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You already know that video is taking over the web, but did you also know that video is taking over social media? And the numbers are truly staggering. For example, YouTube gets over 5 billion video views per day and Facebook gets nearly 8 billion video views. That’s a lot of user engagement that your brand could be capturing! So here are 5 keys to building a successful social video strategy…
Key #1: Understand your company’s underlying business goals
There are many different reasons to create video for social media, so understand what your business goals are from the outset. For example, some brands might be looking to build a strong customer service channel, while others might be looking to promote new products and services. In the first case, you might focus on helpful “How to” videos, while in the second case, you might focus more on splashy product videos.
Key #2: Optimize the creative elements for each video
There are several easy ways to optimize videos for social media. First and most importantly, you want to make sure that the “cover image” for the video is as attractive and compelling as possible. Even if you are just posting an interview clip, you want to make the “talking head” look like he or she is having a very animated discussion. You might also want to include text captions for videos.
Key #3: Play by the rules of the different social networks
On Facebook, Rule Number One is that native Facebook video is always going to perform better than video from another source. In other words, the Facebook news feed algorithm will always give the priority to video that has been uploaded to Facebook natively. By playing by this rule, you can increase the chances that people will actually see your video content when they open up Facebook.
Key #4: Pay attention to the length of your videos
Not all social media platforms are the same, so it only makes sense that you can’t post the same exact videos to every social media platform. You might need to get creative with your editing. For example, the optimal length of a YouTube video is about 2 minutes. On Twitter, however, the optimal length of a video is less than 30 seconds. So on Twitter, you might create a “teaser” video for a new product, but on YouTube, you could post the full product video.
Key #5: Measure and track performance
Data, data, data. Yes, you are going to need to track all the data about your videos – not just the absolute number of pages views, but also how many people watched the video to the end, how many people clicked on the links within your videos, and how many people shared your videos. You can also get really granular with the data and check to see which times or days are optimal for posting video content. Your goal is to improve performance over time – more views, more shares and more engagement.
By keeping all five of these keys in mind, you will be able to create a successful social video strategy that really leverages all the excitement and innovation currently happening with social media and video.
