A Match Made in Heaven: Reverse Video for your Instagram Strategy

• Informative videos

Designed to inform your followers about your brand, product or service, informative videos are an invaluable marketing tool targeted at dealing with any queries your customers might have. What is your brand all about? What range of goods do you offer? How to make a purchase? What are the delivery terms? Whatever questions may arise, putting together an informative video is a sure-fire way to give a much better view of your products.

• Educational videos

How-tos, tutorials, DIYs, demonstrations – whatever they are called, they are intended to educate prospects and current customers considering purchasing and guide them through the problem: how to apply shimmer, how to cook a fish dish in a microwave, how to pack a suitcase way more efficiently, you name it.

• Entertaining videos

Entertaining videos are exactly what they sound like. Jokes videos, pranks, interviews, reverse videos – being super-entertaining they make followers laugh, encourage them to leave comments and share the video.

• Selling videos

Selling videos are the backbone of a good marketing campaign and they have only one goal – to induce consumer brains to make a choice of purchase. Quite often they have a linked call-to-action like “to learn more, visit the website”, “you can place an order by clicking the link in the profile description”, “click here now for discount”, to name a few.

Whatever types of video content you may want to pick for your Instagram video strategy, high quality content – a smart blend of different components – is what you should give pride of place to.

However, Instagram is getting more and more cluttered with promotional posts, branded videos and all that jazz, and it stands to reason you need something more than high-quality content, something brand-new and innovative to cut through this digital clutter and stay ahead of the curve.

Reverse video seems to be just the thing. That’s what we’d like to focus on in this post. So let’s delve into the specifics of reverse video.

As the term suggests, a reverse video is a video clip that is played in backward direction with the help of video reverse software. Its counterintuitive power of attraction, amazing entertaining effect it delivers and its novelty are those key factors that help reverse video gain massive momentum and make viewers share reversed clips like crazy.

You don’t have to fiddle around with things like extracting all frames from a video and then putting them back together in reverse, nor do you have to reinvent the wheel – everything has already been done. All you need are:

• The idea
• Good lighting
• Video reverse app

The biggest challenge you may face is finding a good idea for a reverse video, since it should be easy on the eye when played in reverse mode.

In fact, you don’t need to scratch your head over the reverse video concept, even simple things will look cool in reverse, so record a video of whatever comes into your mind, like:

• Crumpling or cutting paper
• Flipping a coin
• Popping a balloon
• Jumping on/from something
• Blowing bubbles
• Spilling water
• Drawing something

Selling high-quality shoes? Then run through a puddle in slow motion.

Making doner kebab? Record the way you assemble it and give your video a viral title name like “Undressing a doner kebab”.

Be as creative as you can. Use your imagination and come up with your own bizarre, memorable reverse video ideas.

As far as lighting goes, you’d better not rely upon artificial light of your home while filming. You are likely to get frustrated since the outcome of your doing will be totally different to what you expect.  Natural daylight will hit the spot.

Hands down, any powerful video editor installed in your PC is capable of making any video backwards. However, seeing that as a rule they are incorporated with a ton of advanced features and rich functionality, you may find them rather overwhelming and complicated to use for the amateur video reversing.

Why deal with unnecessary complexity if there are a number of reverse video apps in the app stores for both Android and iOS designed to reverse video playback? Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

ReverX

• Totally free (contains popup ads)
• Watermark can be removed
• Allows you to trim a clip and add your own audio tracks along with those provided in the gallery
• Lets you reverse any video found on your device and recorded with the app

Videoshop – Video Editor

• Free (contains ads)
• Enables you to cut your videos as well as merge multiple video clips into one
• Allows for recording your own voice over the video
• You can add music from both your iPod library or Videoshop’s stock library

FilmoraGo – Free Video Editor

• No watermark stamped on your clip
• On top of selecting videos from gallery and albums, it allows for imports directly from social networks like Instagram and Facebook
• You may add music from FilmoraGo’s library of licensed songs, your own device or import your own voice over
• Offers a variety of filters and graphic overlays intended to transform your video clip

RevVideo – Backwards video creator cam with filters for Vine and Instagram

• Free (contains ads)
• Offers a choice of 10 amazing filters
• Option to adjust play speed
• Easily share your video on Social Media

Video Reverse: Video Trimmer Cutter Music Editor

• User interface is easy to use
• Option to add audio of your choice
• Multiple reverse video speed options available
• The ability to share your video on social networking websites

Video Reverse: Free Reverser App to rewind, backward videos for Vine & Instagram

• Completely free (no annoying ads)
• Reverses both video and audio tracks
• The ability to use a video from your own library

Child’s play!
To figure out how your video is performing, it’s imperative that you calculate not only likes, but also video views, as well as identify “likes to views” ratio.

Record two reverse videos with similar themes or featuring similar products, upload them to Instagram and in 10 days estimate the number of likes and views they have both received. If your video has hit 1,000 views but only 10 likes – your content is far from being arresting. If it has pulled in 1,000 views and 500 likes – you’re on the right track! Way to go!

Video reversal is a brand new feature, and as we all know it’s always way easier and more rewarding to capitalize on the emerging trend until people and market get saturated.

However, chances are attention-grabbing reverse video will go beyond a short-lived fad and continue to hold sway owing to its uncanny ability to make you feel better after you watch them.

Instagram in its turn is a powerful marketing tool that opens up unique opportunities to tell your brand’s story through visual content.  With this in mind, it’s no exaggeration to say that Instagram and reverse video are certainly a match made in heaven. So breathe new life into your Instagram marketing strategy and give Instagram users a strong reason to push the follow button.