Likes. Comments. Follows. Those are the basic building blocks of social media. But what happens after you post a tweet or an Instagram story? How do you keep people interested?
According to TikTok statistics, the average user spends 84 minutes per day on the app. Instagram says its users spend 22 minutes per day on the platform. With more and more people choosing to stay connected through their phones, the question is: How can marketers make the most of this trend and keep people engaged?
One way is through video content. If you look at TikToks growth since its inception in 2016, you’ll see that it emerged as the go-to place for short-form video content. With Instagram introducing videos a year after TikTok and YouTube cropping up, the video-centered content revolution was officially underway.
While it’s still early days for video in marketing, having a video strategy is vital for any marketer. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 79% of consumers have watched an explainer video to better understand a product or service. Moreover, 70% of consumers have watched an explainer video to learn about an upcoming product or service.
Why Should You Get Into Video In Marketing?
The sheer volume of video content uploaded to social media channels every day is staggering. And it’s only going to increase as cameras continue to shrink in size and consumers continue to rely more and more on their smartphones to take and share videos.
Additionally, video is a format loved by users and, therefore, a format loved by search engines. Google owns YouTube and uses the platform to rank websites.
If you want to rank high on Google, you need to opt in for video content.
Last but not least, video enables you to connect with audiences wherever they are in the world. You can easily put a call to action at the end of an explainer video, telling people where to sign up for special discounts or how to enter a sweepstakes.
With so much opportunity to educate and inform through video content, brands should seriously consider getting into video. Here are some of the best practices you can adopt to make the most of video content in your marketing strategy.
Choose The Right Platforms.
Since video is a format that users love and search engines value, you’ll want to make sure you’re using the right platforms to reach your audiences.
While Instagram is the second-largest social media platform, it only has 400 million worldwide users compared to TikToks 2 billion users. Additionally, Instagrams algorithm favors posts that include images and videos over texts and videos.
As a rule of thumb, if your target audience is mostly comprised of Gen Z, then Instagram might be the best place to reach them. On the other hand, if your target audience is mostly millennials, then TikTok is where you should aim your content.
Create More Than One Type Of Content.
As a brand, you should always be creating more than one type of content. Users prefer digestible content that is easy to consume in one sitting. As a result, you can bet that video content will continue to grow in 2020.
Since videos can be shared through multiple platforms, you can create one set of content and pitch it to various social media networks. This could mean creating a guide for Instagrammers or a podcast episode for the YouTube channel.
Depending on your target audience, you might also want to create an explainer video to educate consumers about your product or service.
You could also use existing platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, to promote your video content. Plus, you can always use platforms like TikTok to generate more video content for other platforms.
Use Subtitles.
Whether you are documenting history as it happens or just showing a series of reactions to one of the greatest presidential speeches ever made, your videos will benefit from captions.
With the exception of some foreign languages, most smartphones enable users to easily change the text overlay to any of the languages they speak. This means you have the opportunity to literally speak to your audience in their native tongue.
Additionally, many users turn off captions, which means you’ll have to make the choice to include them consciously and deliberately. If you don’t include captions, then users will have to guess what your video is about based on context clues or leave the video entirely.
Use Hashtags.
We all know what hashtags are and how they work. But what is the proper use of hashtags in video content?
First off, you want your video content to include relevant keywords so that your video will pop up when someone is searching for related content.
After you’ve secured those keywords, you can opt to use hashtags to gain exposure and increase your video’s reach.
Make sure you include the keywords in your caption too so that your video will show up when users come back to the video looking for content related to what they’ve seen.
If you have a hashtag for your video’s main topic, then you might want to include that in your caption. For example, if you have a hashtag for your product or service (#myproduct, #myservice) and your video’s main topic is around the benefits of your product, then your caption could include “#myproduct allows users to #myservice.”
The use of hashtags is so important because it lets people find your content even when they’re not specifically searching for it. Therefore, in the future, when someone watches a video and sees a topic or keyword they don’t know about, they’ll have the opportunity to discover that content via a hashtag.
Post Regularly.
Consistency is important when attracting potential customers to your product or service. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure you post frequently and consistently throughout the year to build credibility and encourage users to visit your channel.
When it comes to attracting consumers to your channel, posting regularly is even more important. According to HubSpot Blogs research, users trust content that is regularly posted. Additionally, users prefer content that is posted frequently in the early days to build credibility and gain traction.
To further encourage users to visit your channel and stay for longer, consider experimenting with videos that autoplay. These will encourage users to engage with your content while also getting them onto another channel or website more easily.
Even better, many video platforms, including YouTube, offer additional monetization options for new and existing content creators, like virtual products, memberships, and sponsorships. So you can imagine there are a plethora of ways you can monetize your video content. Plus, you can always use premium tools like Patreon to generate an income from content you’ve already created.
Be Selective.
As the creator of a video content strategy for a digital marketing agency, I see many brands choose to document their daily lives and all the exciting things they encounter. But these videos usually lack any type of value added and, as a result, tend to suffer in terms of engagement.
Since users have grown accustomed to consuming content that is both informative and entertaining, make sure you add value to your video content by offering tips or tricks that can help the viewer. For example, if you see someone jogging in your area, you might want to capture their moment on video and share their workout routine with your audience. Or, if you specialize in beauty, you could offer tips on how to achieve the perfect beach vacation look.
Whether you have a running app for your iphone or a GoPro mounted to a helmet, you have plenty of options to shoot a video and add value to it. Just make sure you capture something that is interesting and unique to the viewer.
In terms of entertainment value, nothing beats a good ol’ fashioned sitcom. However, if you want to capture something that is more in line with our digital world, then consider filming a mockumentary-style story. Not only will this allow you to add more value to your video content, but it will also make the content a whole lot more interesting.
Experiment With Animation.
Many of our readers will remember the 1980s when desktop computers were first starting to trickle into the homes of ordinary people and businesses. At that time, the only way to present animated content was through cumbersome slide shows that consisted of photos with no accompanying text.