animals playing – filmmakers soon MySpace quickly became the most started to incorporate storylines and used social media site in the world. music into their works. Between the But in this brave new world, changes years of 1890 and 1927, thousands were happening fast, including the of silent films were produced with advent of Facebook in 2004. the ever-increasing sophistication It was only a year later that of storyline and technical craftsYouTube launched its videomanship. A new art form was born. sharing app, which allowed users By the late 1920s, television to experiment with self-produced stations started content, to appear in while also If you’ve logged in to any America, with creating the the world’s first blessing – or is social media platform electronic TV it blight? – of being invented in self-appointed recently, you might have 1927 by a 21-yearinfluencers. noticed video content old inventor From makeup named Philo within the first ten seconds. tutorials to viral Taylor Farnsworth. ‘Gangnam style’ Why? Because it grabs our dance crazes, It was also the year that The Jazz proves attention far more effectively YouTube Singer – the first that just about feature-length than words or still images anyone or movie with anything can ever can. synchronized go viral on the sound – appeared. internet. Now, By 1971, some 20 years after US the channel sees more than four engineer Charles Ginsburg led the billion daily views and has more than team responsible for the video one billion users worldwide. It wasn’t recorder, our good friends Sony long before pretty much every other stepped into the consumer market social media channel incorporated and introduced videocassette video into their platforms. recorder (VCR) decks and tapes, If you’ve logged in to any social allowing us to make our own movies. media platform recently, you might Then in 2000, things became even have noticed video content within more personal with the advent of the the first ten seconds. first mobile phone incorporating a Why? Because it grabs video camera, Samsung SCH-V200. our attention far more effectively than words or still images ever The birth of the internet Developing in parallel was a medium can. This explains why videos on Instagram that would give video the platform it and Facebook generate needed to become fully integrated more engagement than into our daily lives: any other content type, The first of January 1983 is considered the official birthday of the and Tweets including videos see ten-times internet, with the first social media more engagement. platform appearing in 1997. Social media Six Degrees, created by Andrew platforms know this, Weinreich, was popular with users and therefore give an until 2003, when Tom Anderson came up with MySpace. This new site extra boost to new let users make profiles that played video-related features. their favourite music, and they could Instagram, for example, even design their own backgrounds. is still heavily promoting
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Instagram Reels, making it one of the best growth-hacks a business can use on the app right now. In 2019, users spent an incredible weekly average of six hours and 48 minutes watching online videos, a 59% increase from 2016. And that’s before we consider the impact of the pandemic on our video consumption habits. Today, consumers expect brands to deliver ever-more engaging, entertaining content, and video is one of the most effective formats to do so. And it doesn’t just stop at social media. Let’s look at website content. If you’re a small business owner, you’ve likely heard the motto “content is king” to describe the importance of content marketing. And while written content is effective for many audiences, visual marketing is an even more powerful tool to increase interactions and actions. Remember the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” – go one step further by adding that “a one-minute video is worth 1.8 million words” (Dr James McQuivey of Forrester Research). Considering that 46 percent of people who watch a video ad on a business website act after viewing it, it is criminal for you not to include video in your marketing strategy.
