The Art of Creating Winning Video Content for Social Media
According to recent stats and performance sheets, it is video content that runs the SMM. By 2022, online videos will account for 82% of all Internet traffic.
It is no wonder that 80% of marketers surveyed would like to create video content if they had the time and money. And we would say that this is the right approach to driving the business – to achieve success in your niche, you need to follow marketing trends.
If you are going to produce video content for different social networks, then you should understand the specifics of serving video content on different platforms. We have made a list of life hacks on how to create video content for social media and services to work with video content for the most popular social networks: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.
There is no need for you to hire a cameraman, announcer, editor, or designer to animate your video post and do dynamic ads for social media. You can yourself create video clips easily and quickly. Our tips will help SMM specialists, Internet marketers, bloggers, and entrepreneurs to reach their goals by producing quality and well-performing videos for social networks.
What Does It Take to Create Video Content That Works?
Many marketers and bloggers end up in a situation when they are unable to deliver quality video content despite initially having a lot of great ideas for video production. This happens because they lack a clear plan of action and do not know what to do and when. If you have never been involved in the production of video content for social networks, the below algorithm will come in handy for you. Follow this pattern when working on a social media video.
- Choosing the idea of the video;
- Choosing a platform;
- Preparing for shooting: creating a script, selecting shooting equipment, calculating costs;
- Video production;
- Post-production: working with the already shoot video: editing, adjusting, applying special effects, selecting background music, etc.;
- Video promotion.
It is important that you do not skip any of the above steps. Otherwise, you risk creating a poor-quality video with no message behind the scenes.
Video posts on social networks are getting shorter; there are less sound and more animated elements in them. Here are some simple tips for using videos on social media when producing different types of video content:
- Do the marketing analytics. Know for whom and why you create video posts, what you want to show in the clips. Take into account the tech specs of videos for different online platforms: YouTube videos are usually longer and educational, while Facebook clips are shorter and more entertaining.
- Focus on content. Your video should tell the viewer something useful and carry informational value. Otherwise, why should people watch it?
- Make use of the intro. Facebook and Instagram offer video autoplay functionality when viewing a feed, so remember the three-second rule: you need to get the user interested in your video from the first frames. Start with the main thing or at least the intriguing one.
- Add some animation. Animation similar to infographics helps to visually present information on the most complex topics, but unlike infographics, the animation is fun and entertaining.
- Don’t worry about sound. Media giants like Mic, LittleThings, PopSugar report that about 85% of their video content is viewed with the sound muted. You can do the hack with video subtitles.
Following the tips for creating effective videos will help you deliver a greater result with less effort and hassle. Let’s dive deeper into the specs and requirements of the most popular social networks so that you know how to make videos for a particular platform.
Key Platforms for Video Posting
Video content has a lot of advantages. It boosts email marketing effectiveness, raises trust in people, increases audience engagement, has a viral effect, and affects behavioral responses. The audience prefers video content – people are better off watching a video from a brand than reading a post. That is why it is worth shooting! The most important thing is to have a strategy.
Different types of videos perform better on different platforms. Video clips that engage your audience on Facebook may not work on Instagram at all. Therefore, it is critically important to choose the right type of video for your particular social network.
- Post native videos. It is better to upload native videos directly to Facebook instead of using links to third-party services like YouTube. Such publications are ranked better in the newsfeed. They account for 80% of all video interactions and have 67% more interactions than YouTube link videos.
- Work on the video. Make sure that the video is useful for the viewer and energizes people with emotions;
- Show the most interesting things right away. There is no need for long intros: videos on the Facebook feed are running in a row, and the competition for people’s attention is high. Keep your videos short – clips shorter than 20 seconds are often watched to the end. If you have produced a long video, then cut it and show the highlights;
- Create subtitles. By default, Facebook videos are played without sound, and often people do not turn on sound on each video. And you need to make sure that your key message is heard.
- Use a call to action after the video is shown. Facebook makes it possible to place a CTA button so that the viewer has the opportunity to additionally interact with the video, for example, go to the website. For the interaction to work, the video must be holistic from the inside: it must answer the viewer’s questions, create emotion, or offer an interesting action.
- Create entertaining content. There is an informal atmosphere on Instagram, so don’t be afraid to joke and entertain platform visitors, regardless of the types of Instagram ads you are working on. The videos can be visually simple but entertaining and emotional, thus, top-performing.
- Think about subtitles. In most cases, people will watch Instagram videos without sound, so you should take care of key message delivery in a visual way.
- Show behind-the-scenes fragments on Instagram. Exclusivity is important here: you give a subscriber a tour of the company, showcase production, and share corporate culture. It humanizes the brand and makes it closer to people.
- Show how the product changes people’s lives. Tell what problems a product may solve and how people’s lives change after they use it. Try not to sell but to show how to interact with the product.
YouTube
YouTube is a more conservative video platform that has been operating since 2005. Video clips that work on Facebook and Instagram will hardly put you in top positions in YouTube “charts.” To see yourself in YouTube recommendation lists, you should take care of the following:
- Educate your audience. YouTube users often come to learn something. If you can teach people something useful and interesting, they are more likely to share the video with friends. The subject of training can be different – from how to brush your teeth correctly to how to buy tickets;
- Don’t cut the video. The YouTube audience is more likely to interact with videos that are ten times longer than their counterparts on Facebook or Instagram. People come to YouTube for video content on a specific issue. And all videos compete more for quality than the attention-grabbing effect.
Must-Have Tools
It is way easier to produce quality video content if you have professional tools at hand. They will do all the magic for you – just decide on what you expect to get and enjoy the result. Let’s take a look at the list of video editing software that should be definitely in your professional arsenal:
- Prezi – this tool was originally released for creating presentations. However, with time, the function to prepare videos has been added to the toolset of Prezi. The program is very flexible: you can import projects there in ppt format and convert them to video, which is extremely useful for the production of business video content for social networks;
- Interactive Platform – the platform allows making a video where the user can control the plot. This means that the video has several options for development. The platform is made as an online editor, and you can create interactive clips with a choice of 2 to 6 actions;
- Movavi Video Suite – it is an all-in-one tool for video content production. It supports almost all video formats – from HD Video, MPEG, and OGV to QuickTime, RM, WebM, and many more. It combines several modules at once: video editing, screen recording, and file conversion. For example, you can use the tool to convert video to MP4 or process a dozen audio files simultaneously. You can also turn your raw footage into a well-edited movie or record anything that happens on your desktop. The service has built-in tips that help a novice user prepare a video. You can add effects, animation, titles.
Working on quality video content always takes a lot of time and effort. The above services will make video marketing easier for you. Spend more time generating creative ideas for your publications instead of making your hands dirty with the routine production tasks.
