Social media and videos are the perfect combos as a marketing channel to attract audiences and boost sales. Many businesses have adjusted the two and achieved positive results for their companies.
Social media videos will continue to be a marketing trend in the future as there is no sign of slowing down. Therefore, new businesses should employ them immediately to thrive and catch up with bigger competitors in the industry.
Keep reading to explore the definitive guide on social media videos below to help you build a robust marketing strategy and get the best of it. So, shall we get started?
Social Media Videos: Why Your Business Should Care?
It becomes a natural need to utilize social media videos on a business’s marketing and sales funnel.
Social media is a significant place to reach a broader audience and meet prospects. Meanwhile, video content is powerful to turn them into paying customers.
Many reports highlight how powerful social media videos are for supporting businesses’ marketing strategies.
A report by Breadnbeyond shows nearly 90% of marketers who use videos generate positive ROI for their companies.
Social media videos will continue to trend as more than 50% of marketers will continue investing in Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok as their marketing channels.
Every business should have video content to thrive in the industry. Here are more benefits of social media videos for businesses:
- Broaden your market reach
- Engage customers and build loyalty
- Boost sales conversion rates
- Improve ROI
- Increase brand awareness
- Develop online presence and reputation
- Cost and time effective
How Social Media Helps Your Business?
Many new adjustments and features for video content across social media platforms have been added. They understand that videos will be more desirable than other content and profitable for businesses.
Continuing the previous discussion, below we provide more detailed elaborations about the benefits of social media videos.
1. Quick Attention Grabbers
Videos can quickly grab the attention of their viewers. The most crucial part of any video is the beginning. Without an engaging and powerful start, viewers won’t stay to watch the entire length.
Therefore, the beginning of a video plays a significant key in defining whether a viewer will stay or leave. High-quality visuals and a compelling storyline are also vital as the most critical aspects of a video.
Focus on framing audiences’ pain points and show how your products can be the best solution for them. Be straightforward and avoid being too promotional to develop better engagement with audiences.
2. Easily Shareable
Having sharable content is necessary to reach broader audiences easier and quicker. Videos are the type of content that generates more share rates compared to other types of content.
Video posts on social media get re-shared more often than image and text-based posts. Also, over 50% of buyers expect more video content from brands.
Therefore, brands are more likely to make their content viral on social media.
Moreover, nearly all social media have room for videos. You can either re-share your content or encourage audiences to do the same through their accounts.
Getting your audiences to repost your video can effectively improve your brand awareness.
3. Works for All Demographics
Video content in social media enables you to reach audiences regardless of demographic factors.
Audiences of all ages, genders, and backgrounds can enjoy and engage with your videos.
However, you must still identify your target audience’s needs and preferences to attract them. Video content that aims at the older generations will be different from the ones for the millennials and gen-Z.
Moreover, a video you create to reach the elites and teenagers will also be completely different in terms of style, tone, colors, and other elements complementing it.
Therefore, you need to understand and identify your target audiences to generate maximum results from social media videos.
4. Boost Conversion Rates
A conversion rate is a crucial metric for businesses. It allows them to see whether the audiences they reach are interested in their product or not.
The higher conversion rates a brand gets, the more influential the content is.
Videos are effective in boosting conversion rates as they’re digestible content. Audiences can quickly sink into your video and effortlessly find the information they’re seeking.
Creating valuable social media video content enables brands to drive many audiences to do the desired actions. Brands can also identify problems on their marketing funnels through social media analytic pages.
5. Improve Brand Awareness
Getting a higher sale is a dream of every business. But, sales rate is not the only thing important to make a business last long.
It is also necessary for businesses to escalate brand awareness and get more people exposed to their products.
Furthermore, brand awareness is important to thrive in an immense business competition. You can add integrity and build relationships with audiences through video content on social media.
Make sure your content is valuable and entertaining to get audiences’ trust. Focus on creating videos that are informative rather than promotional.
Audiences will value your brand more than a commercial account and as a source of information.
6. Time and Cost-Effective
Every business wants to keep its marketing budget low while generating optimum results. They create video content to support their marketing funnel to be more effective in terms of time and budget.
They can hire a video production company to craft an excellent video and cut the production time. Video content is always worth investing in as it can reap audiences’ attention and generate positive results faster.
The Ideal Video for Social Media
Before creating videos for social media, you need to know what an ideal video for marketing is. You must consider four aspects to make a winning video: video length, quality, format, and type. Let’s see a brief breakdown of each.
Video Length
For social media videos to thrive, they don’t need to be long. Each social media platform has its video length preference.
Digging into each social media platform’s post requirements can benefit you well.
If you plan to look for ideal lengths for social media videos, you don’t have to. We’ve compiled a list of ideal video lengths for major social media platforms below.
