The advantage to being late to the year-beginning trend-game is, that you get to wear the “hindsight-is-20-20” glasses and hold the “I knew it!” space.

And, since I gave up calling video marketing trends last year in favor of talking about best practices my timing is perfect: Right after everyone else has posted their 2018 trend blog posts. So, what’s dominating trend predictions and what can we call best practices for this year?

TOP DIGITAL- AND VIDEO-MARKETING TREND FOR 2018?   => MOBILE FIRST

So, what does that mean for you?

  • Mobile First means that your content, i.e. your videos will be watched FIRST AND FOREMOST on mobile devices.
  • That means you should be creating video content that will display and play best on mobile devices.
  • With Mobile First, the best practice is to take mobile user and consummation behavior into consideration when creating your videos.
    • 90% of video content is being consumed on mobile devices: If you do produce videos, make sure they look their best on mobile!
    • Almost 50% of internet users are looking for video related to a product or service: If you’re not into video yet, you’re losing out on 50% of potential customers!
    • 75% of all video content watched on mobile is being consumed without sound: Make sure your video is still relevant if watched without sound, OR: give them a reason to turn on the sound!

Of course, there are plenty more trends, some more obvious than others. I put the ones I found to be of interest for Video Marketing into categories for ease of navigation and ‘digestion’:

VIDEO STRATEGY AND CONTENT TRENDS:

  • Attention spans are getting shorter by the minute, and your content is competing with other distractions – the time you have to “hook” your audience has dropped from 8 seconds to 3 seconds! (A goldfish has a 9 second attention span, just sayin’)
  • Vulnerability & authenticity are key: As more and more video content is needed and videos are produced by non-video-professionals, the focus shifts from video as an highly-designed art form to authentic, accessible, and raw video content.
  • There will be many more purpose-driven brand videos: Companies are aligning themselves with worthy causes and will leverage those relationships for their marketing and advertising.
  • There will be more consumer-generated video content: This points to two trends: first, An DIY approach to video content and secondly, client and customer generated content, which is crowd-sourced content that content cannot be controlled, or only minimally influenced.
  • Video will go deeper into the conversion funnel: More video is expected and consumed in less prominent places like emails, sub-pages of websites, and proposals.

So, when it comes to video content and strategy in 2018, the overall best practices are to focus on getting regular, shorter, less perfect, and authentic video out there.

VIDEO PRODUCTION TRENDS:

  • Produce for mobile first: As we looked at first in this article, with 90% of video being consumed on mobile devices, it is essential to create content that suits the mobile users’ behavior:
    • Most mobile users watch video without volume, at least initially
    • The space between the video and the viewer is an intimate one (users hold the phone in their hands and near their face)
    • The screen is small (Not too much detail will read on the screen)
  • Livestreaming on social media: Livestreaming gets prioritized above video, images, and text by search engines and for that reason alone it will be used more and more. AND with the trend towards raw, authentic and vulnerable content, unedited, real-time livestreaming is bound to become one of the most popular mediums.
  • Transcribed video content is key for SEO: search engine crawlers cannot yet, search video content. A transcription of your video will allow for your video content to be found when someone looks for your product or services.
  • Square video format (Facebook, Instagram): You can still shoot in traditional horizontal format and crop a video into the necessary square format when uploading to Facebook or Instagram. However, you do want to make sure you keep the side edges “empty” as you will lose those in the process.
  • Drones: they have been on the list for a few years now. I’m keeping them in, just because they are so much fun and produce great images if well (and legally!) used.

So when, it comes to video production in 2018, the overall best practices are to focus on producing video for mobile consumption and for a specific social media platform.

GENERAL VIDEO TRENDS:

  • Personalized video content: This is a HUGE topic! Video advertising content, tailored to YOU specifically, based on browser behavior and social media content.An example from the 2016 presidential election: Personalized videos were used by the pro-gun lobby. If you are pro-gun as a hunter: You see a video of a father going hunting with his son. If you are pro-gun living in a big city: You see a video of a person defending themselves from a robber with a gun. AND: There’s was a gender, socio-economic, and race- specific version for each scenario.
  • 6 second videos: As we discuss before, shorter videos are targeting short attention spans. And, I’m already seeing 5 second videos… For inspiration watch this compilation:
  • Shoppable video: This for companies that want consumers to buy while watching a video and directly by interacting with the video, by clicking on a link, or touching the screen. Here a sample I found on YouTube:
  • Virtual Reality (VR) with 5G approaching: Virtual reality is coming to mobile thanks to 5G (much more speed), which was rolled out during the Olympics. Apparently. We’ll see if 5G can be the catalyst to give VR a boost and make it available to the masses on mobile.
  • 360 Video: Is reportedly coming to a mobile device near you soon. Let’s see if it makes it beyond the current use in real-estate and tourism. Similar to Virtual Reality, 360 video needs a bit more bandwidth to play and 5G could be a game-changer.

So when, it comes to general video trends in 2018, the overall best practices are to keep aware of the most current technology and how consumers interact with it.

These a few trends I’ve been observing from my point of view of working with small businesses and non-profits and mostly teaching them a do-it-yourself approach to video marketing.

As always, I would love to hear from you what you are observing in the digital- and video marketing space! Please share below.

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