Three Tips for Updating your Social Media Video Strategy

When we work with our clients on their video strategies, we’re finding that they continue to focus on making minute and a half videos that tell the story of their campaign or company. And then they want to take this video share it on social media. Done and done, right? Not quite.

Did you know that the average mobile user scrolls through more 300 feet of content per day? That’s the height of the statue of liberty. Suffice it to say that they are not stopping to watch a minute and a half video from your brand on social media.

More than ever, it’s important to make video content channel-specific, catering length and topic to user preferences on the platform where we place it.

Don’t get me wrong – the minute and a half video still is important. It’s a good asset to have on the website and on YouTube, as it’s critical for educating prospective customers and moving them down the funnel. We just need to be more strategic about how we’re hooking them in and driving them to the longer video through social media.

So, we’re working with clients to create pithy 10-second content for social media that then drives our audience back to a landing page with the longer video.

How can we create social media video that people will actually watch? Check out these three tips:

Keep it short.

Ten seconds or less. Try to get your message out in the first three seconds. One of our campaigns on Facebook from six months ago saw:

You can bet we were pleased that we stuck to our strategy of getting our call to action out in the first three seconds. The rest is just gravy. But, this finding has led us to ensure more than ever that we’re prioritizing 10-second or less video.

Be efficient.

As you’ve been reading this, you’ve realized you’ll be making MORE videos, but shorter ones. And you’re thinking, oh boy, this is going to crush my budget. Think again. Making shorter videos gives you the opportunity to re-use content in different ways. Don’t think of each video as a 10-second Oscar-winning masterpiece. Use textural b-roll in the background with text overlays. Simply editing clips in a different order and using different text to tell a new story can create numerous shorts out of the same b-roll.

Don’t sweat sound.

According to Facebook, users watch 85% of video without sound. Not surprising, when you think about how quickly you reach for the mute button when sound unexpectedly blares from a video on your phone. It’s easy to save budget by not buying music tracks or taking sound for your videos.

For additional tips for creating video specifically on Facebook, check out my colleague Kyle King’s recent post, Getting Started with Facebook Video ads.

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