Social media has experienced significant growth in the past few years. As the number of users increases, the demand for video content has risen in parallel – creating a new marketing discipline: social video production. The statistics are extraordinary: the number of views of branded video content has increased by 258% on Facebook and 99% on YouTube. And when it comes to Twitter, a video Tweet is six times more likely to be retweeted than a photo Tweet.
The power of social media – and more specifically – video content produced for social media platforms, is undeniably huge. Given that our brains process video 60,000 times faster than text, not to mention evoke an immediate emotional response, it’s no wonder that people connect better with visuals than words. And once a connection is made, they then seek more information about what they have seen.
Your business simply can’t ignore social media in its marketing strategies, but nor can it do without video content produced especially for social media. As a successful video production agency, we spend a lot of time strategising on how we can best merge these two worlds for our clients.
How to do social video production really well
Video content is expensive to produce. Which means it needs to deliver a solid return on investment. It’s no good spending huge amounts of time and money on a nice-to-have; your video needs to work as the centre piece of your campaign. Here are some important points to consider before you kick off video production.
Pull an audience
You can’t simply post a video online and then sit back to wait for the magic. No matter how great and compelling the content is, if nobody knows about it then nobody is going to watch it. A key element of successful social video production is marketing. Yes, the video itself is a marketing tool – but you need to attract an audience for it to do its job.
All too often we come across brands slapping a video on Twitter, for example, without providing any context. This is typically accompanied by a shady looking link which screams ‘spam!’ and turns potential viewers off.
If you want your audience to be invested in your video, you need to show them that you are taking it seriously. For example, carry the same branding over between your different social media platforms to create a consistent message. You can also create eye-catching banners using visuals from your video content in order to catch people’s interest and to reinforce your
Keep it short, on-message and mobile-friendly
Attention spans are not what they used to be. Video content needs to get right to the point and grab the viewer’s attention in the first 10 seconds. And the point you need to make is not how fabulous your product or service is – but rather, how it can make the viewer’s life easier. A viewer will switch off very quickly if there is little to no upfront value for them.
Most videos on social media are watched on a mobile phone – often without sound. Knowing this, we usually add subtitles in social video production to make the videos watchable on mute. Given that content is increasingly consumed on mobile devices, you have to bear in mind the screen size and viewing quality. Nobody wants to watch a blurry video where you can’t even make out the details. We always recommend 4k as our standard -, especially for YouTube.
A gorgeous looking video is a wonderful thing but it’s pretty irrelevant if the messaging is inconsistent with the rest of your marketing objectives. Video content needs to look good, but it also needs to be on-message. This is critical to ensure brand consistency, build loyalty and minimise confusion.
Social video production is about more than just creating video content and uploading it to various platforms. It involves a range of technical components as well as distribution tactics that need to be considered carefully from the get-go. If you don’t have the time or the expertise, you may benefit by outsourcing your social video production to a digital marketing agency like us! Contact our head of video production, Jamie, to find out more.