If you missed the news a few days ago, Twitter announced it is expanding the length of embedded videos from 30 to 140 seconds. While the length is meant to coincide with its current character limit (140), it’s certainly an opportunity for video production companies (like us – yay!) and brands alike to expand their social media video libraries.
But what is this ‘audioless’ video you speak of? Surely it’s some sort of complicated video term that industry professionals have spent hundreds of hours perfecting, right? Not exactly… In fact, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Or… doesn’t sound like. All jokes aside, it’s basically a style of video created with the distribution channel in mind. Audioless videos are structured in a way that the video content is the primary focal point without any audio to go along with it, perhaps excluding some soft music for entertainment, but nothing that adds to the story. These videos often use a text overlay to convey their message and don’t last longer than a minute or two.
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— Business Insider (@businessinsider) June 22, 2016
Audioless videos can contain audio, but generally in the form of a music track for entertainment purposes. The entire message remains in the picture to ensure viewers don’t miss a beat.
The most important thing about these videos, is that they’re made almost entirely for social media. The concept behind these videos was derived from data that shows people absorb information as they scroll mindlessly down their feed, and was first featured on Facebook.
Whether you’ve noticed or not, videos on almost every social platform play automatically once you scroll to them (unless you’ve disabled this in settings to save a hefty data bill). Most videos are designed to be clicked before the viewer is submersed into the brand’s message, but audioless videos are designed with the users thumb-health in mind, meaning that they need not worry their pretty little heart and strain their thumbs to click play, as text overlay allows them to follow the video’s message as it plays on their timeline.
Twitter’s introduction of the video feature has ensured the same will happen when you scroll down your feed, which means avoiding Game of Thrones spoilers just became more difficult than ever before.
This all seems fairly straightforward, right? These videos are designed with the laziness of the human race in mind. I’m certainly not suggesting this is a bad thing, in fact I find it fascinating how we’re able to reflect on our own habits and constantly evolve the way we operate our businesses to achieve the best possible results.
These types of videos aren’t exactly new, either. In fact, the Globe and Mail has been using videos like these to showcase some of their most interesting stories and optimize them for conversation on social media for quite a while. But the truth is, many companies can benefit from these style of videos, especially if their audience is full of millennials with decreasing attention spans who aren’t always willing to fall for brand click bait. As long as there’s a story to tell or a message to convey, using text and a few well thought out visuals, you can create a short and compelling branded video that your audiences will eat up and share with fewer clicks than ever before.
If you need help producing your next audioless video,, give us a call. We are one of Toronto’s biggest video production agencies, and we can assist you with anything from creative ideation all the way to production and distribution.
Happy vid-tweet..! Videet…tweedeoing…! You get the point…
Header image credit: www.businessinsider.com/
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