Why use video

A Guide to why video is the way to go on Social Media

GRAB ATTENTION

Video is a fantastic tool to hook your audience. Unlike a long-winded paragraph, it is extremely easy to consume. We’re all guilty of passively scrolling through our social media feeds and only the most compelling content tends to make the grade for our attention. Video allows you to be concise and capture viewers’ interest in the first few seconds. Social media success lies in your ability to condense information down into easily digestible snippets of content that is long enough to maintain viewers’ attention but short enough to leave them wanting more. You should place clear indicators of the videos intention at the beginning before users have the chance to scroll away.

UNIQUE MESSAGING

Posting a video on social media isn’t dissimilar to a conversation, you can only discuss one thing at a time. Otherwise your audience will quickly lose interest. With your call to action in mind, your video should be telling the story that leaves viewers wanting more. If you’re adding something to the video that doesn’t contribute directly to the call to action, you may want to consider removing it. You can re-purpose many of your large video assets to focus on unique messages. If done efficiently, the asset can last for months and you’ll have compelling content for the foreseeable future.

MAKE THE MOST OF TRENDING TOPICS

It’s imperative to deliver relevant content to your audience. Video gives your brand a voice and allows you to move quickly to take advantage of news stories, consumer behaviour and any kind of relevant content that goes viral. Some of the smartest brands incorporate these real-time techniques to become a part of the social conversation. Many popular hashtags also recur on a weekly basis (such as #WednesdayWisdom) and span across a range of consumer demographics. As a brand, you want to create campaigns that spark conversation and linking your video to the latest trends is key to doing so.

DRIVE CONVERSATION

No matter which social medium you are posting through, you should always have a goal for your video. This typically involves user action, whether you’re driving traffic to your site, purchasing a product or sharing your video. Your call to action is your virtual handshake with your viewers. If they’ve watched a video all the way through, they have demonstrated interest. You then need to direct them to take the desired action, something as simple as “to find out more visit here” may be all that is necessary. It’s one thing to have compelling content, but it’s vital to sweat your assets and drive conversions

INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS

If a picture speaks 1000 words, imagine what a video is worth. It’s one thing being relevant, but this is worth very little if the quality of your video isn’t up to scratch. Bad sound and picture quality tarnishes the credibility of your message and can quickly generate negative brand associations. However, by eliminating background noise and sub-standard resolution, you could vastly improve user interaction. There’s a lot of noise out there so it’s important you cater for viewers’ decreasing attention spans by giving them fewer excuses to leave.

MAKE IT PERSONAL

Videos are a great way to let your followers see the people and processes behind the business – contributing to your brand’s transparency. It’s a great illustration of the company if you can humanise what you do, after all people do business with people. Behind the scenes videos reveal how you work and create familiarity with the people inside your brand, demonstrating why prospects should want to work with you. If you persist in posting only business-related content, people that engage with you will start to tune out if your content is not diverse, human or entertaining enough.