48 hrs is the average life of a tweet – GaggleAMP
75% of engagement on a Facebook post occurs within the first five hours – Wisemetrics
Shocking? As community managers we put in a lot of effort in creating our strategic content plan to schedule Facebook posts, tweets and share information on other social media platforms. We invest time and energy in getting images designed to be shared on these platforms as well, since they are received well with a lot of enthusiasm on social media.
However, it can be noticed that there are a lot of video platforms that are attracting attention and traffic. YouTube being the king of all video platforms, has 100 hours of videos being uploaded every minute. Along with YouTube, there are platforms like Vimeo and Dailymotion where a lot of video content is shared.
Interestingly, Vimeo has developed a reputation for the creatives and artists, so ad films, short films, animated films by freelancers and brands are shared and receive high level of quality engagement. Vimeo is used for show-reels and portfolios as well.
What’s more interesting is the coming up of new entrants like Vine and Instagram Video. Infact, 40 per cent of the top 1,000 most popular Instagram videos are from brands, with MTV leading the way followed by NBA and Peanuts. These two platforms have revolutionised the use of videos and taken engagement to the next level.
Why Video Content Is Future?
In simple words video content meets the criteria of 3 Es – Emotional, Engaging and Entertaining.
Each of these platforms can be used by digital marketeers meet different objectives. Let\’s focus on how social media video content can be optimised and used for social media marketing campaigns.
YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine, ofcourse after Google. It has over 3 billion searches every month, and 6 billion hours of video content is viewed monthly. What we as marketeers must realise is that video content on YouTube is like books in a public library, where they’ll stay forever. They’ll always be available to the user by doing a simple search. Tweets and Facebook updates unfortunately, tend to disappear under the new updates and have a short life. Whereas, on YouTube, people will always search for relevant stories – and you never know – your video might be the one that answers their query.
You can see more interesting stats on YouTube in this interesting infographic.
Objective: To increase shelf life and SEO
Target Audience: For everyone, when you want to give detailed information
1. Add SEO keywords, meta tags, meta description of your video
2. Share the video on all social media platforms
3. Dedicate a section to videos on your website
4. Embed video in your blogs
5. Add YouTube Channel to your Facebook Page (there are Facebook Apps available) to integrate Facebook Campaigns with YouTube and increase the views of the videos.
6. Link YouTube channel with your Google Plus page
Limitation: Overload of content, difficult to get high ranking
Most watched YouTube video of 2013 was Ylvis – The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?), followed by Harlem Shake and How Animals Eat Their Food.
Vine
Vine is a fairly new way to share video content. It’s not even celebrated its first birthday yet! But – you wouldn’t feel like that as a lot of brands have already taken up to Vine to share their brand with a larger audience. According to studies conducted by The 7th Chamber, every 5 tweets a second contain a Vine video. Also, it has been found out that a Vine video is 4 times more likely to be seen than a branded video.
As you know that the Vine app allows you to take only 6 seconds videos, it’s important to keep the script extremely crisp (don’t overload it with information) and visuals interesting. Add special effects (stop-motion effect is a prefered and a popular choice), also do share it – a lot! Vine is specially for social media sharing as it’s short and entertaining.
Objective: Viral snippets on twitter, when you want to tell your story and create a buzz
Target Audience: Witty, with short attention span
1. Create 6 seconds loop videos of your new product/service promotions
2. Record wishes and opinions from your brand ambassadors
3. Share feedback about your product/service in real-time
4. Give a preview of new music release or adfilm release and how-to videos
5. Embed Vine videos in your blogs
6. Vine videos can be saved as mp4
7. Vines must be hashtagged to categorise and increase searchability
Limitation: Like tweets – Vine videos are also short-lived as compared to YouTube videos.
Here is an interesting vine video that brings PacMan to life.
Instagram Videos
65 percent of top brands use Instagram and 40 percent of the videos on Instagram are marketing efforts. A brand can get its 15 seconds of fame on Instagram videos by keeping a few things parameters in mind – relevant content, artistic detail, and timing of sharing the video. Burberry has been using Instagram videos frequently and beautifully. Their latest December – Countdown to Christmas videos are not only beautiful, but representative of the season.
The filter used for the Instagram videos is important, as it defines and sets the mood of your brand. For example, Burberry frequently uses X Pro II as a filter for their videos. Instagram videos are artistic, creative, beautiful and, an excellent choice for marketing for fashion and lifestyle brands.
Objective: Artistic video collection
Target Audience: Artistic, with an opinion
1. Instagram videos are longer – of upto 15 seconds
2. These videos can be about artistic capture of your product – adfilms, behind-the-scenes of shoot or fashion show, promotional campaigns, video series
3. Videos can be hashtagged to categorise
4. Shareable on other social media platforms
5. Videos can be saved as mp4
6. Embed videos on your blog or website
Limitation: Limited target audience on Instagram. Platform is not search friendly for individual videos.
Here is an example of Burberrys Instagram Video – an excellent example for branded videos for advertising on Instagram
Here is an interesting mini infographic that talks about the Vine and Instagram Platforms.
Suggested Video Content Strategy
Upload YouTube videos of your brand campaign or on-going promotion and do extensive SEO of these videos. Give your team sufficient time to plan and develop the videos. These videos are more professional and so target for atleast one video in two to three weeks. Once videos are uploaded spend sufficient time doing its SEO and sharing on all social media platforms.
Share Vine videos once a week about your products. You can create themes like How-to videos, behind-the-scene videos or funny videos. Since these are just 6 seconds videos you can share them more frequently.
Depending your brand’s industry, Instagram Videos can be share once in a week as well. Fashion, Art, Culture, Music, Food, Outings are more suited for Instagram videos. Create beautiful content to appeal to the audience.
Shabby videos will not yield same results as good quality, creative videos. So spend time in scripting, storyboarding and shooting with your creative team. The result will surely strengthen your brand’s image and content’s shelf life.
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