Social Media Videos: 6 Best Tips on Growing Your Brand
Social media is jam-packed with video content, and millions of new ones are being uploaded daily.
Content and social media marketers are challenged by the overwhelmingly vast range of user-generated content on various platforms.
But only those who can think outside of the box can create engaging social media videos that can gain traction for their brands.
Why You Should Use Videos for Social Media
Social media is their daily source of entertainment, social lives, even news and content consumption for many people.
The number of users on social media is a whopping 53% of the world's population – that alone should be enough reason for any business to get into social media.
But what are the other benefits of creating video content for social media?
Social video helps build brand awareness.
Your website should still be your top priority when it comes to conversion.
But growing your brand awareness from scratch is likely more difficult if you only use one promotion channel.
Social media videos are an easy choice to increase your reach because your audience is already there.
Blog posts might be a critical part of your content marketing strategy, but they don't perform well among the less targeted crowd in social media.
Bits and pieces of your articles might make an excellent snippet to share on Twitter, but what you are going for is getting a click-through to your blog.
While you can re-share your articles as posts on social media, it's not likely to gain much traction and engagement.
Video clips, on the other hand, are easily shareable and interchangeable between platforms.
Social media videos also appeal to a broader audience than your website ever could.
Google states that 70% of YouTube viewers regularly watch how-to videos related to their hobbies, studies, or jobs.
Tapping into this audience pool will help you grow your brand awareness much faster than what you can get using only your website.
Video content increases conversion
When you create social media videos, you establish visual and more friendly communication with your audience.
It doesn't matter how much brand personality you pour into your website and how-to's blog posts.
Nothing can showcase a better use case of your product better than online videos of it in action.
Framing your social media video in a way where your product is the hero will help shape viewers' perspectives of the product, increasing buying intent and brand trust.
As many as 84% of marketers report that incorporating video into their strategy helps them generate more leads.
Video sparks engagement
One of the best reasons to create a social media video is the higher engagement than other forms of content.
Compared to images, video content generates 21.2% more interactions. Specifically for Facebook, video ads get the most clicks compared to other forms of promoted content.
Like other digital marketing channels, social media consider engagement in their content algorithm.
While content reach is essential to growing business online through social media, it's been reported that organic reach on Facebook has been declining due to algorithm changes.
However, content engagement is one of the less likely metrics to be taken out of the algorithm.
Therefore creating a highly engaging video on social media can amplify your brand's reach in the long run.
We have compiled the top ten tips to create engaging social media videos to help you elevate your content creation game. Take a look below for video ideas:
1 – Capture curiosity with an enticing thumbnail
While you should not judge a video by its thumbnail, most social media users love clicking on an exaggerated thumbnail.
Using thumbnail for social media videos is what trailers are for movies.
Assembling a great trailer can trigger the curious nature of viewers, and therefore they would go to the cinema or buy it to watch at home.
We always want to know more about something, including the story behind a thumbnail in your video.
Human's curiosity is a natural trait, and you should always use that to your advantage when creating a social media video.
If your thumbnail can induce a sense of knowledge gap in the audience's mind, it's more than likely that they will click it to watch your video.
2 – Know your audience
Each social media platform has a unique user demographic. Social media users also look for a different nuance in each platform's content.
YouTube is excellent for horizontal videos with in-depth content, while TikTok offers a more fun dynamic through vertical videos with its users' infectious dances.
While repurposing content is an effective way to gain maximum ROI from your videos, you should not use the same video on platforms where the native content format does not match.
For example, YouTube videos are primarily horizontal (16:9 or 21:9 aspect ratio) for a reason: the majority of their audience love it.
Instagram stories and TikTok videos are predominantly vertical (9:16 aspect ratio) because their intended users come primarily from their mobile apps.
Simply trimming or letterboxing your horizontal video into a vertical video often does not provide the same quality content.
Understanding each social media's preferred content and crafting unique videos for different platforms will increase your chance of garnering more engagement.
3 – Start with a strong introduction
The first few seconds of a video is the crucial part where you have to grab the viewers' attention.
One of the best ways to make a strong introduction is by quickly delivering what the video is about and the promised value viewers will gain by watching it.
Suppose you can compress the critical information of your video into 3-5 seconds of introduction. In that case, you will gain viewers' curiosity (at least those interested in the first place).
4 – Keep your viewers' attention
Getting viewer's attention and clicks is one thing, but keeping them hooked is an entirely different challenge.
It's pretty well-known that most of us don't have the longest attention span when scrolling through social media.
Other than genuinely exciting content, you can increase the viewers' of your social media video by:
- Including captions throughout the entire video.
- Creating a consistent visual style throughout the video.
- Staying relevant with the title or thumbnail.
- Trimming the videos short, especially for Instagram stories.
If you're trying to develop your brand, it might be forgivable to use clickbait videos. If you're building a company's brand through social media video, you should keep the thumbnail and content relevant.
Gaining clicks won't mean anything for the company's growth. But having high-quality and informative video will.
5 – Use eye-catching visuals
Eye-catching visual does not always mean increasing your budget for expensive filming gear or animation software.
