No matter what your goals are this year, 2023 is not the year to sleep on video content when it comes to your marketing strategy. Now more than ever, audiences are looking for ways to consume content and educational information with minimal effort. From long, cinematic listing tours to those vertical, catchy, short-form videos that have taken the social media world by storm over the last several years, video marketing remains king.
Did you know that video content consumption made up 82.5% of worldwide internet traffic in 2022 – a whopping 15x more than just 5 years ago?! (source: Cisco). Not only that, but a study conducted by both Google and the National Association of REALTORS® reveals that 85% of buyers and sellers prefer working with a real estate agent who has video marketing.
I think we can all agree that utilizing video marketing as a REALTOR® is important … But with the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, it’s worth asking yourself which kind of videos will best help you achieve your specific goals on social media: snappy short-form, or detailed long-form video content? Let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of producing both short and long-form video content for real estate:
Long-Form Video Content
If I had to guess, you likely are reading this blog to find out the benefits of short-form video content … But before we dive into that, it’s highly important that I remind you that long-form video marketing is still alive and thriving. I repeat: Long-form video is NOT dead! In fact, long-form video content is the perfect place to provide more detailed, thorough, and elaborate pieces of marketing. Let’s look at why:
You Can Showcase Entire Properties
Not only are long-form listing tours an excellent way to win a seller’s attention in listing presentations, but these videos modernize the home buying and selling process by allowing buyers to experience a video tour of any listing. As you have the time to provide a large quantity of information, long-form video tours allow you to easily go into detail about a home’s charm and show every little detail.
Millennials Don’t Shy Away From Long-Form Videos
Roughly 15% of millennials watch 10-20 hours of video content per week which is a LOT of screen time. That is GREAT news for all of the buyers’ agents out there, because the National Association of REALTORS® 2022 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report tells us that “buyers 23 to 31 years (younger millennials) and buyers 32 to 41 years (older millennials) continue to make up the largest (and growing) share of home buyers at 43%.” If you focus on buyers, this is great news so that you can successfully market to that demographic using long-form videos that offer value to them.
You Can Build Trust More Effectively
When done well, long-form video content is incredibly effective at capturing attention and building trust. In 2023, the majority of the home buying & selling process begins online, so keep in mind that your video marketing can easily be a client’s first impression of you. It’s hard to establish a relationship with potential clients via short-form clips, but longer-form videos give you the space to establish trust, showcase your unique knowledge, and ultimately forge a bond with your viewers.
You Can Repurpose Your Long-Form Content Into Short-Form Content
Who doesn’t love a good B.O.G.O. deal? Take your long-form video listing tours and repurpose the footage to make a series of shorter edits to use on different platforms. YouTube even recently introduced a tool to help slice-and-dice 60-second clips from existing long-form videos to quickly create content for YouTube Shorts!
Short-Form Video Content
With so many new trends in social media, it’s first important that we define “short-form” video content. Simply put, short-form video content is roughly one minute or less in length. Picture short-form content as a sentence, paragraph, or even a chapter in a novel, while long-form video content (like a 15-minute YouTube video) would be the entire book. TikTok’s impressive audience of one billion (!!!) monthly active users forced Instagram to release “Instagram Reels” and YouTube to release “YouTube Short”: both platforms’ own versions of similar, vertical, short-form video content. But as a real estate professional, are there benefits to creating these bite-sized pieces of video content? Let’s discuss:
More Views & Longer View Duration
Think about the last video you watched on YouTube, and then ask yourself how long it took before you stopped paying attention. If you answered “not terribly long”, don’t worry – you’re not alone. Since short-form videos are – well – short, audiences tend to watch them much more often and usually in their entirety.
They’re Well Suited For Mobile Marketing
Considering that short-form videos usually have a 9:16 aspect ratio to fill up the space on cell phone screens, it makes sense that they’re best suited for mobile marketing. As technology has evolved, the ways in which people access the internet have changed. Social media usage in particular is dominated by the mobile market with a whopping 83% of traffic coming from cell phones. In fact, roughly half of social media users only use mobile devices to access their social network of choice (source: Telemedia).
Get Discovered More Easily
It’s no secret that various social media algorithms usually favor new and shiny features to promote. If you’ve scrolled through Instagram recently, it’s likely that you’re seeing short-form Reels more and more often from brands and content creators that pique your interest. Even Instagram admitted that adding Reels into your content mix is a great way to “be discovered by people who don’t follow you”. There you have it straight from the horse’s mouth: The key to getting visibility and growth is by posting short-form video content.
Show More, More Often!
Because short-form video content takes less time to produce, edit, and upload, you can share more about your personality, services, specialties, and listings through this medium. From mini-listing tours, to client testimonials, short-form videos help you build baby steps of awareness, making for an excellent way to introduce yourself into your audience’s minds and establish a long-term connection.
If this all still seems overwhelming, we totally get it. Social media (and video marketing specifically!) can be daunting. Back At You automatically posts all video content to Instagram Reels, YouTube, Facebook, and more! We’re here to alleviate your social media pains by providing tools to immediately amplify the exposure of your brand, distribute engaging content, recruit top talent, and provide transparent analytics to measure the impact of our efforts. If you’re not using our full-service system yet, get in touch with us by emailing hey@backatyou.com.