500 million hours of video are watched each day across all social media platforms (lilachbulock). That’s a lot of videos being watched! People love watching social media videos so much that by 2019, internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic (Cisco). Videos are increasingly having more impact in our daily lives and it’s more important than ever before to incorporate creating videos into your content marketing strategy.
Videos Increase Social Media Engagement
83% of consumers would consider sharing video content with their friends (Hubspot). Because people love to share video it’s possible to get a significant amount of reach. The ease of watching, commenting, and sharing all on one platform means more engagement.
Social Media marketers know that by incorporating video marketing into a small businesses social media strategy, their clients will get great results.
Tips to help you increase your social media engagement:
- Include a call to action in one or both your video and post copy.
- Consider live streaming on one of your social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Live streaming gets the best organic (free) engagement.
- Keep your video short and sweet. Keeping your short videos on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to no more than 1 minute is ideal. It’s also less work for you to create one video that can be shared on all your social networks.
- Create square videos rather than the standard 16:9 ratio videos. Square videos can be used on every social media platform except when uploading a YouTube video. There are several ways to create square videos. You can either do it through video editing apps such as Videoshop, Clips or Animoto. You can also create them with video editing software such as Camtasia (by TechSmith).
- Considering 85% of those who view video on social media actually turn the sound on, you want to make sure your videos are watchable without sound. Use closed captions when possible and don’t just be a talking head. Consider the environment you are filming your video in. Make it look interesting enough to encourage them to turn the sound on.
Social Media Video Helps Build Brand Authenticity and Authority
Bottom line, there is an incredible amount of noise on social media and there are so many other competing brands vying for your ideal clients attention. Finding ways to build authenticity and authority are key to winning potential clients and sets your brand apart from theirs. Creating content that is informative and educational such as a social media video could really help to build your brands authority through an authentic approach. Potential customers can visually see you and experience you through your video.
Adding video to your content strategy enables you to quickly and easily explain anything and everything. Verbally explaining something makes it easier for people to understand what it is you’re talking about.
To build authority you have to communicate that you know your industry and know what you’re talking about. By using videos you can share your industry knowledge and establish yourself as the expert.
Try these social media video ideas:
- Behind the Scenes – If you have something cool to highlight, show it off.
- New Product or Service Teaser – This is a perfect way to drum up excitement.
- Show Your Professionalism – tip videos work wonders for this idea
- Product Tutorial or How To Videos
- Testimonials from Clients
- Live Videos at your events
Videos Get More Sales Conversions
You only have a few seconds to get users attention and their engagement. One of the easiest and most effective ways to hook people in is with a great video.
Videos are preferred by search engines, and more often than not show up at the top of a search engine results page. Adding videos to YouTube could also help you rank higher in Google and help to draw in more organic traffic. In fact, videos bring in the most organic traffic with a 157% increase from search engines (Storyme). This means a lot of conversions and clicks for your business.
Incorporate these tips into your video strategy to gain more conversions.
- Make your video short and immediately entertaining. Viewers will lose interest if it’s too long and boring. Ideally keep your video to no more than 90 seconds.
- Find a way to be authentic and instill trust in your viewer. Stay away from creating videos that are overly salesy.
- Try video ads. They are a perfect way to get more eyeballs on your content, target your ideal customer and refer business to your website.
- When recording your video be sure you have good lighting, sound quality and incorporate your branding throughout the video.
Video Connects Your Brand With Your Ideal Customer
Wondering how you can connect with your ideal customer? Video is a perfect way to do this.
Using video in your social media content strategy allows your brands personality to show, thus allowing customers to see your more authentic side. Customers can connect more easily with your brand, and only the interested ones will continue to watch and engage.
Brands that really know themselves do this well and do their potential customers a favor by offering up content that connects with them. The company Patagonia is a perfect example of a company who connects with their ideal customer through their mission statement, “We’re in business to save our home planet.” Their mission of being environmentally conscious connects with consumers who feel the same way. How much you want to bet they use video in their social media marketing strategy?
The use of social media video is not going away anytime soon and its impact on social media continues to grow. It’s easier now than ever before to create good quality videos. If you have a smartphone then you have just about everything you need; a video camera, and access to many affordable apps (if not free) to help you capture, create and edit your video. If you want to get a little more technical, then consider purchasing video editing software for your computer. Don’t wait…get in the game and start using video in your social media strategy today.
We personally LOVE ? using WAVE.VIDEO for all of our creative video work.
Why do we love it?
- WAVE.VIDEO is very easy to use
- Your videos will come out looking professional and branded
- WAVE.VIDEO has lots of stock videos and images you can use + you can also upload your own videos and images to customize things.
- WAVE.VIDEO has all the canvas options needed to get your message out there across all social media options. You can create 1:1 Square, 16:9 Horizontal, 4:5 Vertical, 9:16 IG TV videos.
? We recommend you give Wave.Video a try! We tried it and fell in love with it so much that we are now an affiliate for their company. Let us know what you think.
