Without a doubt, social media video marketing has become the cornerstone of long-term marketing plans. In 2019, 87% of companies use video content to promote their respective brands.
Social media allows users to share text, images, GIFs and video content with their friends. However, video content has become the most popular type to share on these platforms.
After Google, you may be surprised to learn that YouTube is the second most popular website in the world. This is due to the popularity of video content in general, and other social media platforms are moving in that direction.
Growing your social media marketing campaign in 2019 means growing your video content offering. Here are 9 easy ways to grow your social media video marketing efforts.
Video Content Is The Future of Social Media
If you thought social media was a fad, you were wrong. Social media is here to stay, and you need to do everything possible to grow your presence in the field.
In particular, video content.
Video content receives 12 times the amount of shares that traditional images do. On top of this, 92% of mobile user will share a video they just watched with friends.
With this information, it is safe to say that video content will perform better than using images. However, video content is harder to create, which can make it difficult and expensive in some cases.
Quality Is More Important Than Quantity
Since it can be expensive to create quality video content, you may think that shorter less detailed videos are the way to go. But your only half right.
Shorter videos perform better on social media platforms than longer ones.
Only 20% of visitors will actually finish long blogs and a similar trend can be seen in video content. Even many YouTubers feel as though they are successful if an audience watches more than 50% of video content.
How long should your video be?
Videos that are around the 2-minute mark get a higher level of engagement from viewers. Why is this the case? Remember, most video content is viewed on a mobile device.
Thus, watchers are on the go and cannot stare at their phones for long periods of time. On top of this, they would also need to worry about the battery life of their device as well as data overcharges depending on a person’s mobile network.
However, while shorter videos perform better, quality is what counts. Regardless of the length, the video needs to look and sound great.
How To Grow Social Media Video Marketing
This will not tell you how to make video content, but it will tell you how to use the content you have.
1. Native Video Content
To save time, you may initially upload your video on YouTube and then try to share that video link across the various platforms. Overall, that is a huge mistake.
In the past, when you used a YouTube link on Facebook, it would play automatically. At the time, it kept you on Facebook which was a good thing, but today that isn’t the case. Today, this isn’t as much of an issue.
Facebook and other social media platforms now have their own native video players. And if you want to get the best results, using the native player will help.
As you can imagine, these platforms want to push their own content and reduce the reach of other platforms like YouTube.
Thus, their internal algorithms will make sure they prioritize native videos.
2. Share Short Videos
Remember how shorter videos around the 2-minute mark had the highest levels of engagement? Well, sharing those types of videos is the best way to grow.
But why is it this way?
Social media users are looking for 3 key things when using a platform:
- To be entertained
- View content without wasting time
- Keep up with the latest news and trends in their field of interest
You want to keep your video content within these guidelines. Social media users are very likely to scroll past a text post and instead watch a video about something else.
For this reason, if you have something to say put it into a short video.
However, it is important to be clear that longer videos do have a place, just not on social media platforms.
3. Live Streams
Streaming is rapidly growing and many businesses are beginning to take part in it. Streaming is live video that is often associated with gaming on the Twitch platform. However, that is beginning to change.
Platforms like YouTube and Facebook have rolled out their own live video services called YouTube Live and Facebook Live respectively.
Live streaming is completely different than standard video content. There is no editing and what you say during a live stream is what people will hear. While live streaming, you can freely interact with your viewer’s comments.
While setting up streaming equipment may be expensive the first time, that equipment will continuously be reused. Thus, it is best thought as an investment instead of a cost.
However, to get the most out of streaming you need an established audience.
4. Grab Their Attention
It’s no secret that humans have a short attention span. Many websites claim that humans have a shorter attention span than goldfish, but not everyone is in agreement.
In the first 10 seconds, you need to capture the watcher’s attention. Thus, you need to make sure that all of your social media video ideas revolve around an interesting beginning.
How you do it is completely up to you. This can be accomplished with funny animations, great cinematography, or some other means. Just make sure that it catches their eyes and ears to stay engaged.
Without it, you will be losing a lot of sharing potential.
5. Create Tutorial Videos
Tutorial videos are some of the most shared videos in social media. They can significantly help you connect with your target audience.
How is that?
For starters, if you offer products or services, making short tutorials that highlight what your goods can do is a great way to get people interested.
Of course, you may not sell any products directly, but that isn’t a problem. It can also help connect visitors to your topic of choice.
For example, let’s say you want to run a green blog.
Creating a short video on how to save energy in your household or business is something that is quick and easy. It connects your audience with the topic they like and it’s a tutorial.
6. Avoid Hard Selling Tactics
The first thought of every business is how do I use video content to sell products. I can assure you that using hard selling tactics like infomercials will not work well on social media platforms.
Remember how visitors like to be entertained? Most users dislike ads and even go as far as installing ad blocking software. Making a video with only the intention of informing and selling products will not work in 2019.
Take a second and imagine what you would do if you went on Facebook and saw a video about someone trying really hard to get you to buy something.
How fast do you close the video?
Instead, you need to focus on telling a story or adding your own personal touch to videos. These elements make your video content unique and help them stand out.
7. Behind The Scenes
Did filming a scene take multiple attempts? Have some funny bloopers to share? If so, that is the kind of material that people love to watch in behind the scenes videos.
Blockbuster films and YouTube stars do it, so why shouldn’t you? These kinds of videos make it clear that real people created these videos. However, these shouldn’t just be limited to bloopers.
If you run a business, consider filming some day-by-day operations. Only write blogs? No problem, make a funny video about struggling with writer’s block.
These are videos that don’t require a large amount of effort but can bring in great views.
Use these types of videos to showcase the playful side of your business and highlight your personality.
8. User-Generated Content
Run out of video ideas? Looking to engage with your audience? Why not create a marketing campaign that tasks your audience with submitting their own video content under a hashtag?
Let’s look at the benefits:
- Little Investment
- Allows you to engage with your audience
- Encourages video sharing on multiple platforms
User-generated content is a great way to involve your community with the materials they read or watch. While you may have great social media videos for business planned, you might be surprised by the direction a visitor will take.
People love free stuff. By offering an incentive like a sum of cash or product giveaway, users could generate hours of video content and give you plenty of brand exposure in the process.
It’s a win-win situation and is great for an established audience as well as building a new one.
9. Use A Call To Action
Before you begin posting on a single platform, you need to have a strategy in place. Obviously, you want the audience to interact with the content of your posts. This can be in the form of buying products, signing up for services or sharing your content.
To have them do so, you need to use a very clear call to action. This has been made easier as social media has grown.
Facebook, in particular, has streamlined the process to add a call to action. This may seem insignificant, but there is a lot of use in doing so.
For example, since we are talking about video content, let’s say you want more of the videos to be watched. The perfect call to action would be “Watch More.”
Perhaps you could end the video with, “Don’t forget to share this video with friends and family,” or another type of action.
However, this isn’t exclusive to video content. Regardless of your content medium, there should be a call to action in place.
Create Great Content
These tips should help you plan out a successful social media marketing strategy, but they are all worthless if the content itself is bad. Let’s face it, if your videos are bad, they will not be shared.
Would you want to share a video with your friends that you didn’t enjoy?
Maybe as a prank, but for the majority of people, the answer is no.
The first and most obvious step of any video strategy is to make a good video. It’s all about what the audience wants to absorb in terms of content.
If no one is searching for it, no one is going to watch it. Focus on what the target consumer is looking for in search and how they interact with the material you’ve already created.
In Conclusion
There are multiple ways to create and share video content in 2019, and it can be daunting to get the exposure you want. However, by following these tips, you should find it much easier to steadily grow your social media video content.