The State of Video Content in 2025 with Juma Bannister

Relate Studios is a strategic marketing and video production company and Juma has two decades of experience in graphic design, photography, video marketing, and many more things. Come Juma.

and happen to go to the homepage or wherever the video lives on whatever page it lives and then they see the video there. So video was used not as a tool to build relationship. It was used as, Oh, you've discovered me already. Now you can come learn some more about me. But that is not how video functions. Now video functions as a always on 24 seven outreach and relationship building tool that companies can use. And so.

It's, it's a really big misconception, especially for large companies and people who've been in the business for a long time. And, um, they have to shift that thinking into how can I use this? Not just as something people could come to see, but how can I reach out to people with the content that I create?

Maybe it's a listicle or something of that sort in video format. But then what will happen is that if you have a longer format piece of content, let's just say a podcast or a live show or something that allows people to go deeper, find out more about how you do your stuff, find out more about your thoughts on the industry and how you can serve them, and they're able to to develop a deeper relationship with you.

And even when people become your clients, they can still go back out into the public social media spaces and find you speaking there. So the relationship is maintained over a long period of time. You don't want to create something for one singular purpose. That thing has to be always able to communicate with the people that matter to your business. So constant communication is essential when you put contents out there.

And tomorrow we're going to start doing another set of videos that tell the story of the actual entrepreneurs and how the company helped them. So instead of seeing the company saying that we can give you this money to help your business, it's going to show the. behind the scenes of how this financing actually impacted them, made them more stable, made them more hopeful and what's the outcome of it.

So I think for me, that's one of the biggest things in terms of, especially for medium form video and even short form video could do it with sometimes that, uh, focusing on those stories and those narratives. Does help in fact make people connect with the content and helps deepen the relationship as well. So that's a big deal for me. You hit the nail on the head right there.

A lot of ads that got really critical acclaim, they were emotional ads, ads that make you laugh, ads that make you cry, ads that made you think deep. And the same emotions apply now, except we have a different distribution channels for those things. And we have to format it in a different way. And so I think that the important thing is that beyond the saying, this is what we do. You also have to activate, this is how this thing made me feel.

And so you try to connect that inside of people telling stories inside of your video content as well.

It's more than just the end product, but you want to show the step by step behind the scenes content. We have a client who is into tech and cybersecurity. And, uh, we've been recording, doing videos with them for a while now. And a lot of the content that we did initially was definition content, like what is two factor authentication? What is this? What is that?

And then one day we were with the person and we told them, well, What is something that has happened to you that is a story that is connected to how you serve people? And so what they did, they were able to tell this story about, very personal, about their landlord and how their landlord almost got, um, a phishing attack and they were able to save them. And it was, and it was very personal because it was, they were in the building that was going to be affected if they didn't.

Give the landlord the right advice. And so they were able to save the landlord from sending money to a hacker's account, and it tied right back into what they do. So their expertise and their story connected and they were able to show not just what they do, but they were able to show how it really impacted someone in real life.

And as another testimonial from the landlord, that is them talking about What happened behind the scenes in order for them to serve somebody who really was in a bind and needed their expertise.

Security or like the trust that they feel working with this people. And I was just like, this is so good because I mean, rather than us writing security or trust, uh, on our own to our website or, you know, the founder saying that someone like a client saying that this company is a company that we trust a lot. So, uh, it was really helpful. And also it's, if once the clients. Advocates for you. It's also like making them feel more connected to the client.

So it's kind of a client building thing as well. So I, I'm completely with you on that.

'cause you know that that point in your marriage is where things that seven, eight years, things tend to fall apart if they have to fall apart. Once you get past that line. Things generally stabilize and it's good, right? Um, and so we did a poll with about 17 of our past couples. A collective relationship experience of over 204 years. And one of the things we asked them is what was the thing that caused them to have this long term stable relationship. Of course, we asked them in the poll.

Do you consider yourself to have a successful relationship? Everyone said, yes. What's the top five things on something that came up 11 out of the 17 times in the pool was communication. So we said, okay, good. How. Does communication translate into video content and what are you trying to do when someone sees your video content and part of that communication is purely visual. It's technical.

