10 Helpful Tips To Improve Your Video Content Quality

Use these excel­lent video mar­ket­ing tips for instant­ly high­er qual­i­ty results.

Greg Jarboe By Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR. Join the discussion » 4 comments

These 10 tips will help improve the qual­i­ty of your video mar­ket­ing con­tent and ensure that your brand is viis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in the moments that real­ly mat­ter.


Five years ago, brands had to hire a pro­fes­sion­al video­g­ra­ph­er or an entire film crew to shoot a YouTube video or a True­View ad. These spe­cial­ists might have used a Sony NEX-VG10, which cost $2,000, or a Pana­son­ic HDC-SDT-750, which cost $1,400 to shoot that online video. And they prob­a­bly used Adobe Pre­miere Pro or Apple’s Final Cut Pro to edit their mas­ter­piece.

But today, most of the mil­len­ni­als in your mar­ket­ing depart­ment or at your agency can eas­i­ly make a great video for your YouTube chan­nel, Face­book page, Twit­ter feed, site, blog, or newslet­ter. All they need is an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus, which are out­fit­ted with a 12 megapix­el cam­era with 4K HD video capa­bil­i­ty. That was the whole point of Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” cam­paign.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaV1pIJyZU

And the Mil­len­ni­als who work for you can assem­ble their footage into a great video or a True­View ad with a free app called Direc­tr for Busi­ness.

Even though your pro­duc­tions costs have gone done, your brand still needs to make videos worth watch­ing and cre­ate con­tent worth shar­ing. These 10 tips will instant­ly improve the qual­i­ty of your videos.

1. Download Directr for Business

Directr for BusinessThe first thing that all the mem­bers of your video mar­ket­ing team should do is down­load Direc­tr for Busi­ness. YouTube acquired the video edit­ing start­up that devel­oped the app in August 2014.

Direc­tr is still the eas­i­est way to make great video for your busi­ness and now it’s free! Directr’s unique sto­ry­board-dri­ven cre­ation process gives your video mar­ket­ing team the ideas, guid­ance, and tools they need to cre­ate great HD video with just their iPhone and share it instant­ly to your web­site, blog or social media page. If you’re a con­tent mar­keter, Direc­tr for Busi­ness helps your brand pro­duce high-qual­i­ty video con­tent faster and more sim­ply than ever before.

Direc­tr for Busi­ness includes pro­fes­sion­al­ly cre­at­ed sto­ry­boards for:

  • Cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als
  • Prod­uct announce­ments
  • How to tuto­ri­als
  • Exec­u­tive pro­file videos
  • Event videos
  • Social media tips
  • Press release sup­ple­ments

You team can also share the videos they cre­ate imme­di­ate­ly to YouTube, Face­book, and Twit­ter.

2. Craft Video Marketing Campaigns Your Audience Will Love

Video is a great way to con­nect with your audi­ence because it gives your com­pa­ny a human iden­ti­ty. Your video mar­ket­ing team can enter­tain them with office antics or inform them with prod­uct demos. Once they start film­ing, they’ll real­ize how many pos­si­bil­i­ties they have.

Here’s a list of ideas to get start­ed:

Make Your Audience Think

Visu­al­ly show your audi­ence how you came to a con­clu­sion or how you’re think­ing about a prob­lem with a video.

For exam­ple, one of the most famous videos, “Dove Real Beau­ty Sketch­es,” explored the gap between how oth­ers per­ceive us and how we per­ceive our­selves. Each woman was the sub­ject of two por­traits drawn by FBI-trained foren­sic artist Gil Zamo­ra: one based on her own descrip­tion, and the oth­er using a stranger’s obser­va­tions. The results were sur­pris­ing.

Announce Product Releases

Let peo­ple know what’s new and give sneak peeks of what’s com­ing.

For exam­ple, “The Revenant | Offi­cial Teas­er Trail­er” was pub­lished on July 17, 2015, even though the immer­sive and vis­cer­al cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence star­ring Leonar­do DiCaprio wasn’t going to be in the­aters until Dec. 25, 2015.

