Why Animated Videos are one of The Best Strategies for Your Social Media
Animated videos are an engaging instrument that can be very helpful to tell your story much more comprehensively. 65% of us are visual learners, and 90% of the information that is transmitted to the brain is visual. Vision is your most dominant sense, according to molecular biologist John Medina, it takes up half of our brains resources. Visual information is said to be processed 60 000 times faster than text.
For these reasons, there has been quite a shift towards visual content on social media platforms. Only last year, the number of video posts per person has gone up by 94% in the United States alone. At the moment, Facebook is averaging on more than 4 billion video streams each day. Then there is also the picture superiority effect in which both pictures and images are much more likely to be remembered than text.
Below are some statistics that will help you understand why you should be using more video in your marketing campaigns.
- After watching a video, an average of 64% of users are more likely to purchase a product online
- Y including a video on your landing page, you can increase conversions by up to 80%
- 1/3 of all activity online is spent watching videos
- According to YouTube, people who use YouTube watch more than 3 billion hours of video each month
- About 50% of executives will look for more information after watching a video on a product or service
If you have not yet started using video as part of your content marketing strategy, the time for you to start is definitely now.
This is all-great but why use animated videos?
With so many different videos out there, all trying to get viewers attention, it starts to get a bit tough for companies to cut through the noise. Having another talking head, bland tutorial, or boring explainer video is just not going to make the cut. Your video will need engagement, which is exactly what an animated video will help you get.
Most of the consumers out there usually prefer video content to read. Consumer preference will help you get to video explosion in content marketing. Video content will be used more for lead generation and converting. Many of the potential buyers out there are not interested in talking to a salesperson. Right at the bottom of the funnel is where your animations and videos are able to influence sales in later stages. There is a lot of experimenting involved in order to find out what type of videos work in different situations. Talking heads, animation, CGI, actors. How to present hooks, introductions, and call-to-action in videos. However, with animation, you get staying power in this mix.
There are a few factors as to why an animation video can work better than other types of visuals:
An animation video keeps a viewer’s attention
Most of us internet users have quite a short attention span and we generally only spend a certain amount of time on an article or video. With animation videos, they evoke emotions that resonate with the viewers. It can help spark conversations and makes your audience want to keep following the story.
In addition, these days’ people are much more used to the more intrusive marketing ads. Often they just see right through all of the white noise that the ads create. But with an animation, it is much less known to be a marketing instrument. Which makes people more likely to pay more attention to it.
A great example of this is Google Doodles. These quirky animations just get us feeling like we want to click on them.
An animation can simplify complex topics
Animated videos bring certain concepts to life that live videos or text just cannot. If you think about it, you have the freedom of making your characters talk as much as you like, travel in time and even fly. With a good animation, you can show how processes and mechanisms work. A great example of making use of an animation video for explanation is Ted-Ed. If you have not yet signed up to their channel, it is definitely about time you did. The channel has more than 3 million subscribers and it is also one of the most popular educational channels on YouTube. Most videos created by the Ted-Ed team are animations. It helps simplify otherwise difficult topics like the physics of the “most difficult” move-in ballet or how the food you choose to eat can affect your brain health.
Have a look at these essential tips and examples of the best practices on how you should make a product demo video.
Animations can bring back old memories
Most people generally associate cartoons with good times in their childhood. Animation has the ability to make us nostalgic, which is one of the most powerful emotions. Nostalgia has the power to filter out any negative emotions as well as fight depression, according to studies.
Animation videos are fun
People like to be entertained, even if they are being educated or talk business. The more entertaining you make your video on Facebook, YouTube, or any other social media platforms, the more people will view and share it. Animation gives you an extra 10 point on the entertainment factor.
Animation videos fit in just about any category
An animation video can work perfectly well for just about any marketing need. Whether it be infographics, product explainer videos, or release announcements. Many marketers who work at prominent companies have recognized this trend. This helps explain why out of 50 best explainer videos collected by Video Brewery, HubSpot, and Switch Video, only seven of them are not animations.
