We’re going to start this off with a very compelling statistic:
The average person spends 16 hours per week watching videos online.
Need another one? 84% of consumers say that they’ve been convinced to purchase a product by a video. Not to mention, just about every social media platform is embracing video content like crazy. TikTok, Instagram Reels/Stories/IGTV, Facebook Live—along with the obvious ones like YouTube and the ever-growing string of streaming services.
With all of the options available, and with how easy it is to create video content these days, you need a solid plan to capitalize on it. The last thing you want to do is throw content together for the sake of posting something.
Here are some tried-and-true tips to help you get started.
Your Content Should Be Meaningful
It’s easy to get stuck obsessing over reaching new people. Don’t get us wrong, reaching new people is awesome and important—but when you’re starting out, make sure you’re catering to those that already follow you.
The most popular kind of brand video? How-tos. Answer your current followers’ most burning questions! People love to see how to use your product or what your service will do for them. Showing them is almost always better than telling them.
You Don’t Have to Start From Scratch
Take a stroll down memory lane and take a look at the content that’s been successful in the past. Use that content as inspiration for new video content. Take a look at the topics, themes, visuals, and information that your followers really ate up. If your followers engaged really well with an infographic about your industry’s best social media practices, why not turn that into a short video?
Don’t Just Post and Ghost
Careful content planning means including time to promote your video—before and after it’s published. Get some behind-the-scenes content to share after the video, or even before the video as teaser content. Get people excited about the final product!
Or, increase engagement by letting your followers choose! If you have multiple videos on deck, set up a poll—ask your followers which topic they’re most interested in learning about next, and post that one. People will feel heard, and you’re more likely to maximize engagement on your actual video.
Set Plenty of Goals
Let’s be honest. Content isn’t very useful if there aren’t trackable goals attached to it. That’s the only way to see if your content is working after all.
The best place to start when crafting goals around your content is, of course, the trusty sales funnel. Figure out where your content (or your content idea) falls in the funnel. Here’s a little breakdown of the funnel parts, along with their correlating goals:
- Awareness — Reach new customers!
- Consideration — Generate demand among your potential customers
- Decision — Inspire people to make a decision
- Adoption — Educate potential customers and answer their questions
- Advocacy — Earn their long-term loyalty
After you pinpoint which of the above goals you’re striving for, you can figure out which key metrics you’ll need to pay attention to. Looking for new customers? See how many new followers you get after posting your video content! Looking to generate demand? Check for comments and click-throughs.
CTAs—Small but Crucial
Your calls to action should be clear and strong—don’t shy away from what you want your viewers to do. A good CTA will not only be clear: it’ll also be easy to find and intuitive. If your customers don’t know what will happen when they click a CTA button, odds are they won’t do it.
Don’t worry about plugging your CTA in multiple places, too—you can put it in the video, the post copy, still frames, etc. Make sure the tone is consistent with your video as well.
Make Your Content Accessible
There are roughly 466 million people in the world who are either deaf or hearing impaired. That’s a big, big audience! You should make sure your video content is accessible to everyone.
On top of that, 85% of consumers watch videos without sound to begin with. Closed captions and alternative text can go a long way in reaching not only those who can’t listen to the audio, but also those who don’t want to because they’re in public or they always keep their phones on silent. YouTube and Vimeo, two of the largest video platforms, offer easy ways to add subtitles to any video you upload.
Don’t Forget About SEO (Ever)
A lot of social media platforms are also powerful search engines, which means you need to be tapping into SEO when it comes to your video content. Just like you would for website copy, you should conduct keyword research to see what your followers or your future followers are searching for. You should put these keywords in your video’s title, description, captions, tags, links, and CTAs if you can!
Stretch Your Content
Like we mentioned in the “Don’t Just Post and Ghost” section, you can get a lot of extra content from your video—GIFs, graphic quotes, still images, or even just smaller snippets. A lot of these things can be incorporated into a longer-term social media strategy.
Honestly, there’s no limit to what you can do with video content—that’s been proven already, and the creative boundaries will just continue to grow.
See How You Did!
The work isn’t done once you tap “post.” Now that your video content is available to the masses, you need to see how it’s doing. The specific metrics you measure for each video will be different, but overall you should be tracking things like view times—how long your viewers stuck around to watch your content—comments, likes, and saves.
There’s a LOT to take into account, and you need to consider it all. What time of day did you post your video? How quickly did your likes and comments ramp up? How many of those things did your video get? How many website visits did you get? Track all of these things, and keep tweaking your strategy to get the results you’re after.
Keep It Authentic
Maybe the most important tip of them all—keep things on brand for you. Video content is a huge part of social media, but that doesn’t mean you should try to capitalize on every TikTok trend. Figure out what you want to convey, and think about how your audience will best receive it. As long as you stay true to your voice, you’ll do great!
Need a Little Help?
We have a team of social media experts ready to help your brand. We can even make videos for you! If you have any questions, get in touch with us.
