Using Video to Tell a Story on Social Media

Not sure if you want to incorporate video into your social media strategy? Let me share some statistics to help you make a decision. Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it on video, compared to 10% when reading it in a text. The increase in click-through rate with video is as high as 96%, and videos are shared 1200% more times than links and text combined.

With statistics like these, I’m surprised you haven’t stopped reading this article and started filming. As an agency CEO, I often hear that many business owners aren’t sure what to film or they simply do not have the time. Therefore, I’ve created a list of five different video ideas and ways to incorporate them into your own marketing strategy. Bonus: They won’t take up hours and hours of your time.

Video Blog

I actually find creating video blogs can be more time-efficient than writing them. This gives business owners the opportunity to share their knowledge on film. My suggestion is to write out the five most common questions you get from your customers and create one video per question. The videos do not have to be long; they simply have to answer the question at hand.

Film six or 10 questions at a time (maybe even more). This way, you can schedule a video blog once a week and you won’t have to film so often. (Hint: Just make sure to bring a change of clothes so it doesn’t look like you wear the same thing every day!)

Make sure to upload all of your videos on your business YouTube channel. Include a headline, a detailed description and tagged keywords. This will assist with your SEO efforts. Additionally, when posting on Facebook, be sure to include captions on your videos. Eighty-five percent of videos viewed on Facebook are watched without sound. In order to add captions, you need to make an SRT file and upload the file to your video. Facebook provides an easy-to-use tutorial for this.

Facebook Live

You’ve probably heard about Facebook Live. It’s exactly what it sounds like — a live video on Facebook. This is a great platform to showcase your business in an authentic light.

Prepare ahead of time. Before going live, think about your goals. What do you want to accomplish with this video? What do you hope your followers will take from it? A restaurant owner, for example, might showcase a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into prepping meals. In this case, it’d be important to discuss the details of the recipe and provide viewers a tour of the kitchen.

Additionally, to increase video traffic and engagement, make sure to communicate with your audience when you’ll be going live. Set a date and time so that followers can watch as the video is being broadcasted.

Instagram Stories

Instagram stories allow you to share moments throughout your day and can be done with both video and photos. Using your creativity, add video snippets and/or photos to your existing story throughout the day. As a business owner, this is a great opportunity to showcase the day in the life of you. Show us behind the scenes of what makes your company so great. Because Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours and won’t show up in your profile or in the general feed, you don’t have to worry about overposting.

Cover Photos

Christmas came early: Facebook recently released the ability to change your static cover photo to video. The Facebook cover page is the most viewed area on your page. Therefore, this is a great opportunity to showcase your business.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Videos must be between 20-90 seconds.
• The suggested video size is 820 x 312 pixels.
• The video will continue to loop.

The feature is in its early stages but is expected to roll out to a wider audience soon.

Out Of The Box

This requires a little more time and effort but the results are worth it: Get your team together and brainstorm ways you can showcase your business in an entertaining light.

For example, think about parodies, music videos, car karaoke, or what’s trending to get ideas flowing. There is no such thing as a bad idea.

One of our dentist clients did a music video to the song “Can’t Feel My Face.” The video received over 150,000 views and hundreds of comments from people saying how they hated the dentist but wanted to go to this one because they seemed so fun.

Start small with one of these ideas and slowly grow to include other video options. By incorporating video, you will see an increase in click-throughs, shares and retention. Lights, camera, action!