Tell Customers How To Use Your Product Or Service

A sim­ple demon­stra­tion can increase the like­li­hood of some­one buy­ing your prod­uct because they will tru­ly under­stand how it works and why they should use it.

For exam­ple, Lil Wayne’s Galaxy S7 still works, even after he pours cham­pagne on it.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=l5aF23XpBwU

Demonstrate How To Set Up More Complex Products

Help a friend out. You know it’s com­pli­cat­ed, walk them through it.

For exam­ple, check out this video to see how Apple let iPhone 6s users learn how to use the timer fea­ture:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CCbWyYr82BM

Let Customers Share Their Experiences

Users often come up with great ways to use your prod­uct or ser­vice that you your­self hadn’t. Lis­ten to, con­sid­er, and share their thoughts.

For exam­ple, Bar­bie used hid­den cam­eras to cap­ture real reac­tions to girls imag­in­ing every­thing they might one day become.

Share Stories That Your Customers Relate To

Birth­days, reli­gious hol­i­days, sports games, high school dances, fam­i­ly trips… The list goes on and on. There are lifestyle sto­ries that define us as humans and enable us to relate to each oth­er in a way that read­ing from a screen can­not.

For exam­ple, 72 per­cent of girls feel that soci­ety lim­its them, by dic­tat­ing what they should and shouldn’t do. Some­times, these lim­it­ing mes­sages can be found in unex­pect­ed and sub­tle places – like on your phone.

They may seem small, but emo­jis are more than just fun­ny faces. They’ve become how girls express them­selves in text and online. But do emo­jis tru­ly rep­re­sent girls? Always asked, and it turns out 67 per­cent of girls feel that even emo­jis imply that girls are lim­it­ed.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3BjUvjOUMc

Encourage Further Action

Get your cus­tomers active­ly involved in using your prod­uct or ser­vice. Ask your users to make a video and share it back you. Hold a con­test. Encour­age your users to share the video you made.

For exam­ple, in cel­e­bra­tion of Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day, YouTube’s glob­al #DearMe ini­tia­tive to inspire and empow­er young girls every­where not only invit­ed 25 amaz­ing women to par­tic­i­pate in the #DearMe video below, it also asked view­ers to take part in the cam­paign by mak­ing their own #DearMe GIF. There were about 3,090 respons­es.

3. Keep The Visuals As Interesting As The Conversation

Here are a few point­ers for set­ting up for a con­ver­sa­tion and pro­duc­ing a beau­ti­ful­ly shot video.

  • Loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion! When there is lack of action in the shots, you should find some­where that is aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing, but doesn’t draw too much away from the promi­nence of the speak­ers.
  • Back­ground should be nat­ur­al and unim­pos­ing. It should not pull atten­tion away from the per­son in the shot, but sta­tion­ary objects should also not appear to be delib­er­ate­ly posi­tioned. If shoot­ing in a restau­rant or cafe, there will be peo­ple sit­ting down or walk­ing around in the back­ground. That’s OK because view­ers will expect the move­ment due to the nature of the set­ting.
  • Use nat­ur­al light­ing if pos­si­ble. Arti­fi­cial light­ing is good if nat­ur­al light is unavail­able.
  • Use a vari­ety of angles and frames. Switch­ing the point of view keeps the video inter­est­ing and con­tributes to the enter­tain­ment val­ue.
  • Use wide shots and close ups. They are impor­tant to telling the whole sto­ry.
  • Use Over-the-Shoul­der Shots or Point-of-View shots to spice things up a bit.
  • Insert shots that bring the view­er into the con­ver­sa­tion. This tech­nique adds dimen­sion to the video. The best con­ver­sa­tion movies will reflect the emo­tions of the peo­ple speak­ing.

4. Think About What Direction You’re Looking

In Hol­ly­wood, eye line is defined basi­cal­ly as the direc­tion a char­ac­ter in a movie is look­ing. It’s impor­tant in fic­tion films to match the eye line of a char­ac­ter to an alter­nate shot of what he or she is look­ing at so the audi­ence can stay engaged and believe the sto­ry. When a char­ac­ter looks off screen with their eyes raised, you expect the next shot to be some­thing he’s look­ing at in the sky.