Animations are not very expensive to produce
One of the biggest advantages you get when using an animation video for your social media platforms is that it will end up costing you a lot less than if you used a live video. The video production process would usually involve spending a lot of money. Trying to find the perfect actor, spokesperson, cutting and shooting the film. Instead of all of that, you just need to put in a fraction of this effort in order to create the perfect animated explainer video.
Just how popular and powerful will video marketing become?
In 2020 there is no telling just how much video traffic is going to grow, based on previous years and how it has continues to grow, it should be huge. Video will dominate the internet. Video is becoming the primary medium for how people using the internet will consume the information they want.
Below are a few animated video tools that may be helpful in getting you started
Animatron – This is an awesome online animation maker, and it’s free! The tool allows you to create your own animation from scratch. You are also given the option to pick from a very wide range of pre-animated objects, which are available in the market. One of the very cool features in Animatron is that it makes use of the cutting-edge HTML5 technology, which means that any animations you create with the tool will play on any of your devices and browsers.
Animoto – This is also a great tool for when you want to create videos from photos. The tool offers many different templates to choose from. All that is required of you is to choose a style and upload your pictures and text. Animoto will do the rest. Animoto packages start from R115 a month. There is also a free trial available.
How to use an animated video in your social media strategy
How to Use Animated Video for Your Social Media Strategy
By now, you should be more or less convinced to make use of more animations across your social media platforms. There a few important factors that you should keep in mind in order to make your video strategy successful.
Try to keep your animation short and sweet
You should try to keep your animation video short, especially when posting it on Facebook, since these are usually almost ten times shorter than those on YouTube. A great example of how shorter videos can do extremely well on Facebook is Tasty by BuzzFeed. What is their key to success? They are entertaining, short, and they suck the viewer in from the get-go. And even though they are not making use of an animation video, it would make a lot of sense to learn from their strategy. And at the end of the day, who would not want to have 30 million followers on Facebook?
Try to keep the Autoplay Function in mind
The videos that appear in your News Feed start playing automatically. Being a video creator, you should be able to create a video that grabs viewers’ attention from the start. You should also keep in mind that the videos that play in your News Feed play silently, which means that your video will also have to grab viewers’ attention without the help of sound. For this purpose, animations can be perfect.
Always make people feel good about themselves
When you are creating a video for social media, you should also keep in mind that people are going to be discovering your video next to a status update from their dad or a photo of their friends. If you want to get as many likes and shares as possible, ensure that your video is appealing to the audience. Let us face it; people often share things that make them look good to other people.
A great example of this is the friend’s anniversary videos that Facebook create for you. These videos fit perfectly into the context and they are about love and happiness.
Use different types of videos on different types of social media platforms
Facebook ads that personal touch, YouTube is more for education, Twitter works well for engagement and some would say Snapchat is for attention. In order to get the most out of your videos, you should try to use different types of videos for different social media platforms. With an animation video, it allows you to experiment and see exactly what type works best for your marketing strategy.
Try to animate other types of content
While most of us know that video is king, it should not always be the only visual that you share on your social media. A study by BuzzSumo has revealed that infographic, “Why” posts and lists are also very likely to get many shares.
You could attempt to make it an animated “Why” infographic on a topic that is trending at the moment that would include a list. There is a good chance that it will go viral in a few days.
To cut our long story short
Video is a very powerful marketing tool, and with animation, it is a trending video type that you definitely do not want to miss out on. Animation videos could be that one thing that your business is lacking and needs in order to get likes, views and shares. It appeals to your audience and helps market emotions. It also has many use cases and is quite simple to create.
At Digital Solutions, we create professional 2D animations. Our animations are ideal for company profiles, digital marketing content, products and services, and social media marketing.
Our animations include a logo animation, a backtrack, voice-over and 1080p HD quality. To find out more about our animations, contact us on 011 867 6380 or visit our website on www.digital-solution.co.
