Nailing Your Social Media Video Campaign: Dos & Don’ts

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Do’s
  • Do consider native videos
  • Do add a call to action
  • Do understand your audience’s behavior on different social platforms
  • Do target relevant audience
  • Do keep mobile in mind
• Don’ts
  • Don’t restrict yourself to one platform
  • Don’t forget about video SEO
  • Don’t be focused on advertising, think about building an audience
• Conclusion

Introduction

Video marketing on social media is diversified. Due to the varied nature of the different social media platforms and the kind of audience these platforms engage, guidelines for social videos cannot be uniform.

Social media is a great platform to showcase your video content and reach out to more people.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc are constantly pushing video content to the front. Due to the rise in consumption of video content, this makes perfect sense.

If you are looking to pair your video marketing strategy with your social media campaign, it is important that you understand what works and what doesn’t.

Source

Here is a list of dos and don’ts of social media video campaign:

Do’s

Do consider native videos

Whether you take the case of Facebook or Twitter, native videos outperform third party links.

In fact, native Facebook videos result in a whooping 80% of all video interactions across the platform.

When it comes to Twitter, native videos drive more engagement with 2.8x more retweets.

A recent update on Reddit allows users to directly share videos on the platforms eliminating the need to use third-party links. All of these facts clearly indicate how platforms are focusing on native videos rather than non-native content.

Takeaway: When thinking of creating a social media video campaign, replace third-party links with native videos. This will help you get more user engagement.

Do add a call to action

A call to action is extremely important for your social media campaign. Not having a call to action is equivalent to engaging your audience and then letting them move on.

Your call to action is what guides your user to your website and takes them further through the funnel. If you do not have a call to action in place (especially in your social videos), you might not see the desired results.

Takeaway: You can afford not having a call-to-action in your website videos but don’t use this approach for your social campaign.

Do understand your audience’s behavior on different social platforms

Making videos and sharing them on every possible platform isn’t a good marketing strategy.

The behavior of your audience varies from platform to platform. Like a LinkedIn user might be looking for something informative about your brand and a Pinterest user might just be looking for products to buy.

It is advisable to focus on cross-promotion instead of cross-posting. What this means is that you should tailor your content uniquely for each platform instead of sharing the same content everywhere.

Facebook is giving a boost to long-form content. On Twitter, users prefer short videos. Your 15-minute video might perform great on Facebook but fail on Twitter. So how about creating a shorter version for this platform?

Takeaway: A tutorial video might find more viewers on LinkedIn as compared to Facebook. So when you are posting video content, analyse the demand of the viewer first.

Do target relevant audience

Social media provides you a convenient way to target your customers. Take the case of Facebook and Youtube. With designed filters, you can target your audience based on region, age, gender, interests etc.

Use these filters and categories carefully.

Takeaway: Whenever you create a product/service, the first step is always to know who your prospective buyers will be. Use this information to target your users.

Do keep mobile in mind

Social video means mobile video.

90% of Twitter videos are consumed on a mobile device.

While crafting your social media videos, remember that you are creating it largely for a mobile audience.

Takeaway: When thinking of video, think mobile. Like try to keep the important information at the centre of the screen and away from the thumbs.

Don’ts

Don’t restrict yourself to one platform

While you certainly don’t have to post your videos on all platforms, multi channel existence can help you strengthen your marketing strategy.

Multiple social platforms put your content in front of diverse audience with varied interests. This allows you to have a broader understanding of your target audience.

Takeaway: Your social media video campaign should utilise every possible social channel. So when you think of multi channel existence, always make sure to invest a little more in crafting platform specific content.

Don’t forget about video SEO

Google’s API has started reading video content and in the coming time, video SEO may not matter so much. But as of now, video SEO is a very important factor in making your video searchable.

When you upload your video 1.001 on Youtube without modifying its title, your content is not searchable.

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. The supporting text content that goes with the video should be a diluted version of your user’s search query.

Takeaway: To make your content more visible to your audience, create appropriate titles and place relevant keywords in the description.

Don’t be focused on advertising, think about building an audience

Video marketing on social media is more about building an audience than selling your product.

Make sure that you are not being too pushy especially when creating video ads.

Don’t bombard your audience with salesy videos. Focus on creating videos which highlight your brand values. Users looks for those brands that share similar values as them.

Takeaway: Use your social videos with the core idea of “socialising” rather than selling.

Conclusion

From choosing the right platform for marketing to optimising content for these channels, the idea is to make your buyer’s journey smooth.

An effective social media video campaign is about incorporating the elements that work and eliminating the ones that don’t.

FAQs