Video is a great tool for business marketing. It tells stories in much more efficient way than texts. However, making a professional movie, which is usually quoted in $$ per second, can be expensive thus not affordable for small businesses. On the other hand, slideshow video can be a great alternative with no compromise on richness. Using Pholody, everyone can make a slideshow with a few clicks. Here we share several tips on how to build high quality slideshow video for business promotion purpose.
1.Use high quality pictures
High quality works can only be made from high quality materials. For picture quality, the simplest rule is, its resolution should be no lower than video resolution. With Polody you can make videos up to 1440 x 1080 pixels, so your pictures should be no smaller than that size. Moreover, quality means more than resolution. A good picture should be no blurring, no over/under exposure and well composed. In one word, all tips of photography apply to slideshows, too.
2.Set appropriate pace
The duration of each slide is important for the success of a slideshow video. If too short, user will be too busy to grasp the information on each page. If too long, they may feel bored. Our study shows 4s~10s is the ideal range as slide duration. That means you may not want to have more than 15 pictures for one minute slideshow, either less than 6 pictures. Besides, it is best practice to let the pace of transition match tempo of background music. For example, if your music is some kind of hot, you may want to speed up the transitions. Conversely, if your music is soft, you may want the transitions to slow down. Pholody is an online slideshow maker with music synchronization in NDA. If you like, you can make all animation transitions perfectly synchronized with beats of background music. Here is a demonstration for the effect.
3.Make a story
A good slideshow is not a bundle of pictures randomly dumped on timeline. You need to seriously consider the sequence of pictures. You need to make them a story. One widely used approach is zoom-in, i.e., show some overview first, then the details of each aspect. Other approaches, such as zoom-out or zoom-in-then-out will also work, but don't try zoom-in-out-in-out.
4.Keep the screen neat
Simplicity is the power for elegance. Here are several tips that will help to make your video more elegant.
- Don’t include unnecessary objects in your pictures. For example, when showing a picture for some house to sell, don’t include strangers that occasionally walk by.
- Avoid using too many colors. If you use charts or text boxes, keep the number of colors no more than 3.
- Avoid using too many texts. Sometimes a few keywords are good enough, but don’t have to be a paragraph.
- Avoid using decorations. They are good for teenagers’ parties, but not for serious business.
5.Call for actions
When the slideshow approaches the end, don’t be shy to call for actions such as “visit our website” or “follow us on Twitter”. Users are usually lazier than you can imagine. They seldom take any action until you ask them to. And they will follow your call if your video do touch their hearts. If your website address is too long to be typed in, you can use URL shortening service or show a QR code instead.
6.Build your own style
If you plan to publish a series of marketing videos, you should build your own style, which will turn out to be your brand image, i.e., any user who watched your 1st video can know it is you with only a glimpse at your 2nd one. A video style can be built in many ways, here are several examples.
- To use consistent background color
- To use consistent color tone
- To add your own logo on every frame
- To apply unified frame throughout the video
7.Put more thoughts on title and description
Finally but not least importantly, the title and description text makes more sense than you may know. If you put your marketing video on YouTube and hope strangers to occasionally drop by, you should seriously consider the words to be included in title and description. Imagine what keywords they will use when searching something related with your business, and make sure you have those keywords in your title or description. Thus your video will gain more chances to show up in search results. This technique is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If it is new to you, try to search on Google and get more hints about it.
Video marketing is a wide topic. It needs end to end effort to ensure success. Here we just covered the creation of contents. If you have time, check the following blogs to get more tips.