October 8, 2018

Why it helps to have a comprehensive style guide for video content

Video Content - An artist drawing illustrations for a video - Scatter

By 2023, a whopping 75% of mobile traffic will consist of video. Apart from all of us needing bigger data plans in five years, this also means that more and more consumers will actively seek video content.

study by Dr James McQuivey shows that just a minute of video is comparable to 1.8 million words or about 3600 web pages. If this is the kind of impact video has on viewers, it’s time to quickly evaluate if you are making your video content correctly and efficiently.

Here’s why a video style guide can help you to this end:

Consistency of Video Content

If you work with more than one production team to help with your video content, it is imperative that everyone involved is well-versed with your tone, logos, fonts, props, choice of music, backgrounds, intros and outros, etc.

Document the best practices for all these elements and keep them handy. Your production crews can keep them in mind while filming and editing, ensuring that all your resulting videos look consistent.

A definitive style guide also helps you save time; you can look forward to fewer edits involving retrofitting of all the vital elements. Consistency also helps YouTube gauge your channel better and add it under suggestions for similar video content.

Clarity

Research says that 68% of creators admitted to having no fixed video guidelines in place.

It won’t matter if you have the best content on your channel if you don’t define the boundaries within which it should exist. Your audience won’t come to distinguish your videos in the clutter or associate a particular style with your content.

The result? They will only be confused about what to expect from your channel.

A great example of brand guidelines working hard to keep their videos consistent is TED-Ed, TED’s youth and education initiative. This channel is all about short, shareable, video lessons for students and teachers.

What makes them so great is that each video has simple animations, a voiceover, a great script, and quickly explains a concept in around five minutes. The videos are so consistent in look and feel that one can almost swear that only one person has worked on the entire channel!

Take a look at one of their videos:

Schedule

As a video creator, chances are that you are running a channel on YouTube. If you want your content to have a fair chance against the 500 hours of video uploaded on YouTube every minute, you will have to publish your pieces at regular intervals.

Creating a schedule and sticking to it then becomes a very important part of your job as a content creator because you will constantly be involved in shoots, edits, ideation, voiceovers – the works.

Creative guidelines

Having a set of content guidelines at hand will allow your mind to focus on the more creative aspects of video-making.

Moreover, these guidelines will let various people work simultaneously on their parts, without having to worry about deviating from the general approach of the project. Guidelines work like a hive-mind where every participant knows what another person’s contribution would look like.

As a result, each component is more likely to fit in perfectly at the end. Additionally, time is saved and the entire team is utilised without members being overly dependent on each other’s game plan at all times.

Messaging

A style guide for your video defines the relevant messaging for your brand or channel. It also helps everyone involved in the process work collectively towards your brand’s goals.

This allows the content to become bigger than an individual’s opinion – there is no ambiguity in terms of what your video should look like, sound like, or be like overall. Over time, your brand’s voice will cut through on video, and the audience will come to identify the messaging with your content.

Conclusion 

Video creation is a game for the long term. You have to be patient with it, work fast and hard, and expect to stand out from the clutter over time. Creating a detailed style guide seems like a bit of work to begin with, but trust us – you will thank yourself for all the time saved in the long run!