Social media is an incredibly valuable tool for businesses of all shapes and sizes. With billions of users, it is the perfect place to connect with your audience, build credibility,y and establish yourself as an expert. No matter your industry or the size of your company, you should have a profile on all of the major platforms, and remain fairly active on them.
But in addition to using it to foster a community and engage with your active customers or readers, social media can also be a good tool for reaching new customers. Companies already spend tens of billions of dollars on social media ads in the USA alone. In particular, social media video marketing is a great tactic you should be using.
Video content on social media often gets shared more often, viewed for longer and the human brain generally processes visuals much faster than text. Many people would simply rather watch something than read it. While text-based marketing on social media is certainly viable, it would be a mistake to disregard video.
These videos can be product tutorials, traditional commercials, how-to videos, sneak peeks of products, behind-the-scenes content and even live video. These many choices mean you can share and convey your message in any way you see fit. Also, in a way that your audience and viewers will appreciate.
When it comes to video marketing on social media, there are several possible strategies that companies can utilize to improve their video marketing ROI and success rate. But which are the best that can take your video marketing efforts to the next level? Well, that’s exactly what this article is going to take a closer look at. Read on as we go over some of the best strategies to achieve success with your social media video marketing.
#1. Have a Detailed Plan in Place
The first, and likely most important, strategy for successful video marketing campaigns is to have a plan. Your plan should always begin with setting your goals. One company might have the goal of these video ads building sales, while another might want them to get more email list sign-ups, more social media followers, or more visitors to their website. There is no right or wrong answer for what your goal should be.
After your goals are set, be sure you have a good idea of who your target audience is. If you are targeting senior citizens who like to go for walks, your strategy will likely be different than if you are targeting teens who enjoy playing video games. Know who is likely to use your product or service, and ensure your video ads speak to them and are easy to relate to and understand.
Next, you need to choose the types of videos you want to create. As we mentioned earlier, this could be a how-to video, a standard commercial, a product test, and several others. Some strategies can also involve creating a few different kinds of videos, as well. Also, be sure to think about the platform it will be posted on. Videos that will be successful on one platform may not be on another. However, if the videos are relatively general and fit within any platform, repurposing videos can also be a good idea at times.
Next, you need to create your videos. The amount of time and energy this will take depends on their length, complexity, and quality. Some can take as little as a few hours, while others may take days. You want to ensure the visuals look good and are clear, and that the audio is crisp. Getting things like the lighting right is also crucial to a quality video. Even if your video is fairly casual, you still want to take time and use quality equipment to seem as professional as possible.
Once created, you need to either post your videos or put them on the schedule to be posted in the future and hope they succeed. While this is a far-from-detailed plan, it should provide a good outline for the type of plan you should attempt to create or follow.
#2. Optimize Your Videos
However, we haven’t mentioned arguably one of the most important parts of your videos, and that is how well they are optimized. When people hear SEO (search engine optimization), they generally think of written content. But the truth is that SEO can have a major impact on video content, too. Just like with text posts, strong SEO can help your videos rank higher and get more eyes.
There are several important things you should remember to do when optimizing your video to give it the best chance at achieving success. First of all, you need to have a strong title for the video. It should give viewers an idea about what they are watching and be exciting and captivating to convince them to click and watch. It also couldn’t hurt to include a quality keyword or two.
The caption should certainly include a couple of keywords you’d like to rank for, and should also tell a story and explain what is happening in the video. Of course, watch out and make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing, and all keywords fit and sound natural.
Depending on the platform, you may also need a thumbnail for your video. It should include a visual, picture, or situation that entices people to click on and watch the video. Also, the length of the video is something to keep in mind. Every platform is different in terms of what length is good, but generally, a shorter video is better. People have short attention spans and if they go too long, many people will click away. Ensure the first few seconds of the video hooks viewers, too. Of course, give yourself enough time to get your message across successfully.
Hashtags are another wonderful inclusion to better optimize your videos. When using hashtags, there are generally two types. There are high-ranking hashtags and low-ranking hashtags. In most cases, you want to use a bit of both to give yourself the best chance of reaching people. If you only use high-ranking tags, your video could easily be overshadowed by dozens of other posts containing the same tags. But if you use only low-ranking ones, your video simply may not get seen enough to be successful.
Since many people scroll through social media with their audio off for videos they see in their feed, having subtitles is a good idea. This can ensure even those who have their audio muted will be able to see and understand what is going on. People greatly appreciate not having to turn on their sound in public to know and follow what is going on in a video.
Even something as seemingly simple as choosing the correct aspect ratio can have a significant impact on how well-received and popular your video will become. Simply put, taking the time to optimize your video can easily help it take the next step from good to great.
#3. Don’t Disregard the Importance of Measuring Success
Once the videos are created, optimized, and shared, you may think that your work is done. However, that is not the case. You also need to measure your success. This is generally done by looking closely at the analytics of the platform (or platforms) where the video content was posted and shared to.
The types of analytics you should look at include how many people viewed the video, how long the average person viewed it, how they found it, who watched the video, and who visited your site or profile after viewing. All can provide beneficial information and guidance for future campaigns.
From this type of information, you will be able to see whether the videos did as well as you wanted them to. Whether they did or didn’t, you should be able to see why. This can help you when it comes to how you handle the creation, optimizing, and posting of video ads in the future. Generally, it is the smartest to prioritize the content that achieved the best results and invest the most in those areas.
If you skip this step or disregard it, you may never know how successful a campaign was and which types of videos performed the best. The analysis of this data is crucial to understand which kind of videos, and even which platform, your audience seems to resonate with the most. While it might seem like a lot of work, many platforms make their analytics very easy to find, read and understand.
Social media video marketing is a crucial part of your overall marketing strategy and a great way to reach and engage with new customers. Without taking advantage of it, you are missing out on a potential gold mine.
We hope that the strategies outlined within this article have been able to take your social media video marketing to new heights.
About the Author!
Wendy Dessler is a super-connector who helps businesses like SkedSocial to find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition.
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