It's about creating a visual style that's unique to your brand and stands out from another type of content on social media.
Developing a visual style for your brand can help you create consistency throughout all the different platforms that you use.
But you can't magically make it appear overnight – that's why we used ‘developing' instead of ‘creating'.
Your visual style takes time to entirely perfect. The first ones might not bring the best engagements and visual appeal, but gradually you'll find a visual style that sticks.
You should evenly distribute a good visual consistency among every element that appears on screen, including:
- Thumbnail style
- Colour palette
- Font
- Intro & outro
- Editing style
While these are not directly related to increasing your video's engagement, they will help your video look more distinctive and therefore stand out on your audience's timeline (or news feed).
6 – Include captions for your video
Indeed, videos are typically more eye-catching since they take up larger screen space than plain text posts.
But that doesn't mean that you should post videos without any context.
Captions provide a more contextual frame to the videos that you post on social media.
Writing a relevant caption with your video can help your followers decide if the video is worth watching by establishing the context of the video.
It can also help viewers connect and understand what message that you want to deliver.
The 5 Most Engaging Video Types for Social Media
One of the most significant challenges in creating a social media video is the abundance of formats available to choose from – and pick which ones are effective.
Out of the various formats, these are the most popular types of video content for social media:
1 – Live Videos
Live broadcasts are one of the most engaging types of video content that you can do on almost any social media. It's fun, interactive, real-time, and tells a genuine story.
All major social media platforms have their implementation of live videos: Facebook Live, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and even TikTok.
The average consumers watch live mobile videos for 10-20 times longer than they spend watching on-demand content.
Most major social media, including Facebook and YouTube, have features that allow users to explore live videos.
There are also several popular formats for live videos, including:
- Webinars
- Interviews
- Q&As
- Product introduction/reveal
- Tours
2 – Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are an excellent way to tell your customers what your products do and what problems they solve within a short period.
As a video content format, an explainer can help you share all the reasons why your audience should at least give your product a try.
It's not breaking news, but have you noticed that reading about a product is boring? Explainer videos offer a more visual way to introduce your product or service to customers.
Don't believe it? Well, the fact that 96% of consumers watch explainer videos instead of reading the company's product page should convince you otherwise.
3 – How-to's Videos
How many times have you had to Google a tutorial on performing particular tasks using specific apps, like “how to edit timelapse video using Adobe Premiere Pro cc 2016”?
You can read up a well-structured blog post telling you how to perform that task, but it's certainly easier to watch another person showing you how to do it.
Tutorial videos are among the three most effective types of video content that you can make anywhere – not just social media.
Not only can you promote your products, but you can also provide value to your viewers, which can spark engagement and bump up your brand's expertise in the niche.
There are three main steps to creating a well-informed and valuable tutorial video:
- Write a well-researched script.
- Practice your presentation in front of a mirror (if applicable).
- Clearly define the purpose of your video.
- Be genuine to your persona.
Tutorials are naturally evergreen content – as long as the subject around it still exists. Investing more time creating a well-written tutorial video can provide you with an excellent ROI.
4 – Behind-the-Scene Videos
As mentioned earlier, humans are curious by nature. Behind-the-scene videos tap into this nature by exposing what you don't usually show on camera.
By doing behind-the-scenes, your existing consumer will be glad to take a peek into the ‘magic' behind the work cultures in the office or the production process of your product.
If you manage to impress non-consumers with your behind-the-scene, it might entice them to switch to your brand.
Behind-the-scene videos can also help you establish brand trust and humanise a company by showing what goes on behind closed doors.
You can effectively create your behind-the-scene videos by:
- Highlighting the people and process – not the product.
- Showing off the unique rooms in the office.
- Explaining the product design or production process.
- Teasing new products or catalogues.
- Creating a separate channel for behind-the-scenes content.
- Trending Videos
Social media are the birthplace of trends that get shared all over the internet – viral trends, if you will.
While the internet, in general, often think of brands joining the viral trend as a tacky marketing move, you can still work together with influencers or create a non-brand account specifically for that purpose.
For example, Dunkin Donuts recently made a fuss over the internet by allegedly hiring employees to make TikTok videos and posting them on their accounts.
Statista forecasted the growth of U.S.-based TikTok users to reach 88.7 million by 2024 – so you can imagine how much more trends you can jump onto if you start making an account now.
If you haven't been living under a rock, you've probably noticed that many new trends started from TikTok.
Dunkin essentially hired an army of employee influencers to promote their new menus and how they are made, basically creating a new trend.
Regardless of how it affects the company's image, it brought a lot of attention and traffic.
Conclusion
Creating an engaging social media video may not be the ultimate growth hack for your company, but it will positively impact your content marketing strategy in general.
More often than not, you can create new videos using only a smartphone.
With such a low budget to start, social media videos offer a lot of ROI using a relatively easy route where the audience is already within a click's reach.
If you can implement social media videos effectively, you will get:
- More brand awareness,
- Increased conversion, and
- Better engagement from your audience.
Get started making your Instagram reels, YouTube videos, TikTok dances, and other social media videos to reach a broader audience and grow faster. We'll see you on top!
