Video is all the rage right now, with most marketers hailing it as the best form of content both in terms of engagement and in terms of conversions – particularly when it comes to social media. However, as a small business, it can appear quite daunting to get started with social media videos and video marketing in general. Although videos are not that difficult to create, it can definitely seem so to a beginner.
In this blog post, we'll show you how to leverage social media videos for your small business.
Why should you use social media videos?
To put it simply, there are several big reasons why you should start leveraging video marketing for your small business:
- Video content gets considerably more engagement than other forms of content on social media (to be more specific, 1200% more shares than text and image updates!)
- They’re not difficult or time consuming to produce, nor expensive, contrary to popular belief
- Your videos will be evergreen, meaning you can reuse them and repost them on different channels and platforms for months or even years to come
- Videos are incredibly versatile and can help you reach several business goals, from boosting engagement and brand awareness to boosting conversions and sales
Here’s how to get started with creating awesome social media videos.
Social video must-haves
Before we get into social video creation and ideas for social media videos for businesses, it’s important to know a few basic best practices:
- Use subtitles in your videos as most people view them with the sound off (on social media); therefore, if you want to get your message across, you should use subtitles throughout the video. Or, in other words, make sure that your videos make sense even if someone watches them with the sound off
- Keep your videos short: social media is all about snappy, short content and that holds true for videos as well. Although you can certainly create longer videos (for example, interviews), generally, you should keep videos at a few seconds – 2-3 minutes maximum and only for video where that length makes sense
- Upload your videos natively – on some platforms, you get to reach more people when you upload them natively versus via a tool (plus, make sure to optimize your videos for that specific platform)
- Add your branding: use your logo to watermark your videos and even better, use your brand colours to make your videos recognizable
- Make it relevant: is the video providing any value to your target audience? Whether it’s entertainment value or informational make sure your video is relevant to your target audience
- Add calls to action: if you want to get people to take action then add calls to action in your social videos
How to create beautiful and engaging social media videos
Now that you know the basics of great social media videos, the next big question is…how do you actually create them? And what kinds of videos should you create in order to engage your audience and achieve your goals?
In terms of types of social videos for businesses and how to create them, you can go one of 2 routes:
Film the videos yourself
- Behind the scenes videos: show clips of your team and office behind the scenes, record exclusive clips of your upcoming products and show behind the scenes at the events you hold or attend
- Interviews: hold interviews with relevant people from your niche, such as social influencers, clients
- Product videos: highlight your products (and upcoming products) in short social videos
- Live streaming videos: live streaming is a great opportunity to share important news about your company, hold live Q&As with your audience or hold interviews, as well as show behind the scenes images – basically, any live action video idea can also work for live streaming
Use stock video footage and editing software to put together your video
Another option is to use tools that offer stock video footage, as well as using your own videos and images to edit and customize your video. Here are some ideas of the types of videos you can create this way:
- Useful tips: create a short video with several relevant useful tips for your target audience; they offer value, they’re quick to create (you can simply use images and subtitles to create them) and they work whatever industry you’re in – look at your own blog, as well as other similar blogs for listicle ideas
- Other listicles: there are numerous ways to use the listicle format: “10 best …”, “5 common mistakes …” and so on
- How-to videos: show your followers how to do something useful (and something related to your business and that is relevant to your audience). For example, if you sell SEO services, then you can create a quick “how to research keywords” video with relevant screenshots and helpful subtitles
- Animated videos: create fun animated videos on all kinds of topics, such as listicles and how to videos
Useful tools
The final piece of the puzzle is software to help you put together your video; for live action videos, so that you can edit them, add subtitles and music, as well as other elements and for stock video so that you can find video clips and edit them together.
Below are some useful tools for creating videos from scratch, as well as for editing social videos.
Wave.video
Wave.video is an online video editor and creator; it has several features that make it a really attractive option for businesses and marketers: the ability to instantly resize your video to over 30 different formats; you can easily add subtitles throughout your video; you can upload your own content (videos and images); you can watermark your video and add calls to action; and finally, you have access to a variety of templates to choose from, for all kinds of industries. Plus, the video creator is very easy to use.
Biteable
Biteable is a similar solution, a video creator and editor that allows you to create marketing videos easily either by using templates or starting from scratch. Like the previous tool, you have access to numerous templates for all kinds of occasions, as well as a large library of video stock footage from Shutterstock, along with animations from Biteable.
Vyond
As mentioned earlier, one way to approach social media videos is to create animations. Vyond (formerly GoAnimate) is a video creator that focuses solely on animated videos; you have a plethora of video templates to choose from, as well as animation styles to choose from so creating an animated video is actually surprisingly easy. Once you’ve chosen a template, it’s very easy to customize your animation by adding characters and changing up their looks, adding the actions you want the characters to take and further edit your video to customize it to your liking.
Canva Video Maker
Canva Video Maker is a hassle-free drag and drop tool, which makes it easy for even non-designers to create videos. You can do it from scratch or use one of the free professionally-designed video templates. Canva’s library has thousands of free and paid templates, stock videos, animated graphics, and music available to use. You can collaborate with friends and colleagues by sharing access to your design, and your finished video will be available to download in high res and watermark free.
Conclusion
Creating social media videos isn’t the time-consuming or expensive task that it might appear to be at first glance; not only that, but you don’t actually need any experience filming or editing videos: just spend some time getting to know the software you’ve chosen and leverage the available templates to help.