Hopefully higher video engagement is the reason you have found this article...
at first glance this article may seem like it is going to be centered around – the historic Groundbreaking of Campus Village. I mean that’s what the video advertisement said.
Where, not only did UofSC break ground on their new building project, but how they also figuratively broke ground in higher education. By creating what interim University President Pastides says “will be nothing short of one of the best living and learning communities in the United States.” Which creates more living space for students, which leads to positive impact on retention and graduation rates.
Maybe you thought you would learn details about how Campus Village Housing will be more than just a living space. This new project will afford students and the community more greenspace in downtown Columbia in the form of a courtyard, bike paths, and pedestrian access to “major parts of campus”, which could have the added impact of less automobile use and, therefore, less automobile pollution. In addition to the green space added to an otherwise building-heavy downtown space, this project will add academic support spaces, a dining facility, and a coffee shop for students and community members alike to enjoy. That information is great and something you can find more here.t
No. This article is centered around the idea that – changing the formatting of your video per the audience you are trying to connect with, can yield [for possibly obvious, yet] drastic results. From a video advertisement standpoint, we’re always interested in the best ways to reach our intended audience.
We created two “corporate videos” for the UofSC Campus Village Housing project. Both sit on their website, and help summarize and supplement the articles about Campus Village. These videos are great tools that help engage audiences in ways that words can not. Though the funnel that gets them to the landing page where the video is a separate challenge.
1 minute version
2 minute 30 second version
Catching your intended audience’s attention is a different story, and the most essential piece to higher video engagement. When making a video it is important to think about how and where it will be consumed. A study done by Buffer.com reports that square 30-35 percent more video views and an 80-100 percent increase in engagement compared to landscape video. Intuitively this makes a lot of sense. Square video takes up 78% more real estate in a person’s mobile newsfeed than does landscape video. — research done by Animoto —
Real estate shouldn’t be overlooked when thinking about reaching your intended audience. Think to yourself. When browsing social media, your screen is small, so every inch of the screen matters. This is one of the many reasons why platforms like Instagram reels and TikTok have the highest engagement. Naturally, our attention can not be sucked away by another piece of content. As advertisers, it’s our job from letting engagement slip on platforms where this isn’t a native function.
Something to note...
There will be times we get called in for a new project as a “video production company”, rather than a strategic video agency. In those situations we aren’t in a position, nor is it our place, to offer up unsolicited advice. Though this doesn’t stop our curiosity!
If you follow us on Instagram, you may have seen a shift (or a few) in the style of how we are posting content. In efforts to either prove, or disprove, different practices of how to effectively grow your social media engagement.
In May when the Groundbreaking originally happened, we posted the minute long groundbreaking video we created; to our Instagram. Traction was dismal at best, as we garnished 6 likes and a whopping 68 views. A month after the fact we reformat the video for Instagram Reels and see triple the traction.
What does this mean?
For us absolutely nothing yet. As we continue to experiment and see results we have to be careful of jumping the gun on our own biases. What can’t be disputed is statistically [length, messaging, autoplay, imagery, (you get the idea)] all have drastic impacts on an advertisement’s successful click rate. All of this we will continue to test, research, and get into deeper in a later article.