If you create video content for your brand, you know there are a lot of different tasks involved.
You have to develop a compelling opening that will hook your audience in the first few seconds — or they’ll just stop watching.
You need to make sure you have the right equipment and tools to create a professional-quality video.
Then, there’s scripting, storyboarding, shooting, editing, and deciding where to post your video for the best engagement — plus all of the analysis of your video’s performance that comes later.
But before any of that, you have to come up with an idea for your video. And sometimes, that’s the hardest part.
If you’ve been staring at a blank screen trying to come up with an engaging idea for a video that will attract views, generate shares and boost your brand recognition, don’t worry.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a full toolset of 19 video content ideas you can use for your next campaign. Plus, we’ll share our tips for coming up with video ideas on your own, so you can avoid that blank screen in the future.
The best videos are relevant, emotional, and tell a coherent story
Before we dive into our list of video content ideas, let’s take a quick look at what makes a video that viewers love to watch.
You should make sure your videos:
- Tell a story. A narrative arc can help you to keep your audience engaged.
- Are conversational. No one wants to watch videos that are stiff, formal, and corporate.
- Are short, sweet, and to the point. You’d be surprised at how much you can fit into a well-executed video of 3–5 minutes or less.
- Are relevant to your audience. Dig deep into your audience’s interests, values, and pain points, and let these guide the topics you choose.
- Evoke emotion. You can drive your message home and make sure your audience remembers it by tapping into emotions like anger, sadness, or admiration.
- Are professionally shot and edited. Don’t worry: you don’t need a professional crew or expensive equipment. But you do need tools to help you film and edit a video that looks professional and polished (like PlayPlay, for example).
19 content ideas to tap into for your next video
Ready to get inspired? Here are 19 video content ideas to boost your creativity and make your next video campaign a success.
1. Educate and engage your audience with a whiteboard video
If you need to explain something to your audience, a simple whiteboard explainer video is a great way to do it. The combination of spoken and written information helps to get your message across in an engaging and memorable way.
Plus, this type of video is cheap and easy to produce: all you need is a smartphone camera, a tripod, and a whiteboard.
2. Talk about hot industry topics with an expert interview
Want to position your brand as an industry leader? Interviewing an expert can lend you credibility, especially if they’re well-known. The interesting insights they’ll bring to the conversation can help you create a compelling and shareable piece of content.
3. Summarize blog posts to drive traffic back to your site
If your blog content is performing well, why not repurpose it into a video? Create a script that summarizes a post’s key points, and add some visual elements like transitions, stock footage, and motion graphics to help to get your point across.
Then, drive traffic back to your blog by ending your video with a call-to-action (CTA) to go and read the full post.
4. Let your customers speak for you with a testimonial video
Video is a great way to get the word out about your products or services — and the message feels more authentic when it comes from the people who actually use them. Before you film your video, think about the questions you’ll ask your customer. These should provoke interesting answers that are useful to your target audience.
Want to learn more about creating effective customer testimonial videos? Check out our guide.
5. Create an entertaining animated video
Animated marketing videos are not (necessarily) easy to produce, but they can generate great results since they’re usually fun, short, and watchable.
You could create your animated video on almost any topic, but they work particularly well for explainer videos because the on-screen animations can help you explain complex topics more clearly.
6. Share your company’s story by interviewing your founder
These days, people want to understand the story behind the companies they buy from. After all, how often have you heard tales about huge enterprises starting in their founders’ garages?
If your company has an interesting or unusual origin story, consider filming an interview with your founder to share it with your followers.
7. Weigh in on a hot debate to spark a conversation
All video marketers want to generate lots of comments, reactions, and shares — and sometimes the best way to achieve this is by sparking debate.
Be careful: it’s not a good idea to wade into big topics just to get clicks. However, if there’s a hot topic that’s affecting your business or industry — and you have something useful and original to say about it — don’t be afraid to get the conversation going.
8. Connect with your audience with a live-streamed Q&A session
When we talk about video marketing, we usually mean pre-recorded videos that you upload to your website or social media. But live video can be an effective way of engaging your audience in real-time and showing them the human side of your business.
Q&A sessions are a great use of live video, because they automatically include opportunities for your audience to participate and connect with your brand.
9. Record your screen for a simple tutorial
If your company sells software, your customers probably have questions about it. To help them get the most out of your product, consider recording a simple tutorial to show off your its capabilities. The best part is, you don’t even need a camera!
10. Do some myth-busting to clear up confusion
A video that busts the myths most people believe about your industry is a great way to drive engagement outside of your normal audience. It also helps drive views, because people are naturally curious about things they might have got wrong.
PlayPlay pro tips to launch your marketing video strategy:
11. Build hype with an event teaser
Got an upcoming event you need to promote? Kill two birds with one stone and turn that promo into an engaging event teaser video to drive attendees.
The trick here is to give away just enough information about the event that people want to know more — and end with a killer CTA to boost sign-ups.