Uh, and so I always tell people when you do video content, you want to start with a blank slate, which is a dark room. And then you want to add things like lights. You want to add things like sound. You want to add things like framing. You want to add things like. Composition, you want to add all those different things.

So for example, uh, some people are going to hear this and some people are going to see this, but if you see the room that I'm in right now, I have five lights going in this one room to form this look that I'm having. So light is very important. How you. Look to arrange your light, whether it's high, whether it's low, whether you use a large light, soft light source, or use a harsh light source. It depends on the emotion you want to convey and communicate. And that's an important thing.

How you frame the person is also important. Do you want them center frame? Because you're thinking about, okay, How am I going to use this content later on? Because one of the things we're thinking about for our project that we have on tomorrow is framing them up in the center so it can be used both in 16. 9 and 9. 16 when it goes to short form social media. That's another technical consideration. But also to tell the story, you want these people to be front and center.

And so we have a wide frame. We're planning to do one wide and we're planning to do one close up so we can punch in and out. When the person says something that is very important to the story, we're gonna zoom in on them and get this nice rich close up. And when they're talking about more ethereal parts or maybe less solid parts of the story, we could zoom out and then we could cover that with b roll. And so there are a lot of technical considerations.

That come together to communicate the message you want to communicate. So, uh, so lighting, framing, composition, sound is so important. And we, we often lord over having multiple song sources. When we go out on the field to create content for people. Uh, I don't know if you want me to get, if you want me to get more technical, get more technical. And so we.

We generally try to shotgun the interviewee or if we have to hide the mic and mic them up in a hidden way so that they could talk freely without having to see the mic. But whatever it is, some big considerations when you are doing your content is that it has to look and feel right. The light has to be right. The background has to look the right way. So we often go into the background and say, let's remove this. Let's remove that. Let's make sure the space around the person's head is clear.

Let's make sure the depth of field is right. Let's make sure that they have short lighting so that the light is coming from the right direction. I get excited about these technical things as well. So, um, I think I'm going to stop myself from, from

And I will always recommend that if someone is doing this type of podcast and they're doing it inside of their own space, get a large ring light. If that's all you can get. And I normally recommend an 18 inch ring light. I have two ring lights going right now. Both of them are 18 inch ring lights. And the reason for that is because the bigger, the light source. And the closer the light source is to the subject, the softer the light will be.

And so bigger light source means it's more than likely that you'll look better and who doesn't want to look better on camera, right? Bigger the light source. So you don't want to get one of those tiny lights. It's like a flashlight that's shining in your eye and it's doesn't look good. And the last thing when you can't afford it, so you have your sound first, then you have your light and the last thing is getting some kind of camera.

That will allow for crisp visuals and people really load over this because they don't know what camera to buy. Cameras are expensive. What do I buy one with interchangeable lenses? Do I just use my phone? What should I do? If you have nothing else, of course, you can use your phone. But when you want to upgrade, you can get a mirrorless camera with interchangeable lens. The cheapest and probably the best one out there these days is a Sony ZV 10. I don't know how this will age.

When I say that, maybe there will be a ZV 10 2 or some other thing. Um, the camera I'm using right now is actually Sony Alpha, the A7 5, which is much higher end camera, uh, with a 28 to 70, 2. 8 lens, technical again. But it makes the thing very good because if I put my hand up to the camera, it should focus on my hand, which is not doing right now, it's focusing on my hand right now, and it will focus back on me. So it doesn't matter where I move in the frame.

It will stay on my face, it will stay on my eyes, and I will always be sharp and in focus. The camera I had before was an older camera that couldn't do that, so I had to make sure and stay exactly on this spot when I started the podcast.

So if you're someone who moves around in your podcast a lot, you may slide your chair left, right, or forward or back, then you'll want a camera that can auto focus on you, and I generally recommend the mirrorless cameras, which are very useful for that type of thing.

