Lilach Bullock — June 18, 2019 — June 18, 2019
We’ve all heard it – time and time again – video is all the rage right now. And that is especially true of social media. From visual platforms like Instagram who are now embracing video even more than images to the more serious of platforms, like LinkedIn, all social networks are clearly all about videos right now. As a business though, it can seem difficult at first glance to come up – and deliver – a great social media video marketing strategy.
But…it doesn’t have to be.
In this blog post, I’m going to talk about video marketing for business or more specifically, how to leverage social media videos for better results for your business.
Use social media videos to aid with your marketing goals
What are your social media marketing goals? What are your overall marketing goals? Social media videos can help you reach these goals faster – if you use them the right way.
Before you start creating any videos, it’s best to consider these objectives so that you can come up with the right video marketing strategy that will ultimately help you grow your business.
For example, if your goal was to boost trust in your business, then you should share videos that provide real value to your audience, such as how-to videos and videos with useful tips, along with video case studies, behind the scenes videos and other similar types of videos that help build trust. Or, if you wanted to boost your social selling, then you’d need to take a different route: more product-related videos showcasing the value of your products or services as well as the benefits they would bring to your target audience.
So to start with, write down a list of your marketing goals to help you develop a video content strategy based on actual objectives.
What kinds of videos should you create?
Now that you’re clear on what you want to achieve with social media marketing and your social videos, here are the types of videos you can create for each main social media objective:
Boost your social media traffic
One of the biggest reasons for using social media is, quite simply, to drive more traffic. And video can be of great help with that:
- Use videos to promote your blog posts: instead of using an image when promoting your blog posts on social media, you can do one better: use a short video. It can be anything from a super-short GIF to a 1-minute video promoting the highlights from the article. For example, here’s how Hubspot uses video to promote their posts on Twitter:
Dear Sales Rep,
Your inability to focus on anything other than closing is hurting your bottom line.
Here’s what you can do about it: https://t.co/51XS0hJGd0 pic.twitter.com/cWJ9sCLUoc
— HubSpot (@HubSpot) March 25, 2019
- Educational videos: how-to videos, useful tips videos and other types of educational videos can be great for driving traffic – just direct them to relevant pages on your website where they can learn more
Boost your social selling
Social media is increasingly growing into its role as a great platform for selling, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and pretty much any other social network. What kinds of videos should you create to boost your social media sales?
- Product videos: basically any video that highlights one of your products or services. For example, GoPro are some of the masters at social media videos for business, often using video to highlight their products in action, while also promoting their top features, like in the video below:
- Explainer videos: showcase what your product can do by focusing on specific features – and explaining them in more detail.
- Case studies: another great way to show what your product can do is with a quick video case study: show viewers how they can use your product to achieve certain results or goals
For boosting engagement
Videos are also amazing at boosting customer and follower engagement – they help you reach more people, get more shares, and generate more likes and comments than other forms of social media content. To boost your own engagement through videos, here are some ideas to get you started:
- Videos that provide a lot of value to your audience: any video that provides real value has a greater chance of getting shared and generally, engaged with. For example, educational/how-to videos, recipes and videos with useful tips
- Funny videos: whether it’s a short video with a behind-the-scenes prank or a video with a cute pet, these types of videos are highly shareable
Useful tools for creating awesome social media videos
If you’re not exactly a filmmaker or designer, there’s no need to worry: there are plenty of easy-to-use video creation and editing tools, many of them with their own library of video stock footage – so no need to even film anything yourself. Below are some of my favourite video creation tools:
Wave.video
Wave.video is one of my favourite video creators for several reasons: the platform is super intuitive and easy to use, it has a huge library of free and paid video clips and images (although it’s worth mentioning you can upload your own too), it supports over 30 different formats (and you can easily change between formats) and it has a great selection of ready-made video templates for all kinds of occasions:
Plus, it’s completely free to use and even with the free plan, you can still watermark your videos.
Animoto
Animoto is another great video creation tool – not for animations though, as its name might suggest – that has numerous features that will certainly attract businesses. As with Wave.video, you can start from scratch or you can use templates/storyboards to create your video – and they have plenty of options for social media video marketing:
To customize your video, you can upload your own content (images and videos) or you can search for Getty stock footage within the app. Then, simply customize with your own branding and, if you get one of the paid plans, add your own watermark to the videos you create.
Vyond
Live action videos are great, but you also have the option to create beautiful animated videos, including whiteboard animations – if you use a tool like Vyond. And no, you don’t need to be an animator to create your own.
The tool is quite easy to use; you start by picking one of the templates or animation styles (unless you want to start from scratch) and then it’s all about customizing it to deliver the message you want delivered: add characters to your animation from the list of available characters, play around with their clothing and the actions they’re taking and add all kinds of other animated elements.
Conclusion
Video creation is now easier than ever, which makes it so easy for businesses of all sizes to get started – you just need the right plan and strategy and a good video creation and editing tool to help you create videos you want.
It’s that easy.
Do you use videos as part of your social media strategy? What kinds of videos perform best for you and what tools have you used to help create them?
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