What Is A Social Media Video?
In layman’s terms, a social media video is video content that is created specifically to share on social media platforms.
This content is designed to educate, entertain, and engage your audience. These videos can be in the form of ads, stories, regular posts, and cover videos.
Why Use Video in Social Media?
Marketers are constantly looking for new ways to engage their audience and the way people consume information on Social Media is always changing.
Social media has been growing rapidly since its popularity began to rise back in the early 2000s and believe it or not, it hasn’t even reached the peak of its popularity yet.
Almost all successful content marketers continually test different methods of communication using multiple social media channels to see what is working and what trends are emerging.
It is not surprising that visual content (photos, video, infographics, etc) is 40x more likely to be shared than just text alone.
According to Emarsys, over 3.2 billion people are active on social media networks, which accounts for 42% of the whole planet! This means that your customers/clients are all over social media just waiting to consume your video content!
Which Social Media Channels/Networks Should I Post My Video Content To?
This answer will depend on your social media strategy goals and linking your social media channels to your strategy’s goals is essential. You will need to find out which social media channels your audience are active on and how they will help you to achieve those goals. If you can’t explain how a specific platform will help you to achieve these goals, then maybe you shouldn’t use it.
There are so many platforms to choose from as a business, but Facebook remains to be the most widely used, and amazingly Forbes state that it now dominates Youtube when it comes to video content.
According to buffer (2019), Facebook is the most popular channel, with 81% of businesses sharing video content, and with over 48 million monthly Facebook users in the UK alone, it is safe to say that your ideal customer/client is most definitely on Facebook.
How Do I Create Video Content To Use On Social Media?
So, you know why videos are one of the most effective forms of content marketing available to businesses, but how do you create professional social media videos on a limited marketing budget?
Facebook recommends that engaging social media videos should be between 15 seconds and 2 minutes long, which doesn’t sound too bad, but where do you start?
The first step in the video creation process is ideation, this is where you brainstorm lots of ideas relating to your social media goals. Think about ways you can help your clients/customers, can you provide tips and advice relating to your products/services?
Look at your competitors, what are they doing with regards to video on social media, and is it working for them?
When you’ve decided what kind of content you’d like to create for your video you need to start the planning process. It helps to write a script of what you are going to say beforehand or, if your video will consist of more static images, create a storyboard of what each slide should contain.
If you are recording a video where someone is talking it is advisable to add subtitles, according to Digiday a whopping 85% of facebook video is watched without sound so videos without subtitles are missing a trick.
Social proof is a great way to build trust with your audience and show them what existing customers think about your products/services. Testimonial videos can show potential customers what sort of service they can expect from you and give them the necessary ‘push’ to decide to do business with you.
What Can I Use To Record Social Media Videos?
You don’t have to have professional equipment to record video for social media, a smartphone can do the job just as well. The right accessories however can make a whole lot of difference.
Investing in a tripod, clamp, or even a selfie stick, so you don’t get the dreaded shake, can really transform a video from looking amateur and they don’t need to break the bank. There are a lot of options on Amazon that will do the job nicely.
Social media Video production
A good clip-on microphone is also a must (if your audience decides to listen to your video) and you can get decent ring lighting (essential for make-up artists and vloggers) on Amazon for an absolute steal.
Make sure your background is clean and simple, you don’t want your audience to be distracted by what’s going on behind!
How do I Edit My Social Media Videos?
Now that you’ve decided on the content and recorded your video or collated images and text you’d like to use, it’s time to put it all together. There are lots of editing software apps out there to refine your video content, here are some of the most popular ones:
is a video and photo editing app available on IOS and Andriod and can create optimised content especially for social media platforms. You can also add stickers, text, and music to videos. A Free version is available but the exported video will contain a watermark. To remove this you will need to upgrade to Inshot pro which shouldn’t break the bank at just £11.99 for 1 year.
This app is great for beginners who want to edit photos and create basic videos and collages.
Adobe spark is a great all-rounder app available on the AppStore, unfortunately, it’s not available on Google Play yet. The pricing starts at just over £10 per month but there is a free version if you don’t mind the watermark.
If you are subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Spark is included and as it’s part of the Spark Suite you can also make gorgeous social media graphics using Spark Post.
Vidlab is another great multi-clip editor, again, exclusively available on the AppStore.
Offering some great filters and effects, it contains a selection of basic tools and is great for beginners who want to produce cool videos. It is free to use but if you want to make full use of its features you will need to make in-app purchases.
The self-proclaimed “easiest video maker for social media marketing”, Lumen5 is designed to convert text into video so it’s great for repurposing your blog content. They have a free version but again, like the others, videos contain a watermark when exported.
This is just a small selection of video editors available on the internet so I recommend you do the research yourself and experiment with a few that offer free trials before settling on one in particular, as what works for one person, may not work for another.
I hope you have found this post useful and it enables you to publish video content to social media regularly as post consistency is key. As long as you create content that people want to see and engage with, that also aligns with your social media marketing strategy, the results will speak for themselves.
If you really don’t have the time nor inclination to have a go at producing your own social media video content and would prefer to outsource it, please get in touch, I’d love to help you out 🙂
