Social media marketing is without a doubt one of the most powerful ways to reach new customers, engage current customers and spread the word about your product or service. While text-based posts or posts containing images can be great, videos often provide the most benefits.
Videos are engaging and can capture the attention of people better than any other medium. Unfortunately, not every video-based marketing strategy will be a huge success. In an effort to help you out, this article is going to go over five tips to help you build a successful social media video marketing strategy.
Identify Your Goals and Plans Ahead of Time
The first part of any successful marketing strategy, video or otherwise, is to identify your goals for the campaign. What do you want these videos to accomplish? Do you want them to sell a product or service? How about generate more engagement or gain followers? Once you have your goals laid out, it is time to make a plan.
For example, if your goal with your social media marketing videos is to build brand awareness, your videos should focus on explaining what your company does, what you believe in, and how you plan on helping people. This video idea in particular would be in the awareness stage of the marketing funnel, but videos can be used at any stage of the funnel. That is, as long as they are targeted at that stage.
If you simply make some videos and send them out without aligning them with your goals or plans, they aren’t likely to provide as much value as they could have.
Optimize the Videos For Mobile
While plenty of people use social media on their computer, it is far more common for people to browse Twitter, Instagram and Facebook on their mobile devices. Because of this, you need to make sure your videos are optimized for mobile. If your videos don’t look good on mobile, a lot of people simply aren’t going to watch them, which will limit their overall effectiveness.
Be sure to look here if you want some assistance when it comes to making your videos for social media. Also, with many people having audio off when watching videos in their social media feeds, adding some text overlays or finding another way to ensure people can understand the video without audio is a good idea.
In addition to optimizing the videos visually, you should also optimize them in terms of SEO. Make sure to tag the video with relevant keywords and hashtags. Also, ensure you write a detailed and unique description and title for the video, to encourage people to view it.
Ensure the Videos are the Right Length
The length of a video on social media is also an important thing to keep in mind. People have short attention spans when scrolling on social media, and if your video is too long, many people simply won’t watch. The sweet spot differs from platform to platform but is generally somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute.
In order for your video to be this short, you need to ensure the messaging is clear and the video gets to the point. If it takes too long to get into the meat and potatoes of the video, people will simply click away and move on to the next post. A good strategy is to use teasers or engaging graphics and colors near the beginning of a video to hook viewers. The video should instantly show or tell people why they should continue watching.
Make Sure the Video Provides Value and is Engaging
While the goal of the video is often to market a product or service, you still want to make sure the video is engaging and provides value. No one is going to spend time watching a video that is essentially a long and drawn out ad. You need to find ways to ensure the video is entertaining, valuable or engaging.
There are several different types of video ideas that you can use to entertain and ensure the video has value. You could make a how-to or tutorial video, tell a relatable story, feature customer testimonials, demonstrate products or even feature videos created by your customers. When it comes to engaging your audience, it is a good idea to appeal to their emotions.
If a video can appeal to someone emotionally, it will stick with them longer than a video that didn’t. Your video could make people happy, excited, scared or even sad in some cases. It should tell a story, while also showing the importance of the message you are trying to convey. Remember, your goal is to put the story above the sale. If people can remember your video and what it stands for, it did its job.
Don’t Forget to Use Data
Data plays an incredibly important role in social media video marketing campaigns. The data, such as likes, view counts, shares and conversions can help judge the effectiveness of a strategy and how well it resonated with your audience. Once the campaign is over and the videos have been posted and viewed, be sure to consult the data.
You should have had goals in mind at the start of the campaign and viewing the data should tell you whether you reached them or not. The data can also give you a good visualization of what things could be improved for next time. If you don’t have previous data of your own from past strategies or campaigns, feel free to see how similar videos to yours have performed for your competition.
This data can also help you if you are experimenting with different types of videos. They can help you see which videos got the most views, how long people watched them for and which type provided you the best ROI.
There is no doubting the benefits that a good social media video marketing strategy can have for your business. Whether you optimize the videos for mobile or use any other tips we mentioned, we hope this article has been able to help you create and implement a great social media video marketing strategy.