12. Share some unique product use cases
When people are considering buying a product, they want to know what they can use it for. Instead of just sharing basic product demos, consider surveying your customers to find out if any of them have used your product in an unexpected way.
For example, this ad for Amazon’s Alexa, made in partnership with the RNIB, shows a blind woman’s morning routine. While the Alexa device wasn’t specifically designed with this use case in mind, it makes an interesting and engaging video.
13. Introduce your employees and show off your culture
Featuring your employees in a video can boost your employer brand and help you to show off your unique company culture. The simplest way to do this is by interviewing a few people about what it’s like to work at your company and editing the footage together.
You can make it more engaging by including visual elements like transitions and motion graphics, and add context with on-screen text.
14. Generate excitement with a product reveal
If you’re launching a new product, the most important thing you can do in terms of marketing is to build excitement. And video is a great medium for this. A great product reveal video will tease viewers’ curiosity by revealing only parts of the product and making them want to know more.
15. Challenge yourself to explain your business in 30 seconds (or one minute, or three…)
The optimum length for video content is less than three minutes for Facebook, less than 60 seconds for Instragram, and less than 45 seconds for Twitter, according to Vimeo. Instead of panicking about how you’re going to fit an engaging message into such a short timeframe, why not see it as a fun challenge instead?
See if you can distill your company’s main message or value proposition into as little as 30 or 60 seconds.
Lists of tips, tricks, and tools have long been a popular format for company blog posts — and for good reason. These sorts of posts are digestible, readable, and provide actionable tips that readers can follow to improve their lives. So why not do the same thing in a video?
For best results, be sure to list tips that are genuinely useful to your audience — and help them to remember the important stuff with on-screen text and visuals.
17. Keep people watching with an interesting timelapse
Timelapse videos encourage people to keep watching to find out what the end result is. They’re also easier to film than you might think: most high-end smartphones now have a built-in timelapse mode, so all you need to do is set it up on a tripod or stand.
And you could make a timelapse of just about anything: a day in your office, the creation of a new product, or, like in the example below, the fitting of a new office space:
18. Get quirky with an offbeat interview
There are all sorts of interview videos you could make for your company. But one of the most fun types is the “off-beat” interview, where you ask your subject unusual questions that don’t (necessarily) have to be about your business.
By doing this type of interview with your CEO or a member of the senior leadership team, you can connect with viewers by showing them your company’s “human” side.
19. Give viewers a peek behind the scenes with an office tour
Wouldn’t you like to have a poke around your favorite brand’s head office? So would your viewers. An office tour is a great way to promote your employer brand and showcase your company culture — particularly if your office has some quirky or unusual features you can show off.
5 tips for generating your own video content ideas
You can use the ideas on this list to create marketing videos that engage your audience, boost shares, and get the word out about your brand. But what if you could generate hundreds of topics all by yourself, and potentially never run out of ideas?
Here are our best tips for coming up with ideas for your video content:
1. Dive into your existing content
Look at the content you already have that performs well: blog posts, ebooks — even social media posts that got a lot of attention. Now, think about how you could turn that content into a video for your social media for example. You could make a video highlighting the key takeaways from a piece of long-form content like an ebook or white paper.
2. Leverage insights from your customer service team
Your customer service team can give you valuable insights into the problems your customers have — which could generate ideas for video content. For example, you could make a tutorial that explains how to do something with your product that users typically struggle with.
3. Read prospective buyers’ minds (by asking your sales team)
Your sales team can also be a source of inspiration, as they know what questions people have before buying your product. By harnessing this data, you can make videos that answer common questions from prospective buyers before they’ve even asked them.
4. Study what your competition is doing
If you’re struggling for inspiration, it’s never a bad idea to check out what your competitors are doing, and what seems to be resonating with their audience.
Of course, you don’t want to directly copy their strategy. But if, for example, you notice your direct competitors put out a lot of explainers, tutorials, or interviews, you might want to consider trying the same.
5. If you don’t know… just ask
If you’re dying to find out what types of content your viewers would like to see from you, you could always just ask them. Sending out a quick survey asking email subscribers to select the types of content they’d like to see is an easy way to generate content ideas.
To boost your response rate, consider sweetening the deal with a free download, discount code, or another perk for those that fill out your survey.
Put your video ideas into action with PlayPlay
So, you’ve come up with a brilliant idea, written a script, and even drafted out a quick storyboard so you know what your video will look like. What next?
You need an easy video editing tool that will let you create a slick and professional video, with no editing knowledge required. PlayPlay is the magic wand you need to turn your video idea into reality — and you can try it out for free. Sign up for a no-strings-attached 7-day trial to get started.
Jaymi Onorato
Demand Generation Manager, North America
Jaymi is a growth-focused B2B marketing leader driving demand generation for North America at PlayPlay. Jaymi advocates for inclusivity in tech and women in leadership.