This may seem like a com­pli­cat­ed movie term, it’s also applic­a­ble to your videos in a sim­pler way. When you watch a busi­ness video, the speak­er is either talk­ing direct­ly to the cam­era, or look­ing of-screen if they’re being inter­viewed.

So, next time you’re mak­ing a video, make a deci­sion as to where you’re look­ing. If you’re shoot­ing some­one with a wan­der­ing eye, try hav­ing a co-direc­tor stand behind the cam­era so it’s eas­i­er for your speak­er to focus. If you’re solo, pick a spot to con­sis­tent­ly look at while you film.

5. Use Different Angles To Enhance Your Storytelling

Depend­ing on the angle and/or the frame of the shot, the image you film will con­vey a cer­tain mean­ing to your audi­ence. Here is how var­i­ous angles affect the mood of the shot and how to best por­tray your indi­vid­ual style:

  • Eye Lev­el: This is the most com­mon­ly used angle and is shot at the eye-lev­el of your star or from your per­spec­tive as the film­mak­er.
  • Birds-eye View: This angle is shot from direct­ly above the per­son or object you want to cap­ture.
  • High Angle: The high angle can have great sig­nif­i­cance. Frame your sub­ject then angle the cam­era down to achieve the prop­er form. This point of view can make your sub­ject appear insignif­i­cant and/or infe­ri­or to oth­ers in the shot or can be intro­duce com­e­dy.
  • Low Angle: Posi­tion the cam­era low and tilt it upwards at the sub­ject in order to ampli­fy the impor­tance and author­i­ty of the sub­ject. High angle shots and low angle shots are often jux­ta­posed in movies in order to show the rela­tion­ship between actors as shown below.
  • Dutch Angle: This angle is often used by direc­tors in hor­ror or sci-fi films. It is a tilt­ed shot. Because the shot is tilt­ed, the hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal lines with­in the frame are no longer bal­anced, which cre­ates an intense emo­tion in the scene. Use this angle to show dis­ori­en­ta­tion and/or dis­com­fort.

When film­ing, try out a cou­ple dif­fer­ent angles for each shot or vary your angles from shot to shot. This vari­a­tion will make your sto­ry more inter­est­ing by pro­vid­ing visu­al stim­u­la­tion.

Exper­i­ment, explore, and most impor­tant­ly, have fun with your videos!

6. Use YouTube’s Video Ad Builder

Now, if you go to the Make a Video page in the Adver­tise sec­tion on YouTube, you’ll see “Make mak­ing video is easy with Direc­tr” at the top of the page. Or, your video mar­ket­ing team can use a ver­sion of the app that YouTube calls the Video Ad Builder (beta) to make:

  • Intro to my Busi­ness (40 sec)
  • Intro to my Busi­ness (60 sec)
  • My Busi­ness Sto­ry (40 sec)
  • My Busi­ness Sto­ry (60 sec)
  • Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion (40 sec)
  • Prod­uct Demo (40 sec)
  • Ser­vice Overview (40 sec)

These themes are designed for small busi­ness own­ers who want to lever­age the pow­er of video with­out the high costs of a video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny. But these themes can also be used by con­tent mar­keters in medi­um-sized and large enter­pris­es who want to cre­ate new video con­tent dai­ly or mul­ti­ple times a week. And increas­ing­ly, they need to cre­ate more video con­tent to engage and influ­ence con­sumers through­out the pur­chase fun­nel, in order to increase rev­enues, and grow brand equi­ty.

So, here are some key tips to help your video mar­ket­ing team improve the qual­i­ty of these four com­mon ad types.

7. Introduce Your Business

Here are some top­ics and ques­tions you may find use­ful when intro­duc­ing your busi­ness.

Talk About Who You Are

Start by intro­duc­ing your­self and your busi­ness. This will help peo­ple put a name to a face, and make it eas­i­er for them to relate to you.

