You already know that video marketing is important, but if you're new to the game then it can be confusing to know what kind of content to produce.

Regardless of industry, successful video content usually has one or more characteristics in common. If you know what people want out of video content ahead of time, then you can be strategic about crafting a campaign that hits the mark with its intended audience.

With that in mind, here are six characteristics of video content that work.

1. Educational

Educational content establishes your brand as an authority and builds loyalty with your audience – after all, most people feel a natural sense of gratitude towards businesses that provide real solutions to their problems. Sixty-five percent of people are visual learners, making video a prime channel for serving educational content.

Educational video content comes in many forms:

  •  How-to videos
  • Interviews
  • Events coverage
  • Behind-the-scenes footage
  • Product reviews
  • Case studies
  • Q&As
  • Infographic videos
  • Vlogs
  • Webinars
To get started creating your own tutorials, get your hands on a video editing tool like Adobe Premiere Elements, iMovie, or the free HitFilm Express. You may also need software for screencasting: Camtasia, ScreenFlow, and Snagit are popular choices for both Windows and Mac users.

When brainstorming topic ideas for your educational content, consider repurposing top-performing blog posts to save time and resources. You can also check out similar topics on YouTube to see whether they've already been done and how well they performed.

To drive up viewer engagement, publish your content at regular intervals. Moz's ongoing and immensely successful Whiteboard Friday series is a testimony to the power of consistency in video marketing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyOqoV90v58

2. Entertaining

Most of us are all too familiar with the feeling of self-loathing that accompanies hours spent bingeing on silly videos. Pranks, fail compilations, funny animals – the stream of suggested content is never ending.

The fact is, people love to be entertained. And you can use this to your advantage to spice up otherwise-boring content, like company culture videos and product advertisements.

Think you're not funny enough to pull it off? Often, you just need a good angle.

For instance, Bad Lip Reading took a simple concept – ridiculous voiceovers applied to TV actors and political figures – and used it as the basis for an entire channel's worth of entertaining videos, like this parody of Inauguration Day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gneBUA39mnI

 3. Visually Appealing

With the abundance of easy-to-use and awe-inducing video creation tools available today, anyone can be a producer.

Check out these visually appealing video formats to help you generate some ideas for your own content:

  •  Stop motion
  • Time lapse
  • Animation
  • Cinemagraph
  • Video scribing
  • Slideshow
Don't underestimate the impact a great soundtrack can have on your creative production. To license music for your videos, browse production libraries like AudioJungle and Killer Tracks.

4. Engaging

The best video content hooks its viewers right from the start and retains their interest the whole way through. To increase engagement and reduce viewer drop-off, keep the following tips in mind:

Ensure your videos are user-friendly. Fast loading times, clear resolutions, helpful annotations or subheads, and mobile friendliness are crucial to a good user experience.

Don't use a misleading title or image. No one likes clicking on a video thumbnail only to be served completely unrelated content. While gimmicky tactics may generate more clicks, the high bounce rates and negative viewer feedback aren't worth it in the long run.

Don't annoy your viewers. An obnoxious or patronizing tone of voice, music that drowns out the narrator, and irrelevant rambling can trigger a viewer's back-button reflex.

Consider going live. There's just something more exciting about live content. On Facebook, for instance, people spend three times longer watching live videos than content that is no longer live.

5. Motivational

Widespread sharing among social media users of quote images, entrepreneurial pep talks, and inspirational hashtags is proof of the popularity of motivational content – especially on visual-heavy platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Video is an especially effective medium for this type of content, because it uses powerful imagery to influence your audience's emotions while helping them visualize their goals.

Motivational video content can be used to:

  • Get people enthusiastic about using your products or services
  • Generate excitement before a launch
  • Drive shares and expand your reach on social media
GoPro is a classic example of how to use motivational content to market a product – and their video content is created by product users themselves!

How did GoPro influence its community of fans to upload thousands of new videos per day, all featuring the GoPro video camera in a multitude of ways? It's simple: GoPro videos are plain inspiring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc8VaMQ5aOo

 6. Shareable

People share content for a variety of reasons: to influence others' perception of them, entertain friends, or recommend a useful resource to their customer base.

If going viral is your goal, try these tips for creating share-worthy video campaigns:

  • Host a user-generated video contest on social media
  • Create a video response to an event or another trending video
  • Curate a collection of other videos clips and produce a round-up video (for example, a "Best of" theme)
Getting started with video marketing doesn't have to be intimidating. Consistency is more important than quantity, so pick an angle that resonates with your audience and commit to producing quality content.
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