On June 20, Facebook announced that its photo-sharing application Instagram will now have a video feature in order to compete with video-sharing application Vine. In a blog post, Russ Somers, VP of Marketing for Invodo, talks about the announcement and what it will mean for brands and retailers.
Here are four takeaways from his blog post that are important to note:
- In Instagram, users will be able to add filters to enhance the video content. For example, the “cinema” feature allows users to create professional-looking video with less camera motion. Merchants can also display the video with a preview image which is more likely to gain clicks.
- Consumption of videos will soon make up 90% of web traffic, but many sites (outside of YouTube and other media sites) still have images and text as the dominant form of content. This will be true of ecommerce sites.
- Brands and retailers should create a lot more video content. It’s not just a home page video but a video to assist shoppers at the category and product level as well as after the sale.
- Use video in all your channels to reach consumers. Encourage consumers to comment on video, interact with video and respond to video.