  • What moti­vat­ed you to start your busi­ness? For exam­ple, did you open a bike shop because you want­ed to reduce your car­bon foot­print?
  • What kind of exper­tise do you have? For exam­ple, are you a florist with a Mas­ters of Botany?
  • How can you make your sto­ry more per­son­al? For exam­ple, if you are a piano instruc­tor, can you talk about your own musi­cal pref­er­ences and style?

Let People Know What You Can Do For Them

Put your pas­sion into action. Tell peo­ple what you do bet­ter or dif­fer­ent­ly and you’ll give them a con­crete rea­son to choose your busi­ness over oth­ers.

  • How do you go the extra mile? For exam­ple, are you a bar­ber­shop that is open ear­ly so peo­ple can get a hair­cut before work?
  • What gives your busi­ness an edge over oth­ers? For exam­ple, are you the only cater­ing com­pa­ny in your city that offers Mid­dle East­ern cui­sine?

Give People A Way To Contact You

Don’t for­get to let peo­ple know how they can reach you. Remem­ber to include things like your email, phone num­ber, street address, YouTube chan­nel, and com­pa­ny web­site.

When shoot­ing, keep the cam­eras rolling as much as pos­si­ble. This will help you cap­ture spon­ta­neous, unscript­ed, and often fun­ny moments on set that give your video an authen­tic feel.

Can’t decide what to wear? Try on those out­fits and let your friends decide! Sec­ond opin­ions are always use­ful.

8. Highlight Your Product

Here are some top­ics and ques­tions that you may find use­ful when talk­ing about your prod­uct or ser­vice.

Give People An Overview Of Your Product Or Service

Break­ing down your prod­uct or ser­vice is a great way to help peo­ple see all the work you put into it.

  • What is your product/service? For exam­ple, are you a gro­cery store whose prod­uct is local­ly grown organ­ic foods?
  • How does your product/service work? For exam­ple, are you a cos­met­ics com­pa­ny that mails new prod­ucts to cus­tomers each month?
  • Does your product/service have any spe­cial fea­tures? For exam­ple, are you a steak­house with a one-of-a-kind Kobe beef hot dog?

What Makes Your Product Or Service Stand Out?

Think about what you offer that oth­ers don’t. What are the unique ele­ments of your prod­uct that could help it rise to the top of people’s minds?

  • How does your busi­ness make people’s lives bet­ter? For exam­ple, do you man­u­fac­ture clean­ing prod­ucts that are free of harsh chem­i­cals?
  • How do you make a last­ing impres­sion? For exam­ple, are you a mechan­ic that guar­an­tees your work for 10,000 miles?
  • What part of your busi­ness makes it dif­fer­ent than oth­ers? For exam­ple, are you a music store with a stu­dio where cus­tomers can actu­al­ly record them­selves play­ing?

Show People Where They Can Learn More

Remem­ber to let inter­est­ed peo­ple know where they can get more info. Include things like your com­pa­ny web­site, YouTube chan­nel, phone num­ber, email address, and street address.

If you are fea­tur­ing a spe­cif­ic prod­uct in your video, make sure you have a few extras of that prod­uct on set, in case you want to mod­i­fy or alter it dur­ing the shoot.

Every­one loves new things! Whether it came in the mail or still has the store pack­ag­ing, reveal what’s in your box! From gad­gets to cloth­ing, show off your pur­chase!

9. Create A Promotion

Here are some key tips on how to cre­ate your pro­mo­tion.

Capture People’s Interest

It’s impor­tant to build excite­ment for your pro­mo­tion. The more buzz you cre­ate, the more atten­tion you’ll grab.

  • What is your promotion’s main draw? For exam­ple, are you a gym offer­ing free per­son­al train­ing ses­sions with the pur­chase of any mem­ber­ship?
  • What about your pro­mo­tion will sur­prise peo­ple? For exam­ple, are you a com­ic book store host­ing a live appear­ance by a famous artist?
  • What makes your pro­mo­tion an exclu­sive event? For exam­ple, are you the only sneak­er store in your city that has stock of a very lim­it­ed edi­tion shoe?

