Incorporating video content into your marketing plan is fast becoming an essential way to grow your business. WYZOwl statistics have shown a whopping 87% of brands use videos as a marketing tool, with 83% of respondents reporting it offers good ROI. And when it comes to social media this seems particularly important – video has been found to be the second most popular content type for increasing engagement.
The meteoric rise of Tiktok has no doubt played a huge part in this shift. According to TechCrunch, young people are now using the platform even more than Youtube. And other social media networks such as Instagram and Facebook are following suit, with these websites now incorporating more and more video into their approach.
Even users on platforms that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with video are getting on board. Take Twitter, for example. The social network has reported over 2 billion video views on its channel each day, which represents a massive 67% year-on-year growth.
It’s no wonder brands are getting so excited about this form of content. Tweets that include video see 10 times more engagements than those which don’t, and Twitter has said video ads save 50% on cost-per-engagement. Meanwhile, 68% of video marketers plan to use LinkedIn videos this year.
But how can the brands who have previously shied away from video make the most of it on their networks? Our brands have had considerable success with attracting eyeballs on our video content (like here for instance), so here are our top tips for using video to help grow your business.
1. The First 8 Seconds
Attention spans are notoriously very short online. Devrix has even estimated that in 2022 for the average user it is just 8 seconds.
With this in mind, it’s important to make sure those first 8 seconds are really capturing your audience’s attention. Otherwise, no matter how great the rest of the content you put out is, if your viewer has already scrolled onto something else it will be entirely wasted.
Try and open with something that will hook your viewer in from the get-go, showing them why they need to keep watching.
2. Consider Sound
When creating content it’s worth considering that many of your viewers might not be in a position to watch with the sound on. They could be on public transport, at the dinner table or even at work, not to mention those who are hearing impaired.
Closed captions are essential for ensuring you are not losing anyone’s interest. That being said, this doesn’t mean you should be purely creating silent films! Even if your video features someone talking, music should play in the background to make it more appealing and engaging for those watching it with the sound on.
Before making your selection, conduct some research into what sort of music you should select. TikTok has provided useful data on how its audience engages with music on the videos on its site. 67% want to see brands featuring trending audio, 68% say it helps them remember a brand and 58% are more likely to share an ad that features it.
So, it’s helpful to look into which songs are trending before you select your song choice. However, don’t neglect to think about your audience and the tone you want to set with your video. If you’re targeting an older audience, the latest hits might not be the right selection.
Whoever you are targeting, consider choosing faster-paced music as this has been found by TikTok to elevate response levels in users.
3. Tailor Your Video for Your Platform
What works well on one channel may not necessarily be a good fit for another channel so make sure you are tailoring your content for where it will end up.
Videos that are stylish, slick, and aspirational will fit better on Instagram, whereas if you are posting to TikTok you will want to create something more rough and ready. On Facebook, it would be valuable to consider creating live video events, which are often prioritized by social media algorithms.
4. Optimize Your Video for Search
It’s easy to assume SEO only applies to purely written content, however, make sure you’re not forgetting it when creating video content too.
Think about using target keywords when naming your video file, creating a video title, and writing your video description. You can also create other opportunities for keyword inclusion by pinning a comment on your own video and via the closed captions discussed earlier. All of this will ensure your video is optimized sufficiently.
5. Review How Your Video is Performing
Once you’ve sent your video out into the world, review how well it has done from a marketing perspective. That way you’ll know what is and isn’t working on your feeds and you can keep refining your output to be more and more impactful.
Keep an eye on view-through rates, click-through rates, share statistics and watch time, for a sense of how well it is performing on your feeds.
Then use your findings to continue putting out content that performs best and hold back on producing more of the content which is doing less well.
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BRANDED utilizes video to maximum effect for our brands, contact us today if you’re curious about all the ways we grow our challenger brands.
