For any business, product, or influencer, video content online has massive potential to make your brand visible to hundreds of millions of people. The explosion of social media use, as well as video engagement make video content creating a cornerstone to marketing success. With video content being more that 50 percent likely to be displayed on the first Google search page, to ignore video as a marketing strategy is to limit the outreach of your brand.
So, why on a budget? We understand that creating video content may not be a priority to businesses in a traditional sense. Until the potential of video is realized, many marketing strategists must make do with the budget they have, regardless if this is a private business, or a single content creator.
So, let’s go through 7 ways you can create quality video content, while staying on a budget. These include:
- Focus on the simple content
- Cover the essential equipment
- Check your environment
- Keep your editing simple
- Script your content
- Caption and transcribe your videos
- Use social media
Focus on the simple content
If you’re on a budget, the scope of what kind of content you can film is limited. You don’t have the luxury of props, special effects, or extras. By focusing on what simple and basic themes and topics you can film about, you can effectively film on a budget.
For Example; you may simply choose to talk in front of a camera, or have the camera stay still during the video as you demonstrate something. This prevents the need of special extras such as editing or effects that drive up the cost and production time of videos.
Cover the essential equipment
Before diving into any production, it’s wise to plan out the video recording equipment that you’ll need. On a budget, you want to cover the absolute basics of a quality film.
At minimum, you’ve got filming, audio, lighting and editing post-production all covered. These are the basic elements used to create a video that can be shared with your viewers.
- Lighting: The ability to highlight yourself and appear visible on camera.
- Filming: Capturing high definition shots of yourself/ or actions.
- Audio: Being able to record your voice without much background noise/ interference.
- Post-production [editing]: Being able to edit the footage, add background music, sound-bites and effects digitally.
Regarding what equipment is recommended, you want to keep the four basics in mind. To cover this, you only need these following pieces of equipment to get your channel started:
- A camera: Can be bought online or any electronics store. Most cheap Samsung or Panasonic hand help cameras have HD capabilities. Iphone cameras are also a good starting point if you already have one.
- Ring light [or other lamp]: A light that specializes in highlighting your facial features. Light boxes are also a good early investment, but can be expensive/ bulky.
- Microphone: Blue yeti, Rode, and Samson are three high quality microphone retails that offer a range of quality, low price microphones. Most of these are very good at cancelling background noise, and are easy to set up.
- Editing software: Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe all have their own branded film editing software. Ranging from low to high end pricing, low cost software will have basic features and editing options for your videos. When getting started, basic editing techniques will allow you to ease into the process of editing, hence we recommend IMovie or Final Cut Pro.
Check your environment
Before you even turn the camera on, you need to think about where you’re shooting the footage. For budget filming, stationary shots of people are usually the least-expensive but show a lot of background. You might want to clean up your filming space, or simply grab any kind of green tarp to be used as a green-screen. Though this option is somewhat more expensive, you can purchase green tarp or fabric from any hardware/ crafts store to save money.
Keep your editing simple
Editing software is highly popular on the internet. From Adobe, to Microsoft, many platforms offer some form of advanced video editing software. However, these tend to be either subscription based, or absurdly expensive at $100+US on average due to the sheer number of features on hand.
While on a budget, it may be worth considering downloading free, or basic packaged editing software online that allows you to alter filmed footage. Although you are losing potential editing features for your video content, you are saving money and time by opting for a more basic style of editing. Simple cuts, fades, transitions and sound will make any filmed footage more watchable and shareable.
Script your content
Think about what you’re going to say! Taking a few minutes, our hours to think about what you’re going to say will greatly improve the quality of the video. This is perfect, since you don’t need any fancy equipment to do it, just a pen, paper, and your imagination.
Videos of greater quality will get engaged with more frequently, which in turn will rank higher on social media and on search engines. Scripting your content and planning what you’re going to say will ultimately have a net positive on the investment into the video.
Caption and transcribe your videos
We briefly mentioned rankings and the share-ability of your video content. Here, we recommend captioning and transcribing your video content. For a simple price, any audio or video files can be captioned and transcribed, allowing people to read the audio as text on-screen. This process has numerous benefits to rankings in Google search engines, as well as social media feeds. It also adds to the keywords which results in higher rankings meaning more engagement and higher return on investment.
What makes captions and transcripts perfect when on a budget is the price. For as low as $1US a minute, you can have any video file captioned regardless of the number of speakers. Scribblr.ai is closed captioning software offering $1 per minute of captioned audio and offers your first 10 minutes free of charge.
In the long run, allowing your videos to be accessible to Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers expands your potential audience. Accessibility also does wonders on personal branding and public image.
Use social media
Social media is without a doubt one of the most useful and effective tools when it comes to online video marketing. As a potential content creator, you’ll be expected to share, promote, and generate content via social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
To create a social media platform does not require any cost, so you’re free to open as many accounts as you like associated with your content. For budgets, this is a huge relief. Although, you can pay social media services like Facebook to promote ads for your content, but your limited budget is better spent elsewhere (like equipment).
Coincidentally, transcripts and captions can assist with social media sharing via keywords. The more keywords search engines can crawl through, the higher the chance your video content will appear within the top 10 results on Google, or the main page on YouTube, or on someone’s Facebook feed. Social media is a tool for visibility and helps to get your video content moving.