Fill People In On The Details

Don’t for­get to let peo­ple know what it is they’re get­ting excit­ed for. Mak­ing your pro­mo­tion clear will make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to remem­ber.

  • When does your pro­mo­tion begin and end? For exam­ple, are you a record store offer­ing a clear­ance sale for one week­end only?
  • Are there excep­tions peo­ple should know about? For exam­ple, if you are a bar with Hap­py Hour spe­cials, are they valid on week­ends?
  • Is there a spe­cial rea­son you’re hav­ing this pro­mo­tion? For exam­ple, are you an art gallery host­ing a par­ty to cel­e­brate your 10 year anniver­sary?

Let People Know How They Can Participate

You’ve got people’s atten­tion; now let them know how they can get involved. Remem­ber to pro­vide your company’s web­site, email, phone num­ber, and street address.

Keep the con­tent of your video as con­cise as pos­si­ble. The details of your pro­mo­tion are bet­ter con­veyed through the “About” sec­tion of your video or your web­site, or as a link to a sep­a­rate source.

Check out the tuto­r­i­al video below on main­tain­ing steadi­ness while shoot­ing. It gives you some tips and tricks for stand­ing, mov­ing, and sit­ting while film­ing.

10. Educate Your Customers

Here are some key tips on how to teach peo­ple about your busi­ness.

Build Trust

Intro­duc­tions are an impor­tant part of this process. Peo­ple will be more inter­est­ed in what you have to say when they feel like they know you.

  • What expe­ri­ences or train­ing do you have? For exam­ple, are you a yoga instruc­tor that spent time abroad study­ing dif­fer­ent tech­niques?
  • Are you proud of your track record? For exam­ple, are you a gui­tar instruc­tor who’s been active­ly teach­ing for decades?
  • Do you have fans that love talk­ing about you? For exam­ple, if you are a hair salon, can your hap­py clients pro­vide tes­ti­mo­ni­als?

Give People A ‘101’ On What You Do

A crash course on your prod­uct or ser­vice is a great way to show peo­ple what kind of ben­e­fit you pro­vide.

  • Would it help to show your prod­uct or ser­vice in action? For exam­ple, if you are ski shop, can you cre­ate tuto­r­i­al videos to help intro­duce new peo­ple to ski­ing?
  • Can you sim­pli­fy parts of your busi­ness? For exam­ple, if you are a com­put­er repair shop, can you speak in layman’s terms?
  • Can you pro­vide fol­low up advice and tips? For exam­ple, if you are a jew­el­ry store, can you show peo­ple how to clean their rings?

Let People Know Where They Can Get More Information

Don’t for­get to include things like your email, phone num­ber, street address, and com­pa­ny web­site. And if you have oth­er videos, encour­age peo­ple to sub­scribe to your YouTube chan­nel.

For instruc­tion­al videos, it helps to use a tri­pod and to shoot every­thing from the same posi­tion and angle. This will make it eas­i­er to edit togeth­er your favorite shots for the final video.

Want to take your iPhone videos to the next lev­el? With a high-pow­ered 1080p cam­era and a huge arse­nal of pro­fes­sion­al video-record­ing apps, the only thing miss­ing is clear, noise-free audio. So, get your­self a micro­phone.


Want more ways to ensure that your brand is mak­ing videos worth watch­ing and shar­ing? Then check out these 29 mind-blow­ing strate­gic mar­ket­ing insights from Buz­zFeed.

Greg Jarboe

Written by Greg Jarboe

President, SEO-PR

Greg Jarboe is President and co-founder of SEO-PR, an award-winning content marketing agency that was founded in 2003. He’s the author of YouTube and Video Marketing and also a contributor to The Art of SEO, Strategic Digital Marketing, Complete B2B Online Marketing, and Enchantment. He’s profiled in the book Online Marketing Heroes, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and writes for Tubular Insights and The SEM Post. He’s an executive education instructor at the Rutgers Business School and the Video and Content Marketing faculty chair at Simplilearn.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalised demo.