Your Guide To Social Video Marketing

You’d say that we were kidding if we told you that social video marketing is the magic beans for anybody who’s looking for success on social media. But trust us, we’re not. Videos are, single-handedly the most efficient method of conveying your objectives to your potential customers. And social video marketing is one of the most crucial components of marketing communications. Any social platform, be it Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or Youtube, needs to have good video content. And it is social video marketing that will increase customer engagement around that video content through social activity.

Moreover, video marketing is one of the most popular digital marketing trends.

Let us see how video content is gradually taking over the paradigm of marketing. As per research, almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every day. 100 million hours of videos are watched every day on Facebook. And 82% of users watch video content on Twitter. From 2016 to 2019, video marketing has come a long way and is supposed to account for almost 80% of the content on the Internet.

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Video marketing is growing even more rapidly than one might think. 54% of the Internet users prefer video content as opposed to other forms and it is important to understand the benefits that actually come with social video marketing.

Importance Of Social Video Marketing

Before investing in social video marketing, everybody wants to know if it’s worth it. And we’re here to tell you why the answer to that question is yes.

1. Increased Conversions And Sales 

According to surveys, 78% of users got more traffic on their website by using videos. Almost 69% of users generated more leads when they used video content and 54% of the users had increased sales. Customers are more likely to try a product when they see an explainer video that shows the working of the product. Placing videos on landing pages also help boost conversion rates.

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2. Improved ROI 

Almost 88% of video marketers are satisfied with their ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media. Video content has been known to grant the maximum ROI as compared to other forms of content. Even though it may not be the easiest or cheapest method of marketing, it offers the most return. 80% of marketers feel good about the ROI of video ads posted on social media. And the reason for the popular demand of video is its visual format.
Here’s a video campaign example that was undertaken by Always, for women. It doesn’t promote a product, but tackles the idea #LikeAGirl. The video was watched more than 90m times, engagement on social media was high and subscribers shot through the roof. Purchase intent grew by more than 50% among their target audience.

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3. Better Brand Awareness 

Video content is always more engaging and personal for the audience. If you want your brand to be more interactive and easily recognized, video content is the way to go.

4. Better Rankings

When you perform a Google search, it is Youtube videos that are most likely to show as top results. With more video content, you have better chances of ranking higher in these lists. You can add transcriptions to your videos, optimize the title and embed it to blog posts so as to help your rankings.

5. Increased Brand Loyalty 

Good video content fosters trust within your audience. A lot of people are skeptical about purchasing products online for the fear of fraud. Some people also refrain from online shopping because they feel that they do not understand the product. Video content helps them do that and gives them confidence. Infact, 57% of consumers say that videos helped them make a purchase they were earlier unsure about.

6. More Appeal To Mobile Users 

Smartphones are growing every day and people like to view content on the go. Naturally, it appears to be more feasible to watch a video about something, than read a pdf about it. Youtube reports that mobile users are growing by 100% a year.

7. Higher Social Share 

People are more likely to share a video that reflects an idea, an emotion, rather than just a product. Almost 76% of users said that would share a video with their friends if it was entertaining. Videos also increase social engagement by your audience.

Social Video Marketing – Best Practices

Now video marketing is not uni-dimensional. It has multiple elements that one needs to take care of, such as length, sound, subtitles, etc. Let us have a look at various social video marketing strategies for each social media platform and what you can do to optimize yours.

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Examples of Video Marketing Campaigns

Coca-Cola: The Last Customer – This campaign by Coca-Cola was one of the most personal and heartfelt video campaigns built around the holiday season. In the video, Coca-Cola treated the Philippines market to a Christmas campaign that gave more than 15000 people a surprise for the holidays. The video projected a more generous and trustworthy image of the brand to its users.

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GoPro: Fireman Saves Kitten – GoPro has always had very unique video content. They don’t only shoot it on their product itself but also tell beautiful stories through their videos. Go Pro has always tried to project themselves as adventurous but through this video, they also attempt to present themselves as sensitive and emotional.

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Social Video Marketing: Social Platforms

Social video marketing does not work in the same way across all social networks. Today, there are multiple networks and you can customize your content as per your preferred platforms. Here, we can deal with each network separately and learn how you can optimize your video content to its maximum.

