Do you feel that your content is not as engaging as it could be? Is your social media performance not trending upwards? Video content is a great way to draw attention to your business, keep customers engaged and breathe new life into your brand.
In this article Fablr’s digital marketing agony aunt, Jodie Beardmore, explains the importance of using video in your social media marketing strategy.
Video is a fantastic tool to use for storytelling, it opens up access to new platforms, can help you build authenticity and with the rise of Tiktok, social media platforms like Instagram are having to follow suit with Instagram Reels because of the prevailing trend towards short-form video content. Customers are scrolling through their phones and want information fast and video is a great way to do that.
They don’t want to read large amounts of copy, follow links to an external source because why would they? If they continue to scroll through the plethora of video content available they might find their answer faster. We’re impatient and with evidence that attention spans are shortening (more on that later) you need to make sure your brand is engaging, entertaining, and will hold your customers’ attention.
To discover more about the benefits of using video in your content strategy, read on.
Why Video?
Reason #1: It’s more personable to your brand
People make decisions based on emotion first so if you can connect to your customer on a personal level then they are more likely to meet your conversion goal, whether your aim is to sell a product or service, create brand awareness, increase followers or recruit new staff.
For example, how many times have you shared a meme because you related to the content? Content that creates a connection with your audience is very valuable and creates a community within your brand.
One of our more recent video campaigns, titled ‘Mums Memes’, connected to our target audience of young mums through a series of funny and relatable videos based around parenting.
We wanted to explore the common frustrations of parenting that all parents have to deal with, and by encapsulating these stories in short, easily shareable video “bites”, we were able to better connect the client’s product with the most relevant audience.
Reason #2: Video is great for storytelling
An advantage of video is that you can tell more of your brand’s story than you are able to in just a static image. Stories have a beginning, middle and end and this is much easier to capture through video. Video allows you to convey more information about your product/service and you have the ability to show where it fits into your consumers lives and not just tell them. Video is also amazing for portraying emotion which can make your stories more memorable keeping your brand at the forefront of your audience’s minds.
We’ve all seen ads that have stuck with us for weeks, years even. Remember the iconic Cadbury’s Gorilla playing ‘In the air tonight?’ That’s from 2007 and we still think about it now!
If you want to reach different audiences more effectively whilst telling your brand story, video is a great way to do this. For example when we worked with our client we created a set of persona’s that we wanted to target and through video we were able to tell a story that reached each persona directly and show how the product would fit into and benefit their lives.
We were able to get a glimpse into several different peoples lives – from a busy mum, to a hungry football fan who needed a quick dinner so they didn’t miss the match.
Reason #3: Access to new platforms
Some social platforms are focused entirely around video, such as TikTok and YouTube. If you are not producing any video content, you simply won’t be able to bring your brand and messaging to these platforms. If we look at the size of TikTok and YouTube, 3 billion monthly active users worldwide, we get an idea of just how large an audience we are missing out on.
Let’s have a quick look at TikTok first. The platform has over 1 billion monthly active users as of 2021 and 90% of Tiktok users access the app multiple times a day which shows that it’s users are highly engaged. High levels of user engagement means that the discoverability of your brand will increase, meaning that users are more likely to connect with your brand, leading to more conversions. If you’re looking to target Gen Z then you really need to be on this platform as 60% of the audience are in this category!
The consumer preference for short-form video that Tiktok represents has really forced Instagram’s hand to copy Tiktok’s format with the introduction of Reels, now rolled out globally.
Youtube has over 2 billion monthly active users and is the second most popular social media site as of 2021. People all over the world watch over 1 billion hours of video every day! The most active demographic are aged 25-44 and the platform is growing fastest amongst Baby Boomers and Gen-X-ers.
Reason #4: Influencers & micro influencers
It’s easy to get authentic, real-world, real-people from both influencers and micro influencers. Using them to create video content can help you to build trust for your brand through telling your story from a more relatable point of view. For example influencers could create videos showing your product/service being used in everyday life and show how it could benefit your customer. Influencer content also opens up new creative avenues for your video content. Some ideas include unboxing/review videos, going live, how to’s and many more. Have fun and experiment!
Whether you decide to work with influencers or micro-influencers depends entirely on the needs of your business. Influencers are often favoured over micro-influencers because of their large following, but you might want to check out this article to help you to discover the benefits of using micro-influencers ‘6 reasons why you should consider micro-influencers in your next campaign.’
For a recent client campaign a big part of our target audience is young mums, so we decided to work with several micro ‘Mum-fluencers’ to create influencer content which could then be posted on their own respective platforms and in turn introduce the brand to their audiences.
We chose to work with micro-influencers as we wanted them to be as relatable to our target audience as possible and we needed a fast turnaround time.
Marketing the brand ourselves is great, but an influencer who connects with our target audience is much better. If you were a young mum looking for inspiration for your children’s dinner, then surely you’d be more engaged hearing it from a fellow mum than hearing it from the business itself?
A great example of this from our recent campaign is @amysmealplan who showcased our clients product in a series of easy-to-make recipes and #Mumhacks. This video showed a hack for keeping the product warm on the go. Depicting the product as the perfect winter picnic treat.
The response from other mums showed trust in the influencers opinion and in the brand, which you could clearly see in the conversation in the comments.
Reason #5: People want to see more video content
According to Hubspot, there is more demand from audiences for video content than any other form of content. Audiences now pay more attention to video content more than they would a written social media post. Think about it, how many times have you clicked on a post and been presented with a large amount of text to read and you’ve hit close and moved on? Exactly.
If that same information was to be broken down into a short video, your audience can receive your message a lot faster. In fact it’s even been proven that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text.
There are so many brands on social media competing for your audience’s attention and if your audience is not pulled in in the first few seconds then they’ll just move on to another piece of content that is more engaging. With evidence of our attention spans shortening, this is especially important. Make sure your content is eye-catching, relevant, and engaging to draw your audience in.
What next?
This article should have shown you how useful video is in your social media strategy and hopefully it has made it feel like a much more accessible medium for promoting your brand. It’s clear to see how effective video content can be and it’s not as daunting as you might think.
In the meantime, if you want to discuss any questions you may have about using video in your social media strategy you should contact us at hello@fablr.co.uk. We can always arrange a time for a cup of tea to see how we can help you use video to meet your business goals.