When looking to get the most out of your business, your company needs to ensure it has enough rods in the fire—that you’re not putting all of your eggs into one basket. Rather than relying on traditional advertising such as USPS mail flyers, billboards, and radio advertisements, your business needs to build an online presence.
An online presence can be fostered in numerous ways. Whether you’re exploring social media updates or CRM emails, your company can easily create pathways to marketing success. If you’re looking to profit off the success of the times, it might be time to consider implementing a social video strategy.
Social video strategy is the creation of short- and/or long-form videos for social media platforms, created specifically for the audiences of each platform to garner greater user engagement. Sounds simple, but it can be a complicated venture. So, how does your company go about creating the best strategy? Let’s take a closer look.
Moving Beyond Your Business’s Website
Creating videos for your company’s website is a good start, but it won’t be enough to garner widespread attention with your niche audience. Unless your company receives regular website traffic, your website-uploaded videos will not perform as well as they could elsewhere. For this reason, it’s smart to move directly to social media platforms—but doing so requires you to better understand the platforms available to you.
Understanding Each Platform
- YouTube Video
The second-largest online search engine after Google, YouTube is designed specifically for video. Whether you want to create short or long videos, YouTube is there to support you. Getting a YouTube channel off the ground from nothing can be difficult, but, if you’re looking to increase brand awareness, then this is the perfect platform for you and your business.
- Facebook Video
Facebook has long been a great way of interacting with your audience, and the video support features have only increased its capabilities of getting in touch with your audience. Analytics capabilities make it easier to track your content, too, whether you’re looking to see the amount of audience engagement, minutes watched, or affiliate conversions, if your company is exploring such an avenue.
- Twitter Video
Short, impactful videos work best on Twitter, where users are quickly scrolling through the feed without much thought. You want something that clearly states its message and gets a person’s attention without having to try too hard.
- Instagram Video
With the addition of IGTV, it’s become even easier to create and share videos with your audience, from mere minutes to more long-form content. If you’re posting to your profile’s feed, create content that is visually enticing and sure to captivate.
- TikTok and Byte Video
Designed for more short-form content, TikTok and Byte have both taken smartphone users by storm, offering them areas to create and share their own video content on a whim. With up to one-minute video available to TikTok users and six-seconds for Byte users, you have the ability to quickly get in touch with millions of people, sharing your brand directly with your niche. Both platforms are very meme-centric, so it might be in your best interest to get someone “hip” who can resonate with your desired audience without coming off as too outdated.
Remain Aware of Aspect Ratios
While working on your company’s videos, you need to remain aware of the social media platforms you plan on posting a video to. Not only is this imperative for the type of content you plan on publishing, but it’s also important while considering the dimensions of your edited and exported video. You want something that will look good on the platform, whether on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Provide a Narrative with Value
When creating a video, you need to ensure that the story is clear. A viewer should never walk away from your content wondering what the point of the experience was; it should be apparent what you want to tell your viewer. Along with having a clear narrative, it should be a story that provides the viewer with the sense that they’re walking away with something beneficial.
Whether it’s knowledge or information about your products and services, a viewer should feel like they received something of worth after watching one of your videos. Video that bring about an emotion within viewers will be extremely memorable. Whether they can laugh, relate, or feel inspired they will be more likely to take action or share it to a larger audience.
Create Snappy, Time-Conscious Content
Even if a platform like IGTV and YouTube allow for long-form video content, you shouldn’t go overboard. Keep videos as simple as possible. While some videos might require more time for story exploration, you should never allow your content to wander. Have a dedicated editor on staff you can make sure your videos remain as tight and to the point as possible. The attention span of viewers is getting increasingly shorter, so if a video drags on they will quickly lose interest.
Always End with a Call To Action (CTA)
Just as you should leave your audience feeling as if they walked away with some sort of knowledge, viewers should have a feeling to do something else once your video is done. Whether it’s heading off to save the world or give your products and services a closer look, a viewer should have a sense of action following the viewing.
This is especially important for brands looking to increase engagement, whether through branded content or affiliate marketing. Something as simple as providing a prompt to share your video with others or check out your website can make for great growth.
Use Analytics to Track Performance
Most of all, make use of the tools at your disposal. Analytics is a great way to track the performance of your videos, especially when trying out new formats. A/B testing can also be implemented to see what type of video resonates best with your audience. Make the most of what you and your business have at your disposal. Rather than relying on just one pathway, take the time to explore multiple avenues, including social video.
About the author
Nick is a digital strategist with over twelve years’ experience in planning and executing marketing plans for B2C/B2B brands. Currently, he’s the Marketing Manager for Refersion, the advanced affiliate marketing platform that helps brands manage, track, and grow their affiliate network.
Nick Stamoulis says
Video content presents many opportunities for businesses of all sizes. The different forms of video content can be used to target different audience segments and can be a valuable way to showcase what your business is all about.
drewfrie says
Here, you will see the total number of video views, total number of 10-second views, and the most viewed videos on your Page. You can customize the timeframe in the upper-right corner of the page and adjust the breakdown of the video views in the upper-right corner of each panel.