Social Media Marketing Videos: Why your business needs to use them
We all know the power of using social media to boost your business brand and increase sales. But not every business owner realises that social media marketing videos are the most effective medium to use when it comes to increasing success on social platforms.
Here we explain why your business needs to be using social media marketing videos and how to use video content to make your business stand out from the crowd.
Why use video on social media?
Video is the most popular, and therefore the most influential, type of content on all social media platforms. Video content gets shared 12 times more on social media than text and image content put together. This means every time you post a video, it is 12 times more likely to reach a larger audience, increasing brand awareness among people who have previously never heard of your brand. This results in increased traffic to your website, more leads, and ultimately, more sales.
Social media users love to see video content from brands. Seventy-six per cent of users will share branded videos if they find them entertaining, and 87 per cent say they want to see more videos from their favourite brands.
This level of engagement is why 87 per cent of businesses now use video as part of their marketing strategy, and social media is the ideal place for sharing video content, as it enables you to reach new audiences and increase awareness of your brand among the audiences you need to reach.
But, for your social video strategy to be effective, you have to look at what makes video so powerful and create videos that people really want to watch.
What makes a good social media video?
There are a number of rules that a video needs to follow to be ideal for social media. You can see them all applied in the below example video, which we recently produced for the startup business ‘Makeovers in Melbourne’.
1. Keep it short
Videos produced for social media have to be short and snappy. The optimal length is one minute or less – the video for Makeovers in Melbourne is only 57 seconds in length.
There are various reasons why social media videos need to be short. Firstly, some platforms restrict the length of video content. For example, on Instagram, the maximum length a video can be is one minute. Even on other platforms which allow longer content, such as Facebook and YouTube, research shows that viewers’ attention begins to fall away after two minutes, so a video of one minute is ideal.
2. Tell the story visually
One of the reasons why video is such an engaging medium is because it can tell the story using moving images, graphics and music, as well as just words. This is essential for social media, as it is extremely visual in nature.
In our example above there is only a few seconds of dialogue at the beginning of the video. The rest of the story is told completely visually, with footage of the man’s makeover journey to the successful results at the end. The use of the red carpet and the helicopter give us clues that this is a high-end brand, and the man has been given celebrity treatment.
Remember, 85 per cent of videos on Facebook are watched without the sound on, so your video has to be able to tell its story successfully just using visual methods.
3. Have a clear call to action
The main point of a social media marketing video is to encourage the viewer to take a particular action after watching the video. This has to be spelled out clearly, so the viewer knows exactly what to do next.
In this case, the call to action is delivered in a graphic – “Book your experience now”, along with the email address and website of the business. This leaves viewers in no doubt of what is expected of them, and how to take the next step.
The video then concludes with another graphic of the business logo, to reinforce brand messaging, which is vitally important in a crowded marketplace like social media.
Find out more about social media marketing videos
It is obvious from all the evidence that using video as part of your social media marketing strategy is an effective and successful technique. If you would like to find out more about this topic, and how to have social media videos professionally produced for your business, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.