A social media video marketing plan is a critical roadmap for businesses looking to harness the power of video content.
It’s especially useful given today’s digital landscape, where attention spans are shrinking and competition is fierce.
So, why are brands eager to join the social media video marketing bandwagon?
The video has emerged as a highly effective medium for:
- Capturing attention
- Engaging audiences
- Effectively conveying messages
As many as 91% of consumers are interested in seeing more online video content from brands.
Whether you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or boost sales, video can help you achieve your goals.
But how do you create a social media video marketing plan that works?
In this post, we will discuss 7 actionable steps to create and execute a social media video marketing plan successfully.
Let’s get started.
1. Set Goals for Video Marketing
Before you start producing videos, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with them.
For instance, according to a HubSpot report, 36% of marketers say that they primarily invest in video marketing to increase brand awareness and reach new audiences.
Ask yourself:
- Do you want to educate your audience, entertain them, or inspire them?
- Do you want to increase traffic to your website, grow your email list, or drive conversions?
- How will you measure the success of your video marketing efforts?
You want to have a budget in mind as you conduct audience research to define your ideal customers.
Then, set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals to help focus your social media video marketing plan and track your progress.
Remember, if a top priority is to maximize your reach, then good-quality videos are the way to go.
2. Decide on Your Platforms
Different social media platforms have different features, audiences, and best practices for video marketing.
You need to choose the platforms that best suit your goals, content, and audience.
For example, YouTube is ideal for long-form videos that showcase your expertise. Meanwhile, Instagram video marketing is great for short, catchy videos that showcase your personality.
Naturally, you can use multiple platforms to reach different audience segments or repurpose your content for different formats.
3. Select Your Video Types
Depending on your goals and platforms, you can choose from various video types to create engaging content for your audience. To get a brief overview of the best type of video content for social media, you can refer to this post by Attrock.
Some of the video types you can try include:
- Testimonial videos: These videos feature happy customers sharing their positive experiences with your brand, product, or service.
- How-to or tutorial videos: These ones teach your audience how to do something related to your niche, product, or service.
Let’s say you are marketing one of the leading B2B prospecting software. You can create a series of tutorial videos to generate awareness and curiosity about your product on social media.
- Live videos: These videos stream in real-time on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. They allow you to interact with your audience directly, answer their questions, or show them something exciting.
- Explainer videos: These educational (or informative) videos explain how your product or service works, how it solves a problem, or how it benefits your customers.
4. Plan Content Production
Once you’ve decided on your video type, you need to plan how you will produce it. This typically involves:
- Writing a script: A script is a written outline that helps you organize your thoughts, deliver a clear message, and avoid rambling or forgetting important points in your video.
- Creating a storyboard: A storyboard is a visual representation of how your video will look like. It helps you plan the shots, angles, transitions, and effects to make your video more appealing and professional.
- Gathering equipment: Depending on the quality and style of your video, you may need different equipment to produce it. This may include a camera, a microphone, a tripod, a lighting kit, a backdrop, and props.
- Finding a location: To film your video, choose a suitable location based on the video type, desired mood, noise level, lighting, and background.
5. Master Post-production for Maximum Impact
After you’ve filmed your video, take it through some handy video marketing tools to perfect it and make it ready for publishing. This entails:
- Cutting and trimming: Removes unwanted parts of the video, such as mistakes, pauses, or repetitions.
- Adding transitions and effects: Enhances the flow and appearance of the video by adding elements such as fades, zooms, filters, or creative animation styles.
- Mixing in music and sound effects: Complements the tone and message of the video by adding audio elements like music tracks, sound effects, or voice-overs.
- Adding text and graphics: Reinforces the information and branding of the video through the inclusion of visual elements like titles, captions, logos, or call-to-actions.
6. Schedule and Promote the Videos
A crucial step of an effective social media video marketing plan is to upload the edited video to your chosen platforms. Once uploaded, promote it to reach your target audience. This process involves:
- Choosing the best time and frequency: Research when your audience is most active and likely to watch your videos and how often they expect new content from you.
- Optimizing the video for SEO: Use keywords, descriptions, tags, and thumbnails that make your video easy to find and attractive to click on by search engines and users.
- Sharing the video on other channels: Leverage your website, blog, email list, and other social media platforms to drive more traffic and views to your video. You can consider investing in video ads for an extra boost.
- Encouraging engagement: Invite your viewers to like, comment, share, and subscribe to your video, and respond to their feedback and questions.
7. Understand and Analyze Metrics
The final step of your social media video marketing plan is to measure the results of your efforts and see if you’ve achieved your goals. This involves:
- Tracking the right metrics: You need to monitor the metrics that reflect the performance and impact of your video. These include views, watch time, engagement rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and return on investment.
- Using the right tools: You must use tools that provide accurate and relevant data and insights on your video marketing. Some examples are Google Analytics, YouTube Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Instagram Insights.
- Making adjustments: You need to use the data and insights to identify what works and what doesn’t in your video marketing strategy. Then, make changes accordingly to optimize future content and improve your results.
An Effective Social Media Video Marketing Plan Powers Brand Success
By following these 7 steps, you can create a social media video marketing plan that helps you reach and engage your audience and achieve your business goals.
Remember, video is a powerful tool to boost brand awareness, lead generation, and sales.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to grow your business with video.
Author: Gaurav Sharma, Founder and CEO of Attrock.
