For the past three years, a unique phenomenon has been on the rise in social media marketing. Social video or videos hosted on social media platforms were once a stub feature, something sites like Facebook and Twitter initially integrated to allow people to post links to their favourite YouTube videos. Since then, the culture of streaming, sharing, live journaling, and so on has grown into a rich world of popular episodic social videos.
For companies who pride themselves on staying up with the times and having a strong social media presence, this new trend simply cannot be ignored. If you’re ready to start really reaching out to your audience with short funny or informative videos, we’re here to help with social video tips to boost your audience. While there are a lot of guides on how to run a great social video campaign, the most important point beyond all the optimization is to build a video series that your audience wants to see.
1) Choose a Video Length
How long is your audience’s attention span? How much time do they have to watch a social media video? Most of the social video platforms allow only a few seconds of video at a time, and even Twitter recommends that you keep it to 30 seconds. While you can do a lot with 30 seconds, most companies choose to go with the Facebook video format – that allows for about two hours of video – and then choose their length from within that time. Two minutes can convey a simple message; five is enough for a mini-webisode. Of course, if you want to convey any detailed content, consider the time an average episode of this kind of content would require and the time you think your audience will want to watch it.
2) Plan for a Series
One-off videos can be great but, in general, if you’re going to spend time building interest in a video and plan to continue making popular social videos, your best bet is to create at least a loosely connected series. This way, videos can share marketing and awareness, lead smoothly from one to the next for those watching your archive, and maintain brand consistency from video to video. Whether you’re going to host a how-to, a cooking show, or just a little live journaling from staff members, make sure that your length, editing, style, and even color choices are consistent between ‘episodes’ of your series.
3) Experiment with Topics
What should you make social videos be about? That is a question that has wracked the minds of many social media marketers over the last two years. If you’re lacking inspiration, take a ‘walk’ through the current most popular independent and company social video series to get a feel for what people like. Informative topics, behind-the-scenes looks at how your industry works, and live interviews with staff are all a great place to start. Many people do how-to videos that relate to their industry, but if you’re just looking for something to catch a million clicks, try making a 30-second joke series. For longer episodes, you might even consider a few featured segments.
4) Ask Your Audience
One of the best ways to know what kind of social video to make is to simply ask your audience. They know what they like and have at least a general idea of what they’d be interested in watching if it came out of your office. You might be surprised about all the interesting and in-depth topics your audience wants to watch videos about from how your teams work together on projects to the founder’s thoughts during the first year of business.
Coming Soon: Social Video Tips to Boost Audience Part 2
This is only the first half of our two-part article on all the social video tips to boost audience we could think of. Join us next time for the second half where we’ll cover everything from live video to the final goodbyes and thank yous. Speaking of which, goodbye and thank you for reading. See you next time!
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