The number of entrepreneurs using video for social media, sales and branded content is growing, and for a good reason.
According to Cisco, global internet traffic from videos will make up 80 percent of all internet traffic by 2019.
Furthermore, one in four customers loses interest if the company doesn’t have a video. Knowing this, I created a web series called “Future of Real Estate,” which reached one million views in the first 90 days. The web series gives viewers tips about the real estate market and how social media can boost your online presence in this field.
After reaching so many viewers, I realized some key ingredients to making a successful web series. For any entrepreneur that wants to use video to tap into key demographics, here is what I recommend.
Narrow down your demographics
Trying to target everyone will result in you not reaching anyone. My video series discusses real estate, so naturally, many of my followers are realtors. You want to find your niche market and cater to that crowd, not try to reach “everyone in tech.” Think about your buyer persona and what type of video content that person would want to digest. From there, brainstorm topics of interest to that group and create videos around that.
Related: Captivate Your Audience with Consistent, Original Video Content
Always inform, don’t sell
It’s important to use your web series to spread top-of-the-funnel content. The last thing anyone wants to watch is a video of you promoting your company; instead, give viewers interesting insights or tips about your industry. You can also discuss customer pain points and how to address these issues in the series. The goal is to garner interest and have viewers regularly follow your series. While sales are important, web series are not a sales tactic, but rather a top-of-the-funnel marketing strategy to bring in followers, who may turn into leads later.
Invest in your web series
A web series must be well-produced, or you’ll lose the audience’s interest, so this means investment in terms of production. Furthermore, once you create a high-quality video, it’s important that your target market sees it, so invest in social media ads. Since you have already established your demographic-base, optimizing ads based on this will be easy.
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Keep it short and stay ahead
There isn’t a perfect length for a web series, but most of the successful ones are three minutes or less. Viewers aren’t looking to watch a full length TV series; they want something short and to the point. If you find that the video is getting too long, cut it into two segments. And speaking of segments — always try to stay ahead of production scheduling. Once you have viewers hooked, the last thing you want to do is not post a video when you say you will. Therefore, try to stay two or three episodes ahead to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Always remember that your web series is for your specific audience, not necessarily for the general public. For example, though my videos go through listings that anyone may enjoy, the primary goal is to inform my target audience (realtors), so I mainly listen to them when I seek feedback.
