Social media videos are at the opposite end of the spectrum from a brand video. Whereas a brand video could sit on your website for 1-2 years and be used in multiple contexts, a social media video doesn’t need a long shelf life.
This means you can produce them cheaply and regularly to feed the various social media channels and build an ongoing relationship with your online audience.
A smart strategy is to equip some members of your communications team with the skills they need to make reasonable quality videos with DSLRs or Smartphones so that you can be sharing content regularly.
As well as a bit of technical know how your team need a regular stream of ideas to keep them creating and sharing videos. Have a bank of video formats you can call upon (team interviews, time-lapse footage, product demos, Top 10 countdowns, Instagram Stories) and plan ahead in the calendar tying video content to big events for your company or popular events, like the Olympics or the Oscars, that will be trending on social media.
If you haven’t got the skills or had the time to shoot any video footage there are plenty of Apps that let you stitch your photos together into a nice 30 second video montage with royalty free music and some nice graphics thrown in to boot. Try out Slideshow Video, Movie Maker or Adobe Spark Video for three of the best. Even with still images you should think about story and structure and hook your audience with strong images and fast editing.
Whatever your budget or skills it’s vital to keep your audience at the forefront of your mind when planning videos for social media. Who is your typical customer? What kind of videos do they want to see? What messages will connect with their values and compel them to click that ‘share’ button? These are all questions you should ask while your planning your video content?
80% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound.
And to finish of with two important stats. 85% of Facebook Videos are viewed without sound so captions or text based video are vital.
And if your video is any longer than 2 minutes, you’re audience will start to drop like flies. In fact 45% of people stop viewing after 1 minute and 60% after 2 minutes .
So keep it short, keep them sweet.
