Find The Reason Why Video Beats Instruction Manuals

Forget pages of frustration, represent your brand with the ease and personality provided by video.

Notice that your favorite internet pages have slowly transformed from pages of text to streams of video after video? Everyday, people become less and less inclined to read anything longer than 140 characters and happier to spend hours watching shared video content. While literacy rates remain the same, this slow but sure focus away from reading affects everything we do, including learning. Of course people still learn by reading, after all, you’re reading this right now! But as a brand, it’s not enough to only inform your customers — you need to engage them without giving them the feeling of doing homework. That’s why ditching the old-school instruction manuals in favor of well-produced videos can give you an upper hand. If you don’t believe us, look at brands like Home Depot, who totally killed the branding game with accessible, personal how-to videos for its YouTube channel.

Even dating back to 2015, statistics showed people spend more time each day on digital video than on social media. As a result, U.S. marketers plan on substantially increasing their digital video budgets. Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s Vice President of Global Content, projects that video will soon drive 90% of all Internet traffic. While these statistics may sound surprising, for small businesses and brands, this represents a great new opportunity to engage and inform customers.

The Challenges:
Despite video being so popular, most small businesses seem to stay away from this powerful marketing tool. Why? Some of the reasons cited include:

The good news is that producing high quality video is no longer reserved for the large businesses. Thanks to the continuous improvement of smartphone cameras and constant creation of mobile production and editing tools like Cinamaker, polished content can be made with any budget. With the right accessories, strategy, and maybe some creative effects, anything is possible!

If you’re still not convinced video is right for your brand’s educational content needs, here are some of the most compelling reasons to use video rather than a printed manual:

Enhanced Understanding
The opportunity to deliver a pitch or set of instructions with personal appeal and visual aids will always be more effective than limiting your message to words on a page. Video gives you the opportunity to explain and actually show things the same way you would in person, which can not only clarify ambiguity that can happen with text and ultimately make the entire experience (and subsequently your brand or product) seem more fun and easy.

Increased Memorability
An impressive 80% of people remember the videos they see online. The same cannot be said for every article or manual you read. Creating a video gives people something to remember for days to come. This means that a business has to invest in quality content that keeps users engaged.

Unique Emotional Connection
A 30-second video can bring you to tears or inspire you to take a certain action. Videos can speak to the core of who we are as human beings, because they can create a feeling of connection with another human being. As a brand, you need to realize the amazing opportunity video provides you to connect with your audience. This connection can help you build relationships with your customers and ultimately create a foundation for brand loyalty.

Ability To Repurpose Content
When working with video, you can use single images, distribute behind the scenes footage or further edit the source video to create promotional clips for marketing purposes. Video allows you to be creative and flex your marketing muscles in considerably more ways than text.

Easily Shareable
A creative video doesn’t have to be confined to your site. You can upload your videos on Vimeo and YouTube and use keywords to draw interest to them. This not only increases your brand exposure, it also leads to increased web traffic that could convert into sales.

Speed Sells
In this day and age, speed is critical when it comes to consuming content, and a picture tells a thousand words. Imagine how many more words can be shared and how many minutes can be saved with 60 frames per second!

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