If you have lower quality, if you do it vertical, but the fact of the matter is, is that all of the phones that we're getting right now, they're just high quality. They just produce great videos. So that gap from low quality to high quality is closing very, very fast. And so even when people try to make it seem like it's organic, people are getting smart enough to know, Oh, that's not as organic as. You know, trying to make it seem, and a good example of that is user generated content.

Now, I know you would have encountered that when user generated content first became a thing. It was 100 percent organic. People used to take products and they would use it and they would have a good experience and they would post about it. Now, A user generated content is about finding an unknown influencer to endorse the product. That's basically what it's become. And in my mind, that is not user generated. That's the same as influencer marketing. But you know, I digress.

But the main thing is this, is that that type of content can be very appealing still, but people are getting smart to when people fake it. So be authentic and how you do it is the best advice I can give.

Maybe Let's take YouTube, for example, first of all, uh, as a channel. Um, what type of content do you think, uh, is now working better? They are trying, let's say, short form, uh, as well, like vertical short form. But is there space for that?

People are getting so accustomed to consuming the short form content, which is now kind of between optimally like one and a half minutes. It was under one minute before, but most channels are reporting now that hovering just around the minute. And I think what caused that is TikTok only monetizes on minutes and over. So people are trying to make their videos longer.

Done well, and the rest of it is highly subjective in terms of the length of video, depending on the type of content you're producing, how you're telling your stories, what's the purpose of it, who's the audience and all those different things. Most videos, people try to get it above eight minutes now, because eight minutes you can get a pre roll, mid roll and end ad. And you can get paid for all three. So most people try to make their YouTube videos eight minutes and above now.

So they, you would see most videos like hovering around 10 minutes, 11 minutes, but above eight. And then of course you have the podcasts, which are two and a half hours, which is a totally different beast altogether. But I would say most people, if they're aiming to make videos, medium length or medium format around eight to 15 minutes is like a good, good format to have around there.

I like the idea and the thought of it because it gives us a dedicated video platform for podcasts, like a space for video. Like it's, they're going to say, this is for this purpose and it's dedicated. And of course you have the tools and everything surrounding that, that helps make it easier for us to organize our podcasts and label them and put the thumbnails on all those different things. And of course we have Spotify doing that now too. I, and I, I spoke with somebody who is a podcast.

Coach, and they can explain this to me some time ago. And I think what they were saying is that at that time it wasn't, they were telling me, go ahead and do it. But as of now, it wasn't beneficial. That is last year. Right. Go ahead and categorize it as a podcast, but it wasn't beneficial. But as in putting your podcast on a regular YouTube channel made more sense last year. I don't know what makes sense this year because these things change fast.

So I have to dig back in and find out what works and what doesn't work because I know some people have refused to put their podcast in the podcast format on their platform and they just made them regular YouTube videos, which you can do. It's just not going to get categorized. Uh, when people search for it in that way, um, so did you result in that one? I don't know which works best. I have to do research on that one.

And then while they are talking, I just do like some work and the floor and so on. It takes like five minutes only. So I think it's Feels like a more of a TV show type of thing, whereas someone is discussing back to back about things. So I also have mixed feelings about that, but I still keep on putting it there for me to figure out later on.

Those are not very good, but they are better than most times just having your regular mic if you're far away from your phone. No, what has happened is that this mid tier category has been growing fast. And so you have DJI in their mix with their wireless mic for phones and for mirrorless cameras, you have Holly land, which has two good products on the market and you have road with multiple products on the market.

I haven't used the Rode ones, but I've used DJI and I've used the Hollyland products. In fact, I have two of the Hollyland products. I have the Hollyland Lark M2, which is one of the most popular ones on the market right now. In fact, might be the most well used wireless mobile phone mic on the market right now of a certain quality of like prosumer level. Um, so that might be the best option.

There's a new version to that, which I also bought and I use now for my content, which is the Holly land lock M two S, which it's a bit of a different form factor, the lock M two, it's circular, and there's a magnet that you use to clip onto your shirt or your blouse or your t shirt or whatever it is, the Holly land lock M two S uses. A, it's almost like a paperclip. You'd clip it on by sliding it on your collar. And that's what I use.

