Studies reveal that bite-size videos help increase customer engagement

The information explosion not only affects consumers, but those supplying the information as well. With so much information available, how do marketers and content creators capture the attention of consumers?

The answer: Bite-size videos.

Bite-size or micro-videos are short, crisp, and engaging videos, usually 5 to 10 minutes long, which deliver a concentrated message on a topic.

Such videos are already widely used as e-learning and marketing tools by organizations across the world,  providing information in easily digestible chunks that facilitate better assimilation of information by consumers in a more relevant and personal manner.

Aside from growing attention deficit disorder, brands that win will use the shortest amount of time to grab customer attention and influence their purchasing decisions. And they’re not just for consumers. According to research, 59% of senior executives would rather watch a video than read text, when both are available. Bite-size videos are a great way to reach out to executives at all levels, particularly the super busy senior executives. Bite-size videos are a perfect tool to positively influence the top executives’ purchase decisions.

A report by Forbes reveals that work-related videos can drive senior executives to take action. Overall, 65% have visited a vendor’s website after watching a video. Younger executives, however, may be more fully engaged with this type of media, and appear more likely to make a purchase, call a vendor, or respond to an ad.

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Why bite-size videos? Here’s the top nine benefits

1. They break through the short attention span barrier.

According to research, human beings’ ability to focus on a task is alarmingly decreasing. In 2000, human attention was 12 seconds. In 2015, it has been calculated as a paltry 8.25 seconds, shorter than the attention span of the notoriously ill-focused goldfish (9 seconds).

The information explosion is a major reason behind the drastic fall of human attention span. We are being presented with gargantuan volumes of information everywhere. In simpler terms, we have too much information to consume and too little time to consume it.

The increasing tendency for multi-tasking is also a major reason for reducing attention span.

2. They can be easily consumed

The human brain comprehends audiovisual messages better than it does text. Bite-size videos pack a punch when it comes to delivering messages to the long-term memory of the audience.

Dr. Lynell Burmark, an education consultant, asserts that “Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.”

Visuals evoke a faster and stronger reaction than words do. Video content with engaging visuals and related audio effectively engages users with the content and evokes emotional reactions that help in information retention.

3. They are social media friendly

Hubspot calculated the average duration of videos that get high audience engagement in various social media platforms: Instagram – 30 seconds; Twitter – 45 seconds; Facebook – 1 minute; YouTube – 2 minutes.

In such scenarios, bite-size videos are a sure-shot way to grab the viewers’ attention. Also, exclusively video-based social media platforms, such as TikTok, are becoming hugely popular where  bite-size videos are best suited for these platforms. One study found out that 73% of consumers have been influenced by a brand’s social media presence to make a purchasing decision about a product or service.

4. They can be easily shared

Today’s audience is not satisfied just with watching interesting content. They want to share the content among their circles on social media. Bite-size videos are perfect for sharing among people as they do not take up a lot of the bandwidth.

Video marketing is undoubtedly the best performing digital content type as it drives more engagement, and more response than any other social posting option. Research shows that 92% of mobile users share videos with others Tweets with video see 10x more engagement than those without – and promoted Tweets with videos save more than 50% on cost-per-engagement.

Feed key audiences properly with the right content in the right place and they will be more likely to share it!

5. They can be easily produced

Producing video content has never been easier than it is now. The proliferation of mobile phones with high-quality cameras has ushered in a revolution in video creation. The power to create quality video content is in everyone’s hands.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has seen a constant rise in video production, where these technologies are integrated in many ways. AI has the potential to completely transform video production, editing, curation, and sharing. With state-of-the-art technologies such as real-time AI-based key moment generation, bite-size highlights videos and key moments videos can be generated just by the click of a button. API & cloud-agnostic platforms powered by artificial intelligence are available for the efficient and cost-effective creation of such videos.

Using vision models, OCR, projection denoising, and audio detection, these tools select key moments and highlights to publish in real-time based on emotions, speech, tone, and many other parameters.

These highlights can also be personalized based on viewer choice. Character-specific highlights increase audience engagement by quickly and easily offering fans what they want to see.

Modern technology has made available high-tech tools that can resize videos based on platform-specific requirements, share automatically to multiple destinations such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and publish them as stories appropriate for Internet consumption.

The concept of hyper-personalization with bite-sized videos becomes reality.

6. They are recyclable

Bite-size videos are highly user-friendly and recyclable, with the ability for users to view replays on demand, anytime or anyplace. Marketing videos can be easily turned into something else, such as a GIF, a shorter version of the same video, a trailer, or a reel.

What’s even better is this can be done at the touch of a button. As described earlier, AI-enabled platforms can be used to automate the creation of highlights, key moments, and also dynamic metadata tagging for efficient retrieval of video content.

7. They are the best tools to amplify customer engagement

Bite-size videos offer more comprehensibility than text-based explanations or only audio. Viewers can effortlessly relate emotions with visuals, which increases audience engagement and delivers a more impactful and memorable message. A two-minute video can efficiently deliver a message that a blog article might take an average reader 10 minutes to read.

Studies reveal that video marketing generates 66% more leads a year than any other type of content. This is probably because video marketing does not only provide info about the product or service but also about the company, which helps in building customer trust and loyalty.

8. Search engines rank video content on top, making for better SEO results

YouTube is now the second-largest search engine. Video content is loved by every search engine. Since videos amplify audience engagement, they are shown on top by search engines. Websites with videos enjoy 157% more organic traffic than websites without them. This means that your chances of ranking on top of Google’s search engine results page get dramatically higher if your website includes video.

Why do videos help SEO rankings? When Google shows a video thumbnail next to a search result, users are more likely to click that listing. The presence of the thumbnail makes the result a “rich snippet,” and rich snippets have higher click-through rates than standard snippets.

The inclusion of videos on a website improves both the time users spend on a website and the number of backlinks referring back to that domain, two of the most important metrics for SEO.

Studies show that people spend over twice as long on a page with video than one without, and the higher the quality of your content, the chances of your getting backlinks are significantly higher.

9. Mobile users prefer Bite-Size Videos

Smartphones and tablets are the new desktops and laptops. Now 80% of adults worldwide own a smartphone. And the degree that smartphones have penetrated our lives is phenomenal.

33% of tablet users and 28% of smartphone users claim to watch videos for an hour every day.

Since June 2014, Facebook has played at least one billion videos every single day.

And of those billion-a-day video views, 65% are viewed on mobile devices. So bite-size videos become the perfect tool to utilize this huge opportunity for visual marketing.

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