Video usage has been growing rapidly in recent years. From court proceedings, business meetings, interviews, brand promotion and news to academic lectures and conferences, video is a powerful way to capture and convey information. Converting the spoken words into text using a digital transcription service expands access to the content and also ensures that it can be used for documentation and report creation.
Wyzowl’s seventh State of Video Marketing report found that the amount of video that people watch online increased significantly during the pandemic. The survey found that marketers are upbeat about the return on investment that video offers and as a result, video was a key priority for marketers, with both usage and spend increasing slightly throughout 2020, and further increase planned for the next 12 months (www.hubspot.com).
Let’s take a look at the top video trends that experts have predicted will dominate in 2021:
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- Video for Remote Selling: Marketers cannot meet prospects face-to-face, but can still fill the gap with video. Sending tailored on-on-one videos to prospective clients – instead of text-heavy, impersonal emails or phone calls – is helping remote selling flourish. Using videos helps businesses convey the unique selling point of their product/service in a dynamic way and also builds trust and rapport with customers.
- Ephemeral and Vertical Video: Social media and smartphones have totally changed video creation and the way people consume video content. Social media apps such as Snapchat and Facebook’s live video option offer a simple way to create and share video. Ephemeral and vertical video are emerging trends, which according to Envato, are here to stay. Ephemeral videos are only accessible only for a brief period of time, usually for a 24-hour period, and disappear after that. They are popular as they are easily digestible and direct the focus to the present moment. With their short life span, ephemeral videos are a great way to grab attention and get an immediate response from viewers. Vertical video is created to cater to mobile. National Geographic and Netflix are among the leading brands that use vertical video successfully.
- Live Streaming Video: 2021, we’ll see a surge in live video coupled with real-time shopping on both Facebook and Instagram. (www.wav.video.com) real, live, in-person events. That’s when you can look into a person’s eyes, read his or her body language, and sense their energy next best thing is video, and especially live video. Another key aspect of live video is it allows you to demonstrate clear empathy for your audience. ince its launch in 2018, Facebook Watch, which showcases all types of video content, has grown to more than 1.25 billion monthly visitors.
- Cross-Posting: Cross-posting allows a single piece of content to be used across many different platforms. Your best videos can be posted across multiple pages. For example, when you post a video on Instagram, that same video can be published on your other social networks. A long-form video can be segmented into smaller chunks for distribution across other social networks. As a major low-resource traffic driver and page booster, cross-posting is growing. This tactic keeps social media accounts active and healthy, and helps brands retain their existing audience, broaden their reach and attract new followers. According to wavevideo.com, “Businesses who realize that production of content must be done with an eye towards distribution and boosting across multiple networks will invest heavily into workflow – the tools, process, and people to enable content to be quickly chopped up and re-used.”
- Interactive Video: A recent video trend, interactive video is expected to spread like wildfire in 2021, according to Envato. As its name implies, this new form of video media allows the viewer to interact with the video content using a variety of tools. Users can interact with the video content by clicking, dragging, scrolling, and performing other digital actions. Functionalities that can be built into interactive video include hotspots, 360 views, data inputs, and quizzes. Envato notes that shoppable videos, which allow users to buy items directly from the video they are watching, are a form of interactive video that is set to change the ecommerce game. IKEA, Amazon, YouTube and Instagram have already launched shoppable videos.
A recent survey showed that nearly 96% of users rely on video to understand a product before making the purchase decision. As the use of video surges in 2021, it will also increase the need for video transcription services. Transcription is necessary to make the visual content visible online and help marketers to reach a wider audience that includes the hearing impaired and others who prefer content in text format like researchers.
