Experts’ Guide: Using Video in Social Media
6 minutes to read
Social media has quickly become the pre-eminent form of communication with the persistence of massive user networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Using video in social media provides one of the best combinations for acquiring new business.
Unless you’re that one guy sitting on his couch who still uses AOL, you’ve seen the countless cat videos, baby vines, and memes that plague the internet due to our newfound love of quick and easy media sharing.
The problem with a lot of social media is that the media that we are interacting with is usually useless or lacks substance. This is observable on both individuals’ pages as well as those of large businesses and corporations
So the question is, how are successful companies using video in social media to attract those users who are actually interested in what we have to say, while creating content that is engaging and not useless? There are a few steps to make sure that your videos come off as professional and serve a purpose to your social media audience.
1. Focus on your target audience
One of the biggest mistakes that you see on social media pages is that people do not know who their target audience is or what they want.
While you could argue that you’re audience is the entire internet, let’s not get too ambitious. You need to narrow this down to the group of people who are going to benefit from your video the most. You need to be able to identify your audience and cater your videos towards that specific group of people. For instance, the Will it Blend guys target their videos towards people who would traditionally not buy blenders by blending things that those people would purchase.
2. Know the benefits of each platform
Social media comes in all different shapes, sizes, and formats – and you need to know how to use your video on each social media platform to increase its success.
Facebook – Chances are that you already have a Facebook profile for your business. If not…well you’re only missing out on a network of over 1 billion active users – many of which may be potential viewers of your video. If you do already have a Facebook, then any videos you upload will be viewed by your current followers. Facebook also allows you a greater level of interaction that other social media sites can’t compare to – it can also serve as a great hub for all your other social network sites. If you link posts from your other sites onto Facebook, it will increase your visibility. Check out this example below. We are pushing our video reel through Facebook. Not only can we push videos as individual posts, we can also set a video as featured to capitalize on even more exposure.
YouTube – As the second largest search engine on the internet and the largest search engine for videos, YouTube contains a huge user base and mass amounts of content.
Enhancing your YouTube presence – and linking back your YouTube page – will increase your video’s visibility. This is the stage where it is important to create content that is engaging and relevant. On our site, we have some great tips that will help you understand what you need to do to get your videos seen by your customers on the internet.
Instagram and Twitter – These final two social media platforms are both amongst the largest and most widely used – however they are not as large as Facebook or YouTube. Even so, it is important to know how to used videos on these platforms as well. Your twitter will work great with short captions of the videos and then links to the videos themselves; or even links to your larger social media platforms. Instagram is one of the most quickly growing forms of video and photo sharing, and this will give you a great place to show off directly what it is your company does and who your company is. The video feature on Instagram is limited to 15 seconds, but this could be plenty of time to showcase a short form that may be expanded on on your larger platform like Facebook or YouTube. Check out this video to learn more about formatting your videos for Instagram.
3. Know the right saturation point
There are two problems contained here: over saturation of content, and undersaturation.
If you are posting three videos a day, it is likely that these videos will lose substance over time and you’ll end up putting out fluff that doesn’t help anyone understand your mission or product. You also don’t want to put out too few videos – people will forget you exist or lose interest in your channel. You also want to avoid making your videos too long. Trust me, most user’s attention span won’t allow them to sit through your 10 minute video walkthrough. Keep it short (2-3 minutes) and simple; and get straight to the point.
4. Focus on interconnectedness
Yeah, that’s a long word. No, I didn’t make it up.
The point is that you can connect all your social media sites together! You can post a video on your YouTube Channel, repost it on your Facebook wall, link to it from your Twitter feed, repost it on your Instagram, if you even want to post it on your AOL email signature – go nuts. The point is this: The internet is a beautiful web and this web has many far reaching tentacles that can all reach back to you.
Ok, ignore the tentacle imagery and just keep in mind that you can enhance your exposure by reposting and re-uploading your content multiple times to multiple different social media sites. Expanding your content’s reach and audience. Just keep in mind what I said about over saturation earlier. Don’t repost boring videos that your audience isn’t responding to.
Social media has become one of the easiest and most accessible forms of communication in the last 4 years. It continues to grow at an exponential rate – and as it grows, it opens up new avenues and possibilities for people to connect with one another. Using video on your social media page increases your exposure to potential followers and clients. If done correctly, it can kickstart your business in a way that you didn’t imagine possible! On our website there are a few guidelines to help you construct your videos and examine data about your viewership that will help you get started!