The nice thing about the Hollyland Lock M2S is that if you're recording a podcast in the kit, you get two mics. I can give one to you, my guest. Or you can give one to me if I'm your guest, and the podcast is recorded on your phone and it goes to separate channels, stereo left and stereo right.

And so you have two distinct channels you can then combine together in order to make the podcast recording, which means that if you have any parts that you want to cut out, if there's any over talking, it can be easily edited. edited. The same applies for the DJI wireless mic. I can't exactly remember the name, but it's going to be easy to find. They're always comparing these two mics, the DJI and the Hollyland mics. Those portable wireless mics are the same thing can be done for those.

My major grouse. With any of these mics is that what has happened over the past few years too, is that these mics were a certain size. They were kind of big and they've been getting smaller. However, they still insist on putting their logos on the front of the mics, which I hate, right? It's supposed to be inconspicuous. You are not supposed to be advertising for DJI or Rode or Hollyland while you are doing a recording. Thankfully, the Lark M2S, it's small, inconspicuous, has no branding.

And the M2 has a sticker that you can use to cover the logo, which makes it a lot less conspicuous. And we've used it for corporate jobs as well. We just have to edit the audio in post and it sounds pretty good. So that's my take on those consumer level. Mike products, other things people can get 18 inch ring light. If you are doing software yourself at home, and of course, use your phone to record everything. I use my phone to record probably like 90 something percent of my videos.

My, well, I have a iPhone 16 pro. Mine is just

I pay a monthly fee for it or yearly fee. I can't remember how I pay now, but it's so good because it's one of the first pieces of software that came out with text editing video, where if we talk together and we delete a piece of text inside of the transcript, it will edit the video accordingly. And because they were early to the market with that. They became almost the de facto podcast editing software for some time.

Now, there are other people that do it now, but I continue to use them because it's always adding features, very easy to use, and I just love, now they have AI built in like everyone else does. And it's just making my editing process much, much easier, much faster, and I can get my podcast and all my other content out in a much more timely manner.

You can click one button and it will do all the camera back and forth for you. You mean,

And when I introduce you, I will be up when you introduce yourself. And I just make small tweaks on it along the way. And I don't have to manually do all that anymore. And of course they have the presets with the intro. You just drag that in, you drag that in. And so. Editing a podcast has gone from like three hours probably down to just over the time the podcast took to record because it's, it's much easier now.

Um, but the other ones you're probably, it's probably not a good idea to put those out cause they don't really. Have the impact that you want it to have. It doesn't speak to the audience the way you want it to speak to the audience. Uh, and so it's good for identifying the parts of the conversation that probably could interest people, but you definitely still have to go and see if that is what you want to say.

Um, and by the way, Oprah's clip might be the most popular one, but just as everything else out here, it's not the only one. And I would tell people, and this is my big secret for software over the years, and I know many people will know this, but I keep on telling people this, go to AppSumo, see what they have. You know AppSumo, right?

And then your investment is lost, but sometimes it pays off and upbeat was one of those that paid off. So we've been using high premium quality audio for the last three years, and now they've introduced motion graphics. Now they've introduced some effects. Now they've introduced all different sorts of different AI, audio and stuff. And everybody else is paying a subscription and we don't because we got it early.

And I take the risk sometimes, sometimes I go through the library and say, what do we really need? What are we spending money on right now that we would not want to spend money on for the next five years? And I say, okay, I look for that software and I say, look at what they have. Look at the ratings. And I say, okay, we're going to pay 99 once. And you know, so far I'm, I'm about. Uh, seven of the 10 good purchases. So the other companies folded, you know,

And so for our videos in particular, we, I have tried a few things, but over the years, one thing that has been consistent is that we always end with, it's good to relate. And we always use text as a way to call main points out that fill the screen. So there are two things that we do. And, uh, I try to make the thumbnails. Now people say, put faces, everyone is putting faces. I'm going to say, just put the text on the thumbnail. That's just my way of doing it. Right.

