The Rise of Video Marketing on Social Media
Content is an incredibly vital component of any marketing campaign. The content you post on your website, blog, and social media pages is crucial in terms of brand perception and visibility. Your content is the means through which effective SEO strategies are implemented. People find your web pages by way of your content, and when they explore your pages, they discover your business.
In the past, the focus was generally on written content. Written marketing material is still essential; however, it must now be integrated with video if you want your brand to truly reach your audience. In many ways, video marketing represents the content marketing of today.
Why You Need to Include Video in Your Campaign
When people go online, they expect to be presented with video. Whether your customers are searching for a tutorial, a quick, silly entertainment piece, or the world news of the day, you can be sure that a high percentage of them will remain engaged longer when this content is presented in video format.
As New York Times contributing op-ed writer Timothy Egan highlighted in a 2016 post, the human attention span is ever shrinking. This doesn’t make your written marketing content irrelevant by any means, but it does mean that the nature of content is changing. Well-written material will always serve as an important aspect of brand development and authority-driven marketing. Blog posts, articles, and white papers can meet the needs of your audience on various levels.
On the other hand, you must keep that continuously dwindling attention span in mind. Your average user may not always have time to peruse several articles. In many cases, people appear online briefly to check messages or social media updates. They may not be looking for finely crafted text, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take a few moments to watch a video that happens to catch their attention.
Incorporating Video in Your Social Media Marketing
What does all this mean for your business? Well, if you care to take a cue from some of the top brands in the world, you will make the most of video in your overall marketing strategy. Video has the capacity to pierce through information overload, which virtually everyone has experienced online at some point. When Twitter’s Vine app emerged a few years ago, major companies (such as Lowe’s, Taco Bell, and Bacardi) quickly recognized the impact that a six-second video could have on their audience. In fact, according to a CNET article from 2013, some of these companies took advantage of the opportunity “just three months after release.”
While the Vine app itself was later restructured and is no longer available via Twitter, the concept is still the same: Quick video snippets can be used to reach even online users with the attention span of a hummingbird. Those snippets have the ability to speak to the subconscious and drive home your intended message to consumers. You need only ponder Snapchat’s enormous popularity to gain a sense of how utterly effective such a format can be.
Beyond a Few Seconds
Not all video marketing needs to be presented in mere seconds, however. Just look at the growth of YouTube as both a social media channel and a marketing tool. As a 2015 article on Billboard points out, “Morgan Stanley analysts said YouTube is ‘exceeding our expectations.’” Today, YouTube is a prime example of how video may be leveraged to promote brands organically and effectively.
YouTube is not the only heavy hitter when it comes to video marketing on social media. According to a Tech Crunch post, Facebook reached an astronomical eight billion daily video views as of November of 2015. This number doubled the four billion daily views from April of the same year. Such figures are representative of the epic reach that video and social media have across the web.
Using Video Marketing on Social Media
Once you understand what a powerful asset video can be to your marketing efforts, your next step is to take it to social media. How can you utilize video in ways that will drive web traffic to your pages, improve lead generation, and increase conversions? You really have a wide range of tools that you might use. From video blogs to live webinars to video tutorials to product demonstration videos, the possibilities are as diverse as ever.
When you are devising your marketing campaign, remember one important detail: The best way to stay connected with your audience is by promoting your brand across several channels. Your content should be visible on as many social media sites as possible. Make the most of these platforms by providing your users with interesting, engaging videos that will keep them coming back for more.
The rise of video marketing on social media is an exciting trend that seems poised to endure. Video enables you to deliver a consistent message across a variety of platforms. Create video content that inspires users to share your content with others. By doing this, you may soon increase user recognition – and appreciation – of your brand.
