If you have a business, and you aren't using videos to promote your business on social media, what are you waiting for?
You are missing out on a big thing, and if your competition is using video, you are going to lose business to them. Many people think that they have to spend a lot of money in order to have great social video content. While this may have been the case at one time, today, anyone can create awesome video content without having to spend much at all. Once you have your videos ready, it is time to share them on social media. Here are nine tips to get you started.
1. Build Momentum
The most important part of a social video campaign is the beginning. You need to build momentum right from the start, and keep people hooked. This takes time and energy, but it is worth it in the long run. Promote it to the hilt, and make sure that it gets shared over and over again.
2. Use SEO
The metadata and descriptions of your video content should include keywords that people are searching for. You want people to be able to find your videos easily, and this is one of the best ways to do it. Remember, even YouTube is a search engine. In fact, it is the second largest search engine, next to Google and benefits from being owned by Google to ensure sophisticated algorirthms.
3. Use Explainer Videos
People like to watch videos that help them to learn something. You can use Powtoon to create awesome explainer videos that are interesting and captivating. This tool is a cloud-based SaaS for creating animated videos. Biteable and RawShorts are other tools that can be leveraged to create explainer videos as well.
4. Offer a Mission Statement
For each video platform you have, there is going to be a different audience. Therefore, it is important to make sure that each platform has its own mission statement. This is going to help to keep you focused, and it will help to make your video even more shareable and effective.
5. Keep it Short
People are busy, and often in a hurry. They don't want to waste a lot of time watching long videos. They want you to get right to the point. Look at creating videos that range from 10 to 60 seconds in length. You would be surprised at how much you can pack into such a short video.
6. Start Out Strong
If viewers aren't hooked in the first 30 seconds of a video, they are probably going to move on to the next thing. You need to be able to hook your audience right away. The sooner you hook them, the easier it will be to reel them in and keep them.
7. Engage Your Customers
Even though your brand is what you want to promote, do it in a way that makes your customers think it is they who are being promoted. Make your customers the heroes in your stories. Your videos should invoke a feeling of familiarity, with viewers seeing themselves in the story. The more involved they feel, the more likely they will be to share on social.
8. Tell a Great Story
People come to social media networks to be engaged.
Every story needs certain elements to make it compelling: a beginning, a middle, an end, a conflict of some sort, a good plot, and a hero. Take advantage of tried and true story structures, because this is what people are used to seeing and what they expect, especially on social networks.
9. Make sure it is Shareable
Before you create a video, ask yourself why people will share it. The best way to get the answer is to look at what your social media followers like. Check out the videos that they are sharing, and use these videos as inspiration for your own successful videos. Not only will your followers share your videos, you won't be wasting time on videos they aren't interested in.
Jane Hurst is a freelance writer from San Francisco. You can find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