Facebook Video Marketing 

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t make the best of Facebook Video Marketing. Facebook users absolutely love videos! Facebook users watch close to 3 billion videos every day, along with 16 minutes of video ads every month. Video ads capture the attention of your audience better than any other kind of content, and thus, boost engagement. Lastly, Facebook video ads also lead to more conversions. Let us look at the tips and strategies you can use to optimize your Facebook videos –

1. Keep The Video Short: It has been seen that videos between 30 seconds to 1 minute get the maximum customer engagement. Users often leave videos midway the moment a video exceeds the said time range. And like any other video ad, Facebook videos too need to be kept short. Facebook videos under two minutes are the most effective. Keep them short, crisp and informative.
2. The First Few Seconds Are The Most Important: If the first five seconds of your video are dry, there’s a much higher chance that your audience is going to drop your content immediately. So make sure to make the first few seconds count. Considering the intro template for idea brainstorming can help you hook viewers in those crucial first seconds and keep them wanting more!
3. Plan For Your Videos To Be Played Without Sounds: As absurd as this may seem, almost 85% of Facebook videos are played without sounds. Keep closed captioning and subtitles into consideration.
4. Schedule Your Videos For Maximum Viewership: When it comes to social media, every hour on the clock is not the same. There are some hours that ensure a higher viewership than others. Make sure you keep that in mind. For example, The highest click through rate occurs between 1 pm and 4 pm, peaking on Wednesdays at 3 pm. On the other hand, the worst time for posting appears to be on weekends, both before 8 am and after 8 pm.
5. Provide The Solution: You need to be able to define a problem and provide its solution in your video. Instead of talking about yourself, try to showcase a tool as a solution for the customer’s problem.
6. Call To Action Button: It makes a lot of difference if your video content actually offers a call-to-action at the end, which drives the customer to your intended place. Infact, a CTA within a video gets 380% more clicks than their normal sidebar CTAs.
7. Always Be Up-To-Date With Video Media Specs: You should always be up-to-date with the specs, sizes, dimensions, and ratios of all your social media videos. It is important to stay relevant. Customers today are always caught up with the latest trends and you need to do the same.
8. Optimization For SEO: There are a lot of ways by which you can improve your SEO settings. Make sure your titles and descriptions are unique and include relevant keywords. You should also enable embedding on your video in order to derive maximum SEO value from your video.
   Here are a few tips and practices that will help you utilize Facebook video marketing to its fullest potential. Apart from working on the actual video, there are a few pre and post-video strategies that you can put into action. You should always build your custom audience on the basis of manually uploaded data or API. And when you are done uploading your video, always try to re-target those customers.

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Mango’s Facebook ad is a great example of what an optimized video ad looks like! It’s a small 18 second video that combines a nice view, tells a story and highlights a celebrity.

Instagram Video Marketing

Slowly and gradually, Instagram has shifted from being about just pictures to all kinds of content. Videos are one of them. Videos can be shared on the Insta feed, added as stories, use live videos or as an IGTV for longer content. Before we talk about how, let’s talk about why you should invest in Instagram videos. Although photos surpass videos in terms of engagement, it is actually videos that are outperforming in terms of engagement numbers. The engagement numbers have reached up to 53% as opposed to the 46% of photos.

Now we will talk about two kinds of Instagram videos and some of the best practices for them.

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In-feed Instagram Posts 

The fact that your videos need to be short and personal applies to all video ads, and Instagram is no different. Some of the technical aspects that you need to take care of are –

1. Video length – 3 to 60 seconds
2. Video format – MP4
3. Videos are automatically played without sound. So make sure you’re covered there.
4. File size – Preferably, under 50 MB.
5. Aspect ratio – 1:1 or 1.9:1

You can either upload a pre-recorded video or record one on the spot. Instagram also allows you to trim it, edit it, add filters, all of that. You can even schedule your videos on Instagram. Here are a few extra tips from our side to help you optimize your Instagram video content –

1. Tell your audience a story. Your videos should have a beginning, a middle arc and an end. You should be able to understand your audience and present your product or service in a way that actually fits their life.
2. Choose an eye-catching, appealing cover for the video
3. Reply to all the comments as much as possible.
4. Your videos should be audience-focused.
5. Use external apps to edit your videos. Instagram options may be limiting you.
6. Use informative descriptions and relevant hashtags.

So that’s that for in-feed videos, let’s move on to story ads.

 Story Videos 

You have the same options for story videos. More so, you can also add stickers and gifts and texts to your videos.

1. Create trackable links so that you can trace the activities on your stories.
2. Keep your hashtags focused and selective!
3. Increase your visibility. Therefore, post multiple times a day.
4. The best ratio for an Instagram story is 9:16
5. Tell stories in a forwarded sequence.

This video ad by Oreo is exactly what you should be aiming for while trying to create a video ad on Instagram! It tells a story, it’s short, it even works without sound and it shows the product.

All of these tips are not only great for your video marketing strategy but also for getting followers! Using good hashtags, embedding your Instagram posts in blog posts, asking customers to share their photos, these are all great ways of shooting your followers from 0 to 10K! Also remember to allocate your resources. Before you get started with your video, plan. Decide on a budget, look at your equipment and tools, and most importantly, take time to design your content.

So here we wrap up with the Instagram section of the blog. Let’s head onto the next big thing: Twitter.

