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Every day, people watch billions of videos.<\/p>\n
TechCrunch reports<\/a> that 8 billion videos are watched on Facebook daily, and Bloomberg reports<\/a> that 10 billion videos are viewed on Snapchat daily. Videos on Instagram and Twitter are climbing rapidly in popularity.<\/p>\n Twitter even started to show view counts<\/a> on their videos as businesses look for more detailed metrics.<\/p>\n We saw the increasing popularity of video more than a year ago when we wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n For SMBs and entrepreneurs, video content will be especially important in 2017, according to Roberto Blake, a YouTuber focused on teaching people how to leverage the platform:<\/p>\n “In the context of YouTube you will see more people take advantage of YouTube Live now that Hangouts on Air has been retired. Another trend you will see this year is serialized content. Whether they be produced and formatted shows, such as the AskGaryVee Show, or Docu Series like CreativeSpaces TV from Sara Dietschy, serial content in the form of series have a disproportionate amount of value as opposed to one-off videos, and content creators and companies are starting to take note of this.”<\/p>\n Blake believes that smart SMBs and startups will ask influencers to help tackle video marketing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We’ve talked\u00a0a lot about\u00a0Facebook Live<\/a> and have\u00a0<\/span>even started working more on the crowdspring YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since then, videos have grown even more in popularity. CISCO found<\/a> that online videos will make up over 81% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020.<\/p>\n This is not surprising.<\/p>\n People love videos, including videos created by businesses.<\/p>\n Customers and prospective customers prefer videos over all other forms of content, as Hubspot Research discovered<\/a> recently:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This means that there’s a good chance that a high percentage of your customers or target audience is watching videos.<\/p>\n It also means you can create many videos for your content marketing campaigns. For example, you can create the following:<\/p>\n You can even invite your customers to create videos about your company or its products or services, as we explained previously<\/a>:<\/p>\n One way to generate video content is by inspiring consumers to create their own. 44 percent of millennials are willing to promote brands on social media and other platforms. Try using an incentive or rewards system to get video reviews and other user-generated content from your followers, and be sure to leave virtual feedback on any content being created.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Video marketing<\/a> opportunities are important because, according to Hubspot Research, people remember good video content better<\/a> than other forms of content.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For most small businesses and startups, video marketing is tricky and more complicated than developing written content. Video marketing is time-consuming, potentially expensive, and requires a different skill set than other forms of content marketing.<\/p>\n This makes videos impossible for small businesses, startups, and busy companies.<\/p>\n Maintaining a basic Snapchat account can take too long for a company to juggle many roles with few people.<\/p>\n Fortunately, with modern, easy-to-use tools, advanced text-to-speech technology<\/a>, and free or low-cost stock videos, even the smallest businesses can leverage video marketing and video prospecting as part of their content marketing efforts.<\/p>\n Some young businesses can leverage videos into billion-dollar exits<\/a>! Dollar Shave Club, for example, gained a huge following with their funny short videos about their shaving products. Here’s an example:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.crowdspring.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/27131403\/branded-content-people-want-chart-1.jpeg\")
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