Social media is one of the most proven and powerful assets available to help take your business to new heights.
As social media demand increases, businesses utilize social platforms to communicate better and boost their sales.
Marketers also use social networking sites to enhance brand awareness, promote content, and build relationships.
There is no one-size-fits-all social media strategy, but one type of content seems to perform well across the board on social–video.
Hence, organizations have progressively pivoted toward video content. A recent study by Wyzowl showed that 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. That number held steady from the previous year, showing that video is here to stay.
Did you know? 92.7 of global internet users watch online videos weekly. That’s a crazy number. These statistics indicate people’s love of video content. This form of content marketing provides significant opportunities for your brand.
However, even with the stats above, some marketers still miss out on the crucial role videos play in social media marketing. Are you one of these marketers?
Maybe it’s budget, or perhaps it’s a lack of faith in the medium. A lack of buy-in from the leadership team, or maybe it’s something else altogether.
If any of the above resonates with you, then the insights below will help you grasp why you should incorporate video into your social media strategy or even help you gain buy-in from leadership to get started producing video.
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Why is using social media video essential to your marketing strategy?
We’ve already taken a look at the power of videos, so let’s jump into some high-powered reasons why you need to create videos for social media marketing. Here are seven reasons you need to be using videos on social media marketing.
1. Videos grab visitors’ attention
If you want to hook your audience on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and other popular channels, there is no better option than video. Video, as a medium, is not only easy to consume but with today’s technological advances, it also can be created effortlessly without breaking the bank.
Previously, brands were priced out of the video space by high production costs. Today, however, your brand can produce a high-quality video using a device like your phone, and there are tons of affordable editing tools available to spice it up.
Whenever we scroll through our social media feed, we are often attracted to compelling, short, and informative content. And the video is a type of content that contains all three of these features wrapped up on one.
By sharing awesome explainer videos, fun challenge videos, testimonials, thought leadership pieces, and other video content types on social platforms, you can easily capture viewers’ interest in a few seconds.
Neil Patel serves as an excellent example of leveraging video to boost thought leadership. Watch this video from his YouTube channel to get an idea of how the medium can be utilized.
The success of social media campaigns lies in attracting visitors’ attention in a split second. If you are successful in catching the viewer’s eye, you can inspire them to purchase.
Quick Tip: Whenever you create videos, try explaining the central concept at the beginning, rather than keeping visitors waiting. This way, you can pull them in from the start and increase viewing time.
2. Video content boosts conversions
Do you know that video content can drive serious revenue? By sharing videos on your social platforms, you can quickly grow your brand’s popularity across different channels and escalate your website conversion rate.
Reports show that landing pages that contain videos improve conversion rates by 86%. Irrespective of the business category you want to expand, videos have made it easy to:
- Share information about your business
- Catch the viewer’s eye
- Build lasting relationships with customers, and
- Steadily grow your revenue streams.
Here’s one more eye-opening stat you. 74% of the people who watch a product video to understand the product or service better have subsequently decided to buy the product or utilize the service.
3. Video helps improve search engine optimization (SEO)
Marketers are improving their social media campaigns to attract visitors, enhance conversions, and receive an organic first-page ranking. You can achieve this target quickly by adding videos to your blog marketing strategy.
Research conducted by Forrester found that videos are 53 times more likely to receive a better organic ranking. And as you know, the higher your search ranking, the more targeted the searches. And targeted searches lead to increases in sales.
As the demand for video content increases, Google also ranks websites higher that incorporate videos into their content. If you are posting videos on a social media channel like YouTube, your social media content can show up in Google search.
So, posting links to your video content on social media is hugely valuable. As these encouraging stats improve, Google tends to recognize what’s going on and is more likely to give your site a boost.
As you continue to post great content on your social media channels, your channels themselves and their content gain more and more exposure.
To help your videos show up more on social media and in search, make sure you write compelling headlines, add accurate and enticing descriptions, and utilize trending hashtags.
4. Videos make it easier to explain complex thoughts
Expressing thoughts and explaining complex concepts, especially on social channels, can be a bit challenging. Are you also facing difficulty in explaining complex concepts to your followers concisely and attractively? That’s where videos come into play.
This is a video from a series we worked on when I headed up the marketing department at the College of William & Mary’s Mason School of Business.
In the video, the Professor Bob Williams breaks down a complex topic with the help of animations to illustrate key points.
Videos have the power to communicate information in an exciting and precise way. According to James McQuivey, 1,800,000 words of content is equal to one minute of video. And while that may or may not be a scientifically determined number, you get the point.
Suppose you have significant knowledge of how to express new information through videos. In that case, you can easily win the hearts of your social media followers – and earn new followers as word spreads.
Explainer videos are frequently used for education and explaining complex concepts. According to HubSpot, 94% watch explainer videos to understand the brand or product better. This is why 45% of businesses add explainer videos on their page that give an excellent, concise overview of what you do and the value you offer.
5. Video increases brand exposure
There is no denying the fact that video content performs amazingly well with most algorithms. As compared to the standard text, videos have an increased chance to go viral, leading to severe boosts in building brand awareness.
By sharing videos on social media, you can quickly bring live events to your audience, capture their feedback, hold live Q&A sessions, and so much more. Within the first 10 seconds of videos, visitors can easily decide whether they want to stay on it for longer or navigate away.
It makes sense why video content sees 10x more engagement than other forms of content. If you create a great video that keeps people around to watch the whole thing, they’ll likely share the content, and the word about your brand will spread.
With a little creativity and strategic direction, video can enormously help your brand stand out from the rest.
6. Video builds customers’ trust
When it comes to online sales and conversion, gaining your target audience’s trust is critical in helping you achieve your goals. And posting video content on your brand’s social platforms will help you build long-term relationships with your audience.
Business success is directly proportional to the trust you build with your audience. The more people trust your brand, the higher their chances are of getting in touch with you and remaining loyal to your brand for longer.
If you have stronger relationships with your audience, then you don’t have to sell as much. Your customers will act as promoters and help guide you as they share your video content with their followers.
Around 48% of people say that videos give them more confidence and faith in making online purchases. Video has the power to make your content more euphoric and ignite the viewer’s emotions.
Videos are more transparent and build instant relationships. Therefore, it is relatively easy to inspire people to buy products and services from your brand when using this medium.
Anthony is CEO and Founder of Gaenzle Marketing. He is a two-time published author and digital marketing influencer. He has helped brands both large and small grow and thrive across multiple industries through strategic marketing campaigns and leveraging a powerful network of influencers.
5 Responses
Hi Anthony, videos are really hot today on most of the social networks. They work great to showcase who we really are and make points visually and quickly. It does built trust as you mention.
X is really pushing video content now on their platform. It will be interesting to see how it develops as they try to compete with YouTube as some have predicted.
Indeed they are, Lisa. You can definitely showcase you personality and expertise and relate to viewers using video. I think a lot of social media channels are pushing video, and that’s great. It’s nice to have a variety of content types.
You’re so right, Lisa. Most channels are picking up on the power of video, and X is no exception. It’s amazing to see how well video performs. I think it just connects on a deeper level.
In fact, video marketing plays major role in marketing and advertisement of a business, brand, products & services these days.
Yes it does. Video is such a powerful tool. We should all be using video in some way in our marketing.