Twitter Video Marketing

Twitter is one of the most dynamic social media spaces. If you’re not quick enough, you can easily get lost. And almost 41% of Twitter users feel that Twitter is a great place to find good video content! So you need to be very careful with those –

1. Repurpose Existing Content: Find out which of your pre-existing content is performing well on your other platforms. Make a few adjustments to the video and use it on Twitter.
2. Keep your videos between 30 to 45 seconds.
3. Use videos that highlight celebrities or famous figures.
4. Keep the tweet copy short.
5. Be mobile-friendly.

Use humor and emotion – Customers relate more to jokes, funny anecdotes, and personal stories in videos, rather than factual monologues. So try to use more such content and retain their attention.

Mercedes Benz managed to send the message across in simply 40 seconds with a mere 2 words.

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You know better than to share impersonal, boring content. Just have fun with your Twitter videos, keep them quick. Just remember, people on Twitter will always see what’s on top.

And before we move on, do take a peek at this Twitter video ad by G-Suite. It is everything you’d been looking for today!

LinkedIn Video Marketing 

Since the launch of the LinkedIn native video in 2017, LinkedIn has time and again proven that it is more than just B2B content. Research has shown that these videos are five times more likely than any other form of content to start a conversation amongst LinkedIn members. So now you need to get on with it too!

Here are some tips and best practices for LinkedIn videos that we think you should definitely catch up on –

Follow the best practices for the technical aspects – Sound, length, structure, ratio, etc.

It’s great to start a series of videos on LinkedIn.

Make sure your content is informative. The demographics for a LinkedIn audience are very specific. So try to target your video content accordingly.

New technology and product videos work best on LinkedIn.

A Call-To-Action button is one of the most crucial elements of a LinkedIn video.

You can see an increase in viewerships if you place more recognizable people at the beginning of your video. It could be celebrities, local leaders, or even well-known employees, depending upon your budget.

This video by Code.org, “What Most Schools Don’t Teach” opens with a quote by Steve Jobs and is ironically followed by Bill Gates appearing on screen. These faces add a certain kind of credibility to a product and its brand image.

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This testimonial video by Hubspot is a great example of what a good video campaign should be like! Go give it a watch!

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Our Own Pick For A Video Creation Platform – Lumen 5

Users are resorting to new video creation platforms every day. The sky is the limit. They’re looking for new specifications, options, opportunities to make their videos brighter and better. And Lumen 5 is exactly what one would need.

What is Lumen 5?

Lumen 5 is a video creation platform that is powered by A.I. It helps you create appealing, quick videos in a very easy fashion. You can just enter a blog post or an RSS feed and Lumen 5 will actually create a video for you with relevant imagery for each of your scenes! How cool is that! It has a variety of themes and footage for you to choose from. So all you have to do is tap a few buttons and sit back and watch Lumen 5 work its magic.

Today, Michael Cheng has grown Lumen 5 to 200000 users. He understood the need for good video content and how fast it was growing. Cheng recognized the challenges that came along with producing videos, the time, the money and the technical obstacles. He thus understood the need for Lumen 5.

Why Do We Recommend Them?

Lumen 5 has a number of great features that makes it unique and sets it apart from other video creation platforms.

1. Lumer 5 provides the ease of text to video – You can simply add a link to your article or blog post and Lumen 5 will automatically fetch your content. If your content is the office, you can copy-paste the entire content on the platform and it will do the same. For a more automated approach, you can simply add RSS feeds and have the videos created every day.
2. It provides automated workflow –  Elements like scene length, text positioning, and keyword highlighting are automatically calculated and taken care of by the AI of the platform.
3. Large media library – Lumen 5 holds a media library of over a million photos, videos, and soundtracks that you can use while creating your videos.
4. Multiple branding options – You can enter your own hex code and use their preset colors, choose from various beautiful fonts, and even create your own logo and watermark.
5. Video formats – You have the option of choosing from a lot of video resolutions, aspect ratios and you can also enhance your messaging with a letterbox format.

Success Stories for Lumen 5 

IIZCAT 

Iizcat created a story video about an adopted cat using Lumen 5. The video increased their page reach by almost 1300%. Today, the video has been shared 95000 and has over 34K likes and 3400 comments!

MAMA INSTINCTS 

Mama Instincts created a video about how you can inspire your children to share with others. The video got 600 likes, 180 comments, and has been shared 7.5K times.

This video increased the page reach by 5,800% 

Conclusion 

I think we’ve successfully eaten your brain about social video marketing, how important it is, its strategies, and best practices. And most importantly, how Lumen 5 is the solution to all your video marketing needs. Social media is an active space. It never stops. So all we can do is dive into the precarious backwaters headfirst and just hold on to rocks like Lumen 5 to help us out.

We’re sure that even apart from all our rambling, you too must have some great insights to offer us in return. So don’t wait up! Hit us up and tell us everything you can!