Frequently Asked Questions

• Videos tell your story in a concise, consistent, and entertaining manner, allowing viewers to self-serve and relieving you of the burden of retelling your story
• Videos have an estimated shelf life of 4½ years because they can be easily edited to reframe or target information
• Stories have the capability to speak to all three learning types: auditory (things that we hear), visual (things that we see), and kinesthetic (things that we do).
• From an academic standpoint, the kinesthetic learning type involves follow up activity or activity that’s woven into the video itself.
• Animated logos surprise and delight your employees and customers and build enthusiasm for your brand

• Put a link to your video in your email signature, preferably with a thumbnail image of your video
• Send your video to prospects and super fans alike, via email, text, or social media
• Post, repost and advertise on social media
• Post it on your website’s homepage

• ROI is most easily measured if you have a website with Google Analytics installed to measure goals and conversions. Including links with your video posts, and attaching tracking codes to those links, will allow you to track certain metrics. See https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-utm-parameters/ for a beginner’s tutorial on how to embed Google tracking codes in your URLs
• Metrics for ROI include: sales conversions (or donations); reduced costs from self-serve call deflection; and propensity to spend longer on your website or campaigns, improving conversion rates

The bottom line is it depends on how aggressively you market the video and how much you charge for your products or services. To increase your ROI:

• See “How do I promote my animated video?” FAQ above
• Give retargeting a chance (the longer you run a retargeting campaign, the more effective it becomes)
• Engage a social media marketing expert. We recommend Zebaq (https://zebaqweb.com/) for their affordable and professional social media expertise.

A couple of things to note about ROI with Sketchology videos:

• Videos have an estimated shelf life of 4½ years because they can be easily edited to reframe or target information
• Sketchology videos are particularly cost-effective, given their low price relative to the national average, according to Hubspot https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/explainer-video-cost

• Size: We recommend and provide 1080p (HD) mp4 format videos with H264 compression for all your video needs. A 1-minute video at this size is about 15MB and is within the limits for all social media platforms. We can provide larger resolutions such as 4K (Ultra HD) upon request for outlying cases like High-Resolution TV broadcasts. However, 1080p is perfect for web viewing from Phone screens to large desktop monitors.
• Length: In general we recommend keeping your video under 90 seconds. Studies show that attention spans drop off dramatically at 2 minutes. However, we understand that some stories take a little longer to tell. Just know that different social media platforms have vastly different length limitations, and you will need to split your video into smaller chunks when uploading to Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.
• Orientation: We can produce your video Landscape (1920×1080), Square (1920×1920), or Portrait (1080×1920). In general, we recommend Landscape format as it has the most longevity and works best on desktop screens as well as phones in landscape view. A Landscape video can also be “sandwiched” with color bars at the top and bottom to create a square version that satisfies square and vertical venues like Instagram and TikTok.
• My website: We recommend embedding either YouTube or Vimeo versions of your video on your website (see YouTube and Vimeo limitations above.) However, if you want to host your video on your website’s server, limitations depend on your website platform.
• Captions: We recommend captions for all platforms. Most social media platforms do not play video sound by default so captions will help viewers understand your video at a glance. In addition, captions make your videos accessible to the hearing impaired. There are two ways to add captions: 1) upload a subtitle (.srt) file when you post your video (the only platform that currently does not allow this is TikTok) or 2) embed captions in your video when it’s produced (works for all platforms). Most of our customers opt to have the captions embedded in their videos.

Social media platform limitations for basic posts:

• LinkedIn: 10 minutes; 5GB; Square is best
• Twitter: 2 minutes 20 seconds; 512MB; Square is best
• Instagram: 60 seconds; 15MB; Square is best
• YouTube: 15 minutes; 128GB; Square is best
• Facebook: 240 minutes; 10GB; Square is best
• Vimeo: Any duration; 500MB/week; Landscape is best
• TikTok: 15 second chunks up to 60 seconds total; 287.6 MB in size for iOS, or 72 MB on Android, up to 500MB for ads; Portrait is best

YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia each have their pluses and minuses. All three allow you to embed your video on your website or blog.

• YouTube is the most powerful search engine in its own right, and you should post to YouTube whether or not you use the other platforms as well. It allows you to track metrics in Google Analytics (see https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-analyze-youtube-google-analytics) The downsides are that 1) you must meet minimum viewership requirements to add CTAs to your videos (called “cards”), 2) the embedded video player is very YouTube-branded which can distract from your message, and 3) the platform is best for Landscape-oriented videos (all others fit awkwardly in the play area).
• Vimeo has a very aesthetically pleasing embedded video player and is helpful for storing and downloading your videos for use on other social media platforms. It does cost if you want to embed CTAs in your video or use other advanced features such as tracking metrics.
• Wistia has an aesthetically pleasing embedded video player, the ability to add CTAs, and excellent tracking features and A/B testing capabilities. There is a cost involved in uploading more than 3 videos and if you want other advanced features.

• You can only embed CTAs in videos hosted on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia, or if you embed your video on your website using any of those three platforms. You should use Google Analytics tracking codes on video CTAs.
• For other social media platforms, a good workaround is to include links in the text for your post along with your video, and include Google Analytics tracking codes in these links.

It requires a certain level of technical expertise to follow our recommendations below. If you are not comfortable with technical activities, we recommend that you rely on your IT staff or contact Zebaq (https://zebaqweb.com/) for their affordable and professional web marketing and social media expertise.

• Social Media: It is tempting to post a link to your YouTube hosted video on all social media platforms and call it a day. However, this only works on some platforms, and furthermore the algorithms for all platforms favor natively uploaded video files. In other words, your videos will be seen by more people if you upload a local .mp4 file of your video to each platform individually.
• Email: You must link to a web-hosted version of your video from the body of your email because there is no way to play a video in the body of your email. To add a video link to your email, put a screenshot of your video in the body of the email and link the screenshot to your online hosted video. The hosting medium can be YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, or even just a dedicated page on your website.
• Your website: We recommend that you embed videos on your website hosted from YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia. You can also host videos on your website’s server, but you lose the benefit of tracking metrics from the aforementioned video hosting platforms. If you do not have an IT department in your organization to help you embed your video on your website, we can provide you with resources that can help.