How your brand can make the most out of social video

EXPERTS predict that 82 percent of all Internet traffic by 2021 will come from video. So, if your brand isn’t leveraging the power of this kind of content, then you’re already behind the competition.

Facebook and Snapchat have both surpassed eight billion daily video views and more than one billion YouTube users are viewing hundreds of millions of hours of online video every day.

Thus, it is not hard to see how social video can be a powerful tool for your business to connect with your audience. It has been well-documented that video posts attract the most engagement in terms of likes, comments, and shares on social.

If the thought of creating video content is a frightening concept for you, then fear not. With the advancements in smartphone technology, it is not necessary to have a film degree to make compelling and engaging social media video. Check out these tips to help you create compelling video content for social.

Plan what you want your videos to achieve

The process of creating videos for social requires an investment of time and money that you would want to see results on. Forming a comprehensive plan on what you would like to achieve from the start will aid you in forming content ideas, how to measure success, and how to make the most of your investment in video.

Each and every video you produce should be aligned with a business goal, for instance, creating brand awareness, generating leads, or driving entries to a contest.

Get creative

In order to stand out and capture your audiences attention, create videos which seek or educate, entertain, or inspire.

1. Aim to catch attention quickly: According to data from Wistia, the first 30 seconds of a social video is what matters most in order to get viewers to stick around. So make it exciting!
2. Keep it short and snappy: Short-format video has consistently proved to be better performing than long clips on social. Social media is all about immediate gratification; users are looking to consume content quickly. So keep your content short but engaging.

Increase your reach

How to distribute your video on social is just as important as the video content you create. Your video may have the most compelling content, but this would be useless if people aren’t watching.

1. Promote across all platforms: Publishing your video links across all of your social networks will enable people to discover your content and share with their own followers.
2. Stick to a consistent video format or theme: By having consistency in your videos, you will create brand awareness and familiarity. This will give your audience a reason to keep an eye out for your video content. This can be as simple as having the same host, a unique sense of humor, or consistent visuals.
3. Re-purpose popular content into video form: Creating videos based on content that has already experienced success on social is an effective way to capitalize on the hype and keep the momentum going. Popular blog posts, tweets, or photos can be transformed into engaging video content or inspire future content ideas.

Build a video community

While building video views are a crucial signal of success, what’s even more effective is growing your subscribers and followers. This will benefit your social video strategy in the long run. But how can you do this?

1. Engage with your viewers: The engagement of video comments can often be forgotten by social media marketers. Yet, a lot of valuable discussions can take place in these comments. Monitoring and engaging with then should become part of your daily social media routine.
2. Find and share videos from others: Your customers may be creating videos about your content which may be valuable for your audiences, such as tutorials and reviews. By sharing customer-content, this could increase trust in your brand.
3. Collaborate with influencers or publishers: Collaborations with brands or influencers can help increase the reach of your video. Moreover, if you utilize those influencers with a genuine interest in your product, their followers should also share these interests and values.

Track the ROI of your videos

Connecting the performance of your social videos to the bottom line of your business is fundamental in seeing results. This takes us back to the point of aligning your content to business goals, as this gives you a case to measure the success of your videos against.

For instance, if you include a promo code in your social video, you could directly track the number of times it was used to illustrate the video’s impact on your business sales.

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