Social media is a powerful marketing tool that businesses can use to attract customers, promote products and services, interact with their audience and create stronger brand recognition. The key to social media marketing, however, is to generate a strong following, because without followers there’s no one to see your business. While there are countless ways to attract followers, one of the most effective is video. If you’re a business owner who’s looking to create a stronger social presence for your organization, consider the following tips.
Choose the Right Networks
First and foremost, you need to choose the social media networks on which you’ll post videos. Facebook is undoubtedly the most popular network, reaching more than 2 million users every month. However, there are other social media networks available, and including them in your video marketing strategy can help you attract more followers. Twitter and Instagram, for instance, both support video. The former even has a separate service designed specifically for live video streams, Periscope.
Consider which networks are used most frequently by your business’s target audience, as these will yield the greatest response for your videos.
30 to 60 Seconds
In addition to choosing the right networks on which to post your videos, you should make your videos 30 to 60 seconds long for maximum engagement. According to a study conducted by Kinetic Social, nearly half of social media videos 30 to 60 seconds long are viewed to completion. In comparison, videos that were just 30 seconds or less were only watched to completion 26% of the time. And videos that were two minutes or longer saw a 31% completion rate. These statistics indicate that 30 to 60 seconds is the “sweet spot” for social media videos.
Call-to-Action
You can boost the marketing value of your social media videos by including a call-to-action (CTA). If you’re looking to attract more followers on social media, for instance, you can ask viewers to follow your profiles and pages. And with a little post-production editing, you can even include the URLs to your respective social media accounts in the video. An otherwise simple CTA such as this can prove invaluable in attracting followers and growing your business’s presence on social media.
Upload Videos Directly to Facebook
There are several methods available for publishing video content on Facebook, one of which is to upload the video to YouTube and post a link to the URL on Facebook. However, a better approach is to bypass YouTube and upload your videos directly to Facebook instead. According to a study conducted by Quintly, videos uploaded directly to Facebook perform up to 400% better than videos published from other platforms. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should avoid publishing your videos to YouTube; rather, consider uploading them to both platforms. Sharing videos as a link on Facebook isn’t as effective as uploading the actual video to your Facebook Page.
Focus on the New Style of Corporate Video
Not long ago, corporate videos were largely designed around cheesy, fake themes. Rather than showcasing their own corporate headquarters with their actual staff, for instance, companies would produce videos showing generic locations with paid actors and actresses. Alternatively, some would buy “stock video” clips to use in their own productions. Regardless, these archaic corporate videos have since gone the way of the dinosaurs, paving the way for more genuine videos.
The new style of corporate video emphasizes the importance of authenticity. Rather than paid actors and actresses — whom aren’t related to the company — business owners are now producing videos featuring their own employees at their own headquarters. This creates a more genuine corporate image to which viewers can relate. With the old style, viewers could easily see the videos were fake, so they were often reluctant to buy the company’s product or service.
Capture Viewers’ Attention in the First 4 Seconds
It’s not uncommon for social media users to click “play” on a video, only to watch the first few seconds before exiting. They are essentially testing the waters to see if the video offers any real value. If it doesn’t spark their interest, they’ll exit and move on elsewhere. Therefore, it’s important to capture the viewers’ attention within the first four seconds of your video. Once you get the viewer hooked, he or she will likely watch the rest of your video.
Consider Subtitles
Why should you include subtitles in your videos? Well, statistics show that up to 85% of all videos posted on Facebook are watched without sound. This means most Facebook users simply click the “play” button while leaving their speakers turned off. If your video relies on sound to convey its message, it’s not going to offer much benefit or value. A simple solution, however, is to add subtitles to your videos. Even if a user watches your video with his or her sound turned off, they’ll still the words spoken as a caption at the bottom of the video.