “short” clips.

Then I started looking into what type of videos were keeping peoples attention and also ranking highly on the search engines.  I created a little list of some basic guidelines that I found effective to follow when creating any future videos.

Here are my tips to create effective videos for your website and for distribution across the internet:

  1. Your video shouldn’t be over a minute long unless it is playing on your website.
  2. The videos you submit off-site should be 30 to 60 seconds long so the viewer gets to the call to action button/link before losing interest.
  3. There is a balance between over-stuffing a video with too much content and getting as much useful information in as you possibly can. Do this by keeping a nice flow with the video, music and graphics to keep the viewer from abandoning.
  4. Make sure there is a clear introduction of your companies service or product.
  5. Create a news-worthy sales pitch about a new product or service.
  6. Put a final catchy plug leading into your call to action.
  7. Use keywords and images of your products and of subjects relevant to your business.
  8. Include a link to your website. If you can’t put a click-able link, then make sure to leave one in the description of your video where ever you post it.

Image by Michelle Dennis 2008

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