How To Create Social Media Videos

Today’s social media landscape is absolutely crowded, competitive, and overwhelming. Engaging content is essential for standing out, receiving attention, and remaining relevant in this ever-changing environment. The importance of having a strong social media presence, as a business or brand cannot be taken for granted.

Video content is the most powerful tool for going viral on social media. Trust the stats; the algorithms do not lie. There is a generous amount of statistics related to social media and video content. All of them undoubtedly point to the medium’s massive growth.

Video content’s popularity has been on the rise, maintaining a top spot on social streams. The video marketing forecast by Cisco predicted a million minutes of video per second on the internet by the year 2020. Videos have the power to establish a connection between the customer and brand. With videos, you can put a face to your business and give your customers a glimpse of who you are. It definitely helps the customers and audience relate to you more. 

Include video content to strengthen your social media strategy and use this emerging trend to grow. As daunting as it might seem, the plethora of video editing software available online makes the process a lot easier. It can be as simple as shooting content on your smartphone, looking up an Instagram video editor online to do the post-production work, and you are all set to upload awesome content on your social media page.

6 Step guide to create well-performing social media videos

To make the entire task simpler, let’s take a look at a 6-step guide to create well-performing social media videos.

1. The Platform

From Facebook to YouTube, every platform has its own format. The videos need to be tailored to suit the platform. The first step is to choose where your video is getting posted. Understanding your audience is critical before making this decision. 

Choosing the platform right at the beginning is important for getting the format and dimensions right. The 1:1 aspect ratio works across most platforms, but it’s a good idea to look up the recommended specs for the platform you choose.

2. The Video Type

Identifying the most effective type of video is critical to a successful video marketing strategy. Opt for the type that works best for your brand and engages your audience the most. Here are a few of the most popular types of video content.

Live Videos: It’s the most interactive and most genuine video content. These could be in the form of webinars, interviews, or Q&As.

Behind-the-scenes: It’s a great way to give your audience a peek behind the curtains. This type of content is ideal for building trust with your customers by humanizing your brand.

Tutorials: Everyone has looked up ‘how-to videos on the internet at least once. A step-by-step guide of how to use your products or services through these videos helps establish your expertise.

Testimonials: Often the type of content that converts viewers to sales. These videos are customer reviews and highlights that enhance your brand validation. 

3.The Production

Whether it’s an in-house production or done by hired professionals, a comprehensive production plan saves time and money. Lack of clarity in your plan can leave you with a poor quality video in the end, despite having great ideas at the beginning. Preparing scripts, budgeting, and choosing the location and equipment should be done in advance for a smooth rollout phase. With all of these locked down, you can effortlessly shoot your content and get on to the editing stage.

4. Post-production

Here’s the technical part of the process. Take your time polishing the content that has been shot. Add captions, animations, music, call-to-actions, and pretty much anything that enhances the visual aesthetics of the video and adds value to the concept and content.

5. Uploading the Video

This step usually entails just a few clicks on your social media profile but contributes a lot to the performance of your content. For instance, if you are on YouTube, you will be prompted to add tags, descriptions, and more. There are two important points to consider at this point: attractive thumbnail and SEO keywords. Thumbnails set the tone of your content. Your thumbnail should be powerful enough to reel viewers among the overflowing and overwhelming volume of content that people scroll through daily. Optimizing your video is what maximizes its reach. Search keywords and ensure relevant ones make it to your tags and descriptions. 

6. Analyze the Performance

The last step is monitoring the performance. The view counts, likes, shares, and comments speak a lot about the effectiveness and success of the content that you post. Every platform has a set of metrics to analyze your video’s performance. To meet the goals you would have set for your content, understanding these metrics is a significant part of your social media strategy.

Now that we have looked at the ‘how to’ part of creating social media videos, here are some points to consider while creating video content.

• Quality Content: It’s critical to create valuable content not just for you and your brand but also for your target audience. Think beyond just promotional videos. Social media is an incredibly interactive space; leverage this and put out content that’s informative, fun and entertaining.

• Short & Simple Videos: Holding the audience’s attention throughout the video is challenging but quite doable. 2-minute videos are the most tried and tested format on social media. These are easier to produce, and as a result, you get to focus more on getting the quality of content right.

• Optimize for mobile: Most of the social media content is consumed on mobile. Therefore, ensuring that your video looks great and performs well on the smaller screens is necessary. 

• Powerful start and call-to-action: Beginning and endings are of great value with any type of content. The first 3 seconds are what usually get the viewers hooked. A dynamic start that piques interest and curiosity is a definite winner. Similarly, end with a bang! The ending should be impactful enough for the viewers to click the ‘see more’ link. A compelling CTA can be an extremely beneficial element in your video’s end.

• Repurpose: The time and effort put into creating exciting videos can be maximized by repurposing them in multiple ways. Monitor the performance of your content and reuse the ones with excellent track records.

Conclusion

If you haven’t started leveraging video marketing on social media, get started right away. Create dynamic video content and share it across platforms to reach your audience far and wide. For staying visible in the increasingly crowded digital space, video content needs to be an integral part of your social media strategy.