You Still Have Time to Add Video to Your 2017 Social Media Strategy

January 9, 2017SOCIAL LISTENING, SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Let’s put it like this: If you haven’t started planning, or at least exploring, to utilize videos as a significant part of your social media campaigns, start.

 

Because stats like this from eMarketer.com will tell you there’s no better time than now:

 

“Video will be the fastest-growing content category on mobile, desktop and everywhere else through at least 2020, and as a result digital-video ad spending will rise from $9.90 billion in 2016 to $28.08 billion in 2020.”

 

Not convinced, yet? This one might scare you a little more into making moves:

 

“In 2017, more brands will move dollars from traditional advertising toward social media platforms, which in turn should increase the quality of video and other content types that brands share on social media.”

But you haven’t run out of time. Even though you might be playing catch-up with brands that are already wielding the power of videos, there are plenty of tools and tips at your disposal.

 

The main issue is starting because there can be so many moving parts at work here, especially if you want to create a video that looks professionally done, which is what you should be doing. Many marketing agencies probably won’t have members of their team experienced in this field.

Little did they know that video ads and posts on social media wouldn’t be a fad, but a trend.

 

In fact, the most experience they’ll have will be limited to Snapchat and Instagram. But that’s not all bad. We’ll get to that later.

 

The issue now lies in social media teams learning several new jobs; directing, filming, scriptwriting, film editing, and graphic design just to name a few. And that’s only if you want your videos to look semi-professional. A video worthy of a TV spot would need expensive sound equipment, lighting, space, and the time needed to put all of this together.

Here’s a way to solve that last problem: Whatever your social media team is doing now, tell them to forget it. Videos are here and they’re the way of the future. Cisco predicts that “79% of all global consumer internet traffic will come from video by 2018.”

 

As for the other issues, you don’t need a professional set to make a video-driven social media campaign work. In fact, tech experts saw this coming. Over the past two or so years, major brands have taken advantage of the video craze and use short, high-quality videos to sell their product.

 

Samsung Mobile was at the forefront of this, which might explain the near 43 million Facebook followers.

 

For those without big marketing budgets and professional filming experience, however, tools have been created to help smaller marketing agencies with more modest funds.

 

Websites like Animoto are a huge help to newcomers and are even used by popular media outlets like The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. What Animoto allows users to do is to take a series of pictures and create a video montage complete with captions and even music. The two aforementioned online publications will use these montages to showcase photos from the event they’re reporting on and overlay the images with the main points from the event.

 

Here’s a great example from Huffington:

 

 

It’s essentially what I mentioned. It’s a slideshow with captions overlaying the images and diegetic music that fits appropriately with the somber tone of the story. This video undoubtedly received hundreds of thousands of views, tugged at the heartstrings of its audience, and likely created a larger impact than had it been a story.

 

We live in a microwave society where everyone wants their news delivered to them fast, regardless of the facts, and without too much critical thinking. Journalism has become a race to the bottom, where publications are simply pushing out headlines as fast as possible, regardless of whether all the facts are in or not.

 

It’s absolutely right to assume a video will have more impact on a user than an article. Videos, especially with sad music to set the right tone, add realism to a story that words sometimes cannot convey. Even when they could, a video is faster, easier, and will likely resonate more with the user.

 

You could write a 3000 word piece on how Syria came to be in the state it is today, which Huffington Post does, but it’s far, far more effective to just compile a slideshow and add some sad music and captions.

 

Making a video is even easier with the Lumyer app. All you need to do to make a video is to take an ordinary image, uploaded it to the app, add your own effects, and you have a 7-second looping video.

 

Adobe Spark Video, Flipagram, Ripl, and Legend are all tools that can be used to turn run-of-the-mill posts with a simple image into one with a dynamic video that stands out.

 

Now that we know how to make the video. What should we know to make it as appealing to our audience as possible?

Here’s some tips:

  1. Grab attention early
    1. Remember that point I made earlier about how easily distracted people are? And that they need their info spoon-fed to them as fast as possible? You need to capture viewers’ interest within the first 10 seconds (or less) or they’ll stop watching and move on to something else.
    2. “74% of total ad recall is achieved in 10 seconds of Facebook video campaigns.”
  2. Appeal to emotion
    1. Think back to the Huffington Post video. Consider all aspects of the video. Choose language, background music, and even fonts so they come together and match the feeling you’re trying to evoke.
  3. Attract attention without sound
    1. Simply consider your own experience online for this one. “85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound” and “80% of viewers react adversely to videos with automatic sound”. Now, I’m not saying to disregard sound altogether, but you should definitely use captions. Fortunately for you, captions on a Facebook video will generate automatically on a video under 5 minutes long.
  4. Add a logo
    1. “Choose a logo that is relatively small and unobtrusive and place it in a corner.” You want to make it easier for the users to associate the content with you.
  5. Feature calls to action
    1. “While viewers should get the idea of what you want to do just from the video, you should always have a clearly stated CTA.”
  6. High Quality
    1. Nobody wants to watch a pixelated video or hear garbled sound. It’s 2017. We’re well past those days. Always ensure your videos are in HD and that your sound is devoid of background noise.
    2. The same goes for videos that buffer. Did you know “4 out of 5 users will click away if the video stalls while loading”?
  7. HIGH ENERGY
    1. Nobody wants to watch somebody boring, either! Be exciting and engaging! Act like you really want to talk about the subject at hand. People want to watch somebody who is excited about what they’re promoting, so that they have equal reason to be excited, too.
  8. Sharing is Caring
    1. Every piece of content you create should be focused on getting it shared. Just think of EVE: 
      1. Educate
      2. Value
      3. Entertainment
        1. Your post, whether it’s a video or not, should always be focused on these three principles of a social media post.

 

You can, in fact, go beyond this by going Live, specifically using Facebook LIVE. The real-time communication of LIVE allows for constant communication and engagement between the brand and users, thus cultivating trust via authenticity.

 

Why should you take this approach? Because “people spend 3X longer watching video which is Live compared to video which is no longer live.”

 

Plus, native uploads allows you to upload videos directly to Facebook through your mobile or desktop, and keeps original content exclusive to Facebook. Uploading the video directly to FB is much more appealing than posting to YouTube first and then linking it on a FB post.

 

I know it’s a lot to digest, but don’t panic. You’ve read this article so you’re already on the right track. Do as much research as you need to, get the tools you need, and start planning out your strategy for the year.

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