Even as social video rises in popularity, many brands don’t have a solid grasp on how best to use it.
Let’s take a look at how you can be sure you’re doing it right:
Going viral isn’t always the goal
Everybody wants to make the next viral hit, but that shouldn’t be the only reason you create video content. Most of the time, it shouldn’t even be a goal!
Social video is a great way to tell the story of your brand, engage your followers, and build your identity.
If you’re regularly producing engaging content, you’ll grow and retain your audience, even if your next video isn’t breaking the internet.
Optimize social video for mobile viewing
Huge amounts of social video content is viewed on mobile – 90% of video views on Twitter, for example.
Keep this in mind when producing your videos by asking yourself a few questions:
1. Are infographics and text easy to read on a smaller screen?
2. Will the preview thumbnail stand-out when someone is thumbing through their feed?
3. Is the length going to be a turn-off for a mobile viewer?
Get their attention, then get to the point
With all the competing content in our feeds, your video has to grab a viewer’s attention immediately and keep things moving.
Make sure your first few seconds are interesting and captivating, then shift quickly to your main points. Remember that it’s always a good idea to keep videos short.
Be yourself
Even when making content for a brand, it’s important for your audience to feel the human touch.
A little levity and personality can go a long way in turning what could be just a dry corporate or informational video into something fresh and interesting.
That personal touch engages followers, too, and helps them understand and identify with your brand.
Go native
Native video always does better!
Don’t just share out links to a Vimeo or YouTube video on your other social networks, upload your content natively.
On Twitter, native videos receive two and a half times more engagement than third-party video, and on Facebook native video has 8.7% organic reach (the highest of any content on the platform).
The good news is that these common pitfalls are easily avoided. Take our advice and your social video content will work to strengthen your brand and grow your audience.
Now that we discussed the basics, time to see how the pro’s do it:
In our post, “5 Under 1: Short branded social videos that really work” we share examples of extremely successful social videos and talk about why they worked so well.
