Twitter and YouTube have brought the visual storytelling game to new heights. Recently YouTube unveiled its free YouTube Director for Business app, part of a suite that allows businesses to create video ads straight from their mobile devices. The first portion of the suite gives creators access to design templates, text overlays, animations and music, all in a user-friendly step-by-step tutorial framework.
The second portion of the suite, Director onsite, dispatches a filmmaker to oversee and shoot the project from start to finish (a 2-3 hour process available in 6 major cities) in exchange for spending $150 or more on YouTube ads. The third and final piece: Once the video is complete, businesses are connected with a Google Ads consultant, who advises users on maximizing reach to the target audience.
Also, Twitter released its Engage app, enabling creators to post videos of up to 140 seconds in length to Twitter. Outside of its expanded video feature, Engage is first and foremost a measurement tool, allowing users to track engagement and measure success in real time.
Aggregating useful stats like number of likes, retweets, mentions and impressions, as well as listing followers' commonly used hashtags, the app provides brands invaluable insight into what resonates with audiences. With a one-tap video broadcasting feature, users are reminded to be proactive about boosting their engagement with video.
For communicators, both apps will be enormously helpful and cost-effective in terms of pumping out quality content and measuring video success, which isn't going away as the big winner in online content. According to the June 1 Mary Meeker/KPCB Internet Trends Report, Snapchat and Facebook video views jumped over 2 million views per day since last quarter.
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