Video: up to 60 seconds
Story: 10 – 15 seconds
YouTube
Video: 2 minutes
Shorts: 15 – 20 seconds
Video: 15 – 60 seconds
Reels: 10 – 60 seconds
Story: 10 -15 seconds
TikTok
Video: 10 – 20 seconds
Video: Less than 60 seconds
Video: Less than 30 seconds
Video Quality and Format
No one wants to watch cracky videos on social media. Viewers are most likely to pass bad-quality videos instantly.
There’s no excuse for brands to make videos with a low-quality resolution, as it can downgrade their images.
Say it’s for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, or YouTube; videos with a high-quality resolution are preferred.
To keep things simple, make your video 720p or 1080p to give the best visual experience to audiences.
As for video format, most social media platforms support .MP4, .MOV, and .MKV.
As you make videos to support your business, investing in top-tier equipment such as cameras and editing software becomes necessary.
Video Content
The heart of a video is the content itself. What you bring to your audience cares a great deal.
The best recommendation is never to be over-promotional about your business and focus on giving valuable content to show integrity.
Valuable videos mean to be informational and entertaining. You can make tutorial, comparative, or review videos to attract and maintain audience engagement to your business account.
On top of that, consider referring to the 4-1-1 or 80/2 rules to have a good balance of valuable and promotional content on your social media feed.
Look at the brief explanation below.
4-1-1
The 4-1-1 rule means that for every six posts on your social media, four should be valuable content, one should be soft promotion, and one should be powerful.
80/20
The 80/20 rule is similar to 4-1-1. It suggests you manage 80% of your social media posts to be useful to audiences, while 20% should be explicit promotion.
Generating more sales shouldn’t be the only goal for businesses.
It must be understood that improving brand awareness and building relationships with audiences through social media content are also important to make a business last long in the industry.
Types of Social Media Videos for Marketing
Content creators may have the privilege to make any video for their feed, but businesses need to be strategic to create one.
Any kind of video won’t be enough to bring positive results and grow their business.
There are certain social media video types suitable for supporting businesses.
From animated explainer videos to comparison videos, here are the social media videos businesses should make to level up their marketing effort.
1. Animated Explainer Videos
Animated explainer videos have been in high demand as many businesses generate positive results thanks to them.
This video is very beneficial to introduce complex products or services through illustrations, graphs, and animations.
A compelling voice-over narration also accompanies animated explainer videos to make them more digestible by audiences.
Some companies that benefit significantly from animated explainer videos include healthcare companies, blockchain or crypto companies, educational sectors, cybersecurity companies, and other organizations.
2. Live-streaming Videos
Live streaming videos are highly converting. Many businesses leverage live streaming features on social media platforms and eCommerce to meet prospects and market their products.
Commonly, sellers will give special deals for those who buy their product during live streaming.
It also helps sellers to build a real-time interaction with audiences. Two-way communication allows brands to build stronger relationships with audiences resulting in long-term connections.
3. Tutorial Videos
Brands should focus on creating valuable content for their social media feeds. Being too promotional will only leave a poor impression on audiences.
Tutorial videos are among so many options regarded as valuable content.
Creating tutorial videos is relatively simple. Brands must showcase how their product works and highlight every feature delightfully. Tutorial videos can be a legitimate source of information for audiences.
4. Testimonial Videos
The power of words is undoubtedly significant. That’s why buyers’ testimonials are essential for brands to collect. Encouraging buyers to leave reviews of their products can help you push your marketing strategy.
You can make a video compilation of how buyers are satisfied with your product or service purchases. You can spice up the video with testimonials from significant people, such as company leaders and experts.
5. Behind-the-Scenes Videos
Behind-the-scene videos are relatively less popular compared to those previously mentioned. This type of video allows brands to expose their working environment, from manufacturing products to shipping orders.
Showcasing a glimpse of how your business works make it much easier for you to build audiences’ trust.
Behind-the-scenes videos are a way to humanize your brand and products. Revealing what’s behind the curtains can give a feeling of inclusion to audiences.
This will help them connect with your brand more personal, leading to a higher chance of turning them into paying customers.
6. Comparison Videos
Creating a comparison video can be a great option if one of your goals is to get the upper hand over competitors. Comparison videos are among the most potent videos for social media content.
Creating one can help you win prospects and customers effortlessly. You tell audiences how and why your product is way better at solving their problems.
Mentions some exclusive features and supporting data or facts to level up your content.
Summary
Major social media like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have been intensifying their video content features daily. Social media and video content have become inseparable with more and more improvements.
Business owners and modern marketers should be able to foresee the future that social media videos will continue to trend.
As there is no sign of it slowing down, it becomes necessary for them to be creative and authentic to stand out in the sea of competitors.
On top of that, small enterprises can join the trend as utilizing social media and creating video content are cost and time efficient.
They have a bigger chance to improve brand awareness, increase sales, and grow their businesses in no time.
Last but not least, as we live in a rapid society, we will see more marketing trends in the following years.
Businesses should keep an eye to catch up with the trends and upgrade their marketing strategy to thrive and last long in the industry.
