Are you planning to use videos in your social media marketing campaign? Many companies use short videos to promote their new products and engage their market due to their effectiveness. If you want to use this strategy, you should determine what works best for your brand.
The demand for video marketing continues to grow around the world. Based on Statista data, 95% of all Internet users in Turkey and Saudi Arabia watched videos online monthly on their devices in 2018. The data also showed that 85% of all users in the United States consumed online videos, with 25-34-year-old Americans comprising the majority of the watchers.
Because of these trends, marketing professionals include videos in their digital marketing campaigns. According to a Wyzowl report, 87% of marketing professionals utilized videos as part of their marketing strategy in 2019. This article will discuss the most effective videos you can make in about 30 minutes and how to market them successfully.
Top Questions You Should Ask Before Making Your Videos
Videos continue to dominate the social media spectrum. Based on a report by Cisco, 80% of Internet traffic will consist of videos by 2021. The popularity of videos could be due to the reasons people can relate to them personally, and reflect an authentic message from the vloggers or actors. When you are making your videos for your business, you should ask yourself these questions first:
- How do these videos fit my overall marketing strategy?
- What kind of feeling will I project in the videos to make them effective?
- What social media platforms will I share my videos, and when will I post them?
- What kind of consumers will I be targeting for my videos?
- How do my videos fit into my target market’s journey?
- What will be my call to action (CTA)?
Top 5 Types of Videos for Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
There are several formats of videos you can make for promoting your brands, products, and services on social media. Your choice will depend on what you think will work best for your business and on your platforms. Here are the top five videos you can create for your social media marketing:
- Informational Videos – To attract different users to your account, make informational videos that are interesting and compel the viewer to share it with others. Organize your videos using the cluster methodology to increase their researchability by Google.
Strive to make your videos insightful, unique, and witty. You may also add humor to make them more entertaining to the viewers. Here are other tips when making informational videos:
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- Avoid providing too many details or making your video too long to prevent viewers from losing interest.
- Make sure to make them fun to watch as they may become the foundation of your content.
- Establish a personality or identity to your videos that reflect your corporate image.
- Evaluate your videos’ performance to help you determine your strategy and topics in your future videos.
- Look at the comments of viewers on social media to have an idea of the topics they want to be covered.
- Live Videos – Live videos are an excellent way to engage with your audience. They allow you to communicate directly with your viewers and followers. You may do your live streaming on streaming services like YouTube Live and Facebook Live.You should use live videos for behind-the-scene events, product launch or information, and company announcements. It would be best to do regular short video updates to maintain your followers’ engagement and interest. You may also do live interviews, Q&As, or chats to build relationships with them.
Here are other tips for making live videos as part of your social media marketing strategy:
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- Use high-quality equipment to make sure your videos’ sounds and pictures are clear and appealing.
- Conduct a test of your setup before going live to ensure all your devices and equipment are working properly.
- Utilize scheduling tools, like Facebook Premieres, to increase the visibility of your videos.
- Make a regular live streaming schedule to offer something your followers may look forward to and establish their loyalty.
- Behind-the-Scenes Videos – This type of videos makes your relationship with your followers or viewers more personal as they will see how you conduct your day-to-day operations. They provide your potential customers a glimpse of how you operate and your culture as a company.Some of your videos’ possible focus includes your production processes, office setup, products or services, and officials and employees. You may also feature your vendors or suppliers and your major or regular customers.Ensure your videos are informative, interesting, and well-produced. With these qualities, your viewers are more likely to share your videos. Here are other tips for making behind-the-scene videos:
- Make sure to integrate and focus on your brand’s personality or culture to raise awareness.
- Focus on your staff’s daily tasks or activities of your staff that your clients would want to know or find interesting.
- Ask the opinions or comments of your employees, suppliers, and customers about your company, products, or services.
- Use the videos to narrate the stories behind your brand, your products, and your officials and staff.
- Tutorial Videos – This type of video is the most shared video on social media due to its mass appeal. When making these videos, make sure they are related to your brand, products, and services. You can also cover topics related to your industry and your target market or followers.Your tutorials should be informative, entertaining, and easy to follow to attract the attention of viewers, who are potential customers. Focus on the vital information on the first minute of your video. Make sure they are long enough to cover every step and short enough to not lose your viewers’ interest.Here are other tips when making tutorial videos:
- Produce tutorials that are easy to understand and direct to the point to make them more interesting and appealing.
- To increase the potential of being viewed, ask recommendations or suggestions from your followers on the topic they want you to cover or teach.
- Refrain from using tools or methods your audience are not familiar with or don’t understand.
- Make sure to respond to your viewers’ comments, suggestions, or questions about your videos to build their loyalty.
- Trending/Breaking News – A growing number of people are consuming breaking and trending news on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Based on data from the Pew Research Center, 55% of Americans obtained news on these sites in 2019 compared to 45% in 2016. Social media site Twitter also announced that breaking news videos are the most viewed type in its platform. With these data, reaching your target audience through breaking or trending news videos is high.When making this type of videos, make sure they are related to your industry. You may cover the latest projects, products, or developments in your company or give your reaction or opinion to your sector’s latest major events or trends.In making your videos, make sure to use the right formats for the platforms you plan to post. Use square videos (1:1) for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook and landscape videos (16:9) for Vimeo and YouTube. Portrait videos (9:16) work best on Instagram and Snapchat stories.
3 Ways to Market Your Social Media Videos
To gain the most number of views and following, you should plan a strategy to market your videos. A well-planned social media video campaign engages your followers and attracts more audience. Here are several strategies you can take to promote your videos:
- Post your videos natively – To make your videos available for viewing and sharing, post them in the most popular social media channels, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, and Vine. You can also run paid ads into your most popular videos or cross-promote them to get the most views, likes, and shares.
To boost the visibility of your videos, you should optimize them for each platform. Use SEO strategies like the use of keywords and meta tags to make them more researchable. Make sure your videos play well on any device but focus on mobile formats as most people watch videos on their mobile phones.
To grab the attention of prospective viewers, you may use pre-roll video ads on sites like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Make your video ads light, informal, and fun to make them appeal to your viewers.
- Utilize promotional tools and services – Be proactive in promoting your videos. You can utilize video promotions on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube to reach more users. Make sure to analyze the viewers’ behavior and market trends to optimize the performance of your videos.
When using these promotional services, target a specific group of users with the highest potential to gain the most benefits from your videos. This way, you can expect a higher response rate like comments, likes, and shares.
You can also share your videos in niche communities that are related to your business. You may join these groups to participate in discussions and conversations and share relevant videos. Make sure to post your videos sparingly to avoid being too promotional.
- Monitor your videos’ performance – It is essential to track your videos’ performance to determine their success or whether you need to change your approach. You can use the data from the hosting platforms where you uploaded your videos to gain insights on the number of views, likes, comments, and shares.
To gain more information on your viewers’ profiles and behavior, you may use social media analytics tools to do so. Having a clear picture of your videos’ play rate and the type of viewers they attract will allow you to think of ways to improve on your future videos.
In monitoring the performance of your videos, try to determine their impact on your bottom line. Did your sales increase? If yes, find whether your videos contributed to that increase. Tracking your social media marketing campaign is essential to determine your ROI.
Final Thoughts
Social media video marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools nowadays. If you want to increase your brand awareness or market your products or services to a wider audience, make sure to include videos in your campaign.
This article was previously published on SocialSellinator’s Blog.