There is probably a right and a wrong way, but I know that there is a good way and probably a better way as well. So there are some things that are proven. The tested and proven faces on your thumbnail, thumbnails that show some kind of action or some kind of emotional response in your thumbnail. If you're putting text, you don't put the text as any title, you just want one strong statement that sparks curiosity. The things are out there. Everybody knows how to do it.

I would say, find what works for you. Find what works for you. Here's how I look at it. There are three elements to that. Number one is, uh, what you're good at, right? Uh, you might not be good at it and you might want to outsource it, but if you're good at it, do it. What you like to do, and that is in terms of how the thumbnail looks, there's probably a look that you like. It might not be the right look, and I'm using quotes here, but it might be something that you like, that is an alignment.

With your particular brand, your visuals. And then the third thing is what you like to do, what you can do, and then what you have the time to do. So you don't want to spend two hours working on one thumbnail, right? You want to be able to do something that's quick and that works. And if you find the balance between those three things, you're able to produce something consistently, being able to produce something at probably 80 percent perfection.

Consistently is better than trying to produce something at 100 percent perfection, probably one or two times a year, whatever it might be, you know, just trying to make it so that it makes your life easier so you don't have to think about it too much and then you will actually do it. Yeah.

And if there are still some things that I have to fix other than the music. Then why bother with the music right now? I'm just like, focus on the other things.

And I said to myself, if this podcast ever gets big, I don't want to have to be worried about. Music that someone made, right? So I made a music for myself and I use that music and that music is going to continue to be used until this vision of the podcast is done. So do things that are important, not things that, uh, that you feel like you need to do, do whatever is important.

And so what is happening now, the subscribers and followers have less weight and it's more of whether your content is engaging, whether your content is entertaining, whether your content is what people want to find and see, and I think as a result of that, people are going to have to find ways. To put content on different platforms so that when, uh, people go to different platforms, they can still engage with them.

And so it's going to be, while I still support the whole idea of focus on one platform, build it out there and then expand, I think people are going to have to start to think about multiple platforms earlier, um, because it's a case of you're fighting against interests.

Which are varied and you'll see something from someone one day you like the thing, but for some reason you don't see them again for two weeks, even though you subscribe to them, even though you have been looking at the videos consistently, and it's not that they're not putting out content, but if you are on multiple platforms and you have the opportunity to show up again in someone's feed and so.

I think for video in the future is going to be, um, not every way like how Gary Vee did it, but you're going to have to make some calculated decisions and strategic decisions about where you want to place your content so that when interest based algorithms start to work even harder, because Instagram is adopting it, YouTube is adopting it, they're kind of following TikTok's lead, that you're still going to be in front of the people who really want to see your content. As, as well.

So I think that's important over the next year or so.

And I will give a special mention to John experience content DNA as well, which I also read right now. And obviously I'm thinking about a lot of books in my mind, lots and lots of books, but right now the book that I'm going to read is from Louie granny. Um, so that is S T F O. I'm not going to say the words stand out, right? Uh, It's been released last year. It's doing extremely well. I actually one of the people who helped him proofread the book.

So that's why I said I kind of read it, but I didn't read it at the same time and my copy is in the mail right now. Heading to me, uh, and I've, I still bought, there was a sale on it on Kindle for 99 cents like recently. So I bought that too, but I haven't read it yet, but I've kind of know it. Some of what is in the book, because I got to proofread it. So I would say for positioning, for knowing who you are, for finding out what products and services you should focus on.

Uh, Louie granny is STFU and get that one as well.

Um, there's Mount Tabor, there's St. Michael's, there is a place called Breezy Hill, there's Paria, there's Paragrant, multiple places that we go to. But one of my favorite places, if you ever in Trinidad and Tobago and you come and you want to do a short hike, it's like two kilometers. It's a place called Mount Tabor, which is in Mount Saint Benedict. It's beautiful. Beautiful. When you get up to the top and the wind starts to blow, it sounds like the sea. It sounds like waves, waves crashing.

It's, it sounds beautiful. If you come on a good day, a nice windy day, and the wind rushes through the trees, you hear, it's, it's a, it's a, it's an experience when you hear it. Oh, okay. So I, I love, I love that. Perfect.