The 5 Best Video Production Tips for Content Marketers
The 5 best video production tips for content marketers are:
Identify your goal, target audience, and topic
Outline the right type of video content
Organize your video production project
Leverage video filming best practices
Use a smart video editing process
Once you identify your goal, target audience, and topic, you can outline the right type of video content you need to produce.
Then you organize your video production project to optimize for the pre - production, production, and post - production phases—all while leveraging video filming and video editing best practices.
Remember, as an aspiring full-stack content marketer, understanding how to create or manage video content is critically important.
And that's why we've put this post together for you.
Let's get started.
How to make a video more high quality
Making a high-quality video requires learning and using video production best practices like knowing your target audience, creating the right type of video content, and using smart video production processes.
We believe anyone can make professional-looking videos.
And as an aspiring full-stack content marketer, it's important for you to internalize that you can make high-quality videos, too. All it takes is a little bit of patience, grit, and willingness to learn.
But what exactly do you need to know to make an entire video while improving your video quality?
5 video production tips for content marketers
There are multiple factors that can affect a video production project.
Whether you're filming your own content, outsourcing it, or using stock footage can all affect your outcomes. However, producing professional videos all follow a set of video production best practices that you can learn and use.
Here are the 5 best video production tips for content marketers:
1. Identify your goal, target audience, and topic
Before you jump into video production, you need to identify your goal, target audience, and topic because these factors will influence the rest of the project.
Goal: Are you creating a video to increase brand awareness? Or are you producing an explainer video for your website? You need to understand the why behind your video content first.
Target audience: Who are you speaking to? Is this video content B2B or B2C? What are your audience's needs, pains, and desires? You need to understand the who behind your video content.
Topic: Are you creating video content around a pain point, a value proposition, or a customer testimonial? You need to under the what behind your video content.
Once you've got these three factors outlined, you will increase the chances that your professional video will be high-quality and drive the right impact.
2. Outline the right type of video content
We know that short-form video production is growing in popularity.
But that's not the only type of video content.
There's also long-form videos, music videos, promotional videos, corporate videos, and visual sales letter (VSL) videos to consider. Plus, you must also think about how to repurpose this video content.
For example, if you produce a long-form video, you might as well chop it up and create a few short-form videos out of it. Make sure you take the time to consider these factors prior to moving onto the next step.
3. Organize your video production project
There are three video production stages: pre - production, production, and post - production.
Pre - production: This is when you plan and organize your video production project by considering your goals, getting your video cameras prepared, and outlining the visual elements you may need. This is also when you can storyboard and create a comprehensive shot list.
Production: This is when you actually film your awesome videos. If you're not filming, this step includes gathering your stock footage, royalty-free music, and other visual elements you may use like motion graphics.
Post - production: This is when the magic happens. Editing your video is an important step in your video production project because you can transform an okay video into a professional video in post. Even if you faced filming issues like bad light sources or background noises.
Once you organize your equipment and project files, and you understand the three video production stages, you can begin the video production process.
4. Leverage video filming best practices
If you're filming the video yourself, keep reading. If not, move onto the next tip.
Filming video isn't as difficult as you may imagine. You just need the right video production equipment and to deploy a few best practices including:
Camera equipment: You can use cameras worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or use your smart phone. At the end of the day, you simply need to understand how to avoid shaky footage, basic shot composition, and capture relevant footage that'll elevate your video script.
Lighting equipment: You can use fancy lighting kits with fluorescent lights, overhead lights, and bright lights. Or you can ensure you film your content with direct light (not too dark, not too light). Again, as long as you have natural lighting you will largely avoid bad lighting.
Audio equipment: Sound quality matters maybe more than any other factor. Make sure you don't skimp out on this step. You can get away with a bad camera, you can kinda get away with bad lighting, but you cannot get away with bad audio. Film somewhere quiet and with good mics.
Following these video filming best practices will ensure your raw footage in post is much more manageable and easy to edit. Otherwise, make sure you download stock footage that follows these composition techniques.
5. Use a smart video editing process
Post-production video editing is the most exciting part.
You've worked so hard to plan and get the footage you need, now you get to put it all together.
This is the stage where you can:
Identify your best shots
Cut up your audio
Assemble a logical story
Mix your audio
Use color correction
This is also when you get to add text to your videos, and deploy some post-production magic to make your video really stand out.
And if you're interested in becoming an efficient editor, make sure you use these Adobe Premiere Pro keyboard shortcuts.
Make sure you've organized your files and project timeline, and that you've allotted yourself enough time to appropriately edit your video in post.
In closing
If you learn and apply these video production tips, you will become a much better video producer.
And as you continue your journey into becoming a full-stack content marketer, remember to embrace video production. It may seem scary at first, but we promise you it's possible to go from zero to professional video producer in no time.
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