Social media videos attract the most interactions and likes. More than 53% of online consumers engage with a brand after viewing one of its videos on social media, according to survey data from Brightcove. For millennials, that percentage rises to 66%.
For video, you have three major social media platforms to target – Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The same organization, Meta, owns both Facebook and Instagram, so those platforms share posts and advertising, more commonly known as post boosting. Twitter has experienced unfathomable video viewership though – two times year-on-year growth to 1.2 billion daily video views.
How can you grab the attention of these viewers with your content marketing? What does it take to get people to watch your video and like it? Let’s look at the 10 make-or-break things you need for successful videos. Check out these tips for videos on social media!
1. Develop a Savvy Strategy for Digital Content Marketing.
Simply making video content and posting it doesn’t earn you followers or interactions. You need to offer high-quality videos that people want to watch. That starts with creating a digital content marketing strategy that guides all of your posts, including the video posts. This strategy includes goals for the videos, measurements, and milestones that align with your business.
2. Make a Video Idea List.
Put in a bit of research in Google Analytics or Buzzsumo to find your most popular and most shared posts. These frequently visited blogs become your first topics for videos. You know that your customers already want to know about those topics, so creating a video that provides more information on that topic ensures interest. Also, check Facebook Pages to Watch and study the posts of any competitors there for ideas.
3. Purchase Good Quality, Essential Equipment.
Influencers can get away with using a smartphone camera or webcam to film themselves, but businesses need to invest in good quality equipment – a camera, LED lighting, microphones, a tripod and editing software. Videos need subtitles, your company logo, phone number and website overlaid. Learn to use the equipment properly before making videos for posting. This especially applies to miking the video shoot. Each video needs crisp, clear sound with good audio levels and this takes practice to master.
4. Use Templates Until You Learn How to Script Videos
Companies like Wave.video and Biteable offer social media content marketing tools with templates and stock footage. These video templates include guides for Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories plus templates for product presentations and commercials. The options in Biteable also include a music library. Follow the template for the video and simply fill in the blanks. Pay special attention to the title because viewers see this first and it can help draw them into the video.
5. Keep Your Videos Short
A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark revealed that the global attention span narrowed. When consuming videos on social media, videos of one minute or less perform best. People enjoy short, informational content. Regardless of the template used, your dialogue needs to start with a hook, move to information about it and end with a call to action either to buy or visit the website to learn more. Also, encourage viewers to like your videos and comment on them.
6. Optimize for Various Channels
You need to post to the channels your clients use. If consumers who buy from your company use Facebook, then you use Facebook. If they use Twitter, then you use Twitter. You can reuse and cross-post videos to some extent, but some videos require editing. Twitter users like .GIFs, while Facebook and Instagram Stories range from three to 60 seconds in length, but Facebook Live can run two minutes in length.
7. Use Visuals.
You might think all video consists of visuals, but many social media videos use text over a colored background. These might prove easy to view and take up less bandwidth, but they bore more viewers. Film visuals of your product or dialogue of an individual talking about the product while showing it.
8. Use Background Music.
Choose a non-distracting song for the video’s background. Instrumentals work well for social media videos, as opposed to commercials which typically use a short sample of a popular song. Only use music for which you’ve acquired legal rights. Many royalty-free options exist, so explore those.
9. Craft a Catchy Call To Action.
Nothing matters more than positive results, so your CTA needs to sell your business. If the viewer makes it to the end of the video then you want the CTA to pay off in a like, comment, website visit or sale. Your goal for the video decides your CTA.
10. Measure and Adjust Your Strategy.
Determining the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategy and its video posts requires measuring the success of each post. This analysis includes comparing the posts to each other to determine which videos obtained the best reach. This tells you which topics consumers find most interesting and amenable. Each social media platform offers businesses analytics built into the platform. You can also try a video analytics program like Vidooly that offers unified measurement and point-and-click reports.
Contact Bake More Pies
You could pour the time and effort into learning how to make videos and purchase expensive equipment, or you could come work with us! As a digital marketing agency, we’re experts in digital content marketing and all types of post creation. Let us help you increase your social media engagement by developing and implementing your business’s digital content marketing strategy.
