Video is the best way to tell a story. It has the ability to captivate an audience and take any information from complex to comprehensible. Plus, companies using social media video are known to have 41% more web traffic from search than companies that don’t utilize it. Gary Vaynerchuk built his family wine business into a multimillion-dollar wine business using video. According to his article, “The Rise of Video Marketing on Social and How It Affects Your Business,” he says, “The single most important strategy in content marketing today is video. Whether it’s video on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or YouTube, the content you need to be thinking about creating and marketing on social for your business is video. Period.”
As a marketing or social media professional you know you need to incorporate social media video into your strategy, so where do you begin? Check out these different social media platforms where video can be used for your marketing strategy.
YouTube
YouTube is usually the go-to when you think of video websites. If it doesn’t already, it’s safe to say your business needs to have a YouTube channel. At 800 million unique visitors per month, with approximately 72 hours of content being uploaded each minute, it’s by far the most used social media video-sharing platform on the web. Beyond just uploading and sharing, it’s a great platform to serve as a library for all of your video content collected over time. The demographic is broad, covering primarily 18 to 49 year olds, giving you access to many target markets you might want to pursue. They also recently launched YouTube Live as a live streaming competitor to Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope.
Vimeo
When it comes to hosting social media video content online, Vimeo is probably the next platform that comes to your mind. Vimeo, while on a smaller audience scale than YouTube, has plenty of advantages. One great thing about Vimeo that makes it stand out from YouTube, is that it allows you to replace a video after it has been uploaded without losing that video’s stats and analytics. This is a big advantage for those times when you notice a mistake or just want to update a video that needs some revamping. Vimeo also keeps their site free from ads, so you won’t see one playing before, during, or after your content is played. For business, it’s also great because it offers password protected content. This can be helpful when you are reviewing content with clients and want to keep it hidden.
If you’ve been on Facebook at all in the past year, you likely noticed that the majority of your news feed content is shared videos or photos. Videos uploaded directly to Facebook get better visibility in the news feed than links to videos on 3rd party sites like YouTube. There are more than 4 billion video views on Facebook every day, and 71% of adults use Facebook. Facebook Live recently rolled out to all users and is a great way for your company to host an interactive video series where customers, clients, or people with a general interest in your product can engage in real time.
Twitter has become really popular for companies wanting to share content and interact with a vast audience. As of April 2016, there are 310 million people that use the popular social media platform. While a video uploaded to Twitter is limited to 30 seconds, there are many ways to share social media video and receive the same outcome. For example, Twitter has integration with Periscope and video already uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo and even Vine can be tweeted and shared by either embedding the video, or posting a direct link. What’s even better: your followers and anyone who sees your tweet with a video, can retweet and share to their followers for even more visibility!
Instagram announced in March that the time users spent watching videos on its platform has jumped by more than 40%. Also in March, the company increased their video length from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Instagram’s sharing features are great because it only takes 2 quick taps to also share your social media video content on Facebook and Twitter. Pro tip: If you keep your Instagram videos just under 30 seconds, you can cross-promote that video to Twitter, which will double your leverage and increase your visibility!
Periscope
Periscope is an app made specifically for live streaming, which is perfect for company events and conferences. It has more than 10,000,000 users and 350,000 hours of video is streamed live daily. Periscope is especially convenient because it has automatic integration with Twitter. That means you can let your Twitter followers know ahead of time before you do a live stream to enhance your viewership. Some examples of ways you can use Periscope on a regular work day, or at special events:
- Company/client events
- “How to” demonstrations
- “A day in the life”
- Q&A Sessions
- Panel discussions
- Virtual conference updates
Vine
Vine’s videos are limited to 6 seconds, so this platform is used more for fun snippets of your company culture and every day work life around the office. It could also be used for posting a short teaser for the launch of an upcoming company or client video.
Snapchat
Snapchat has over 100 million daily active users. While most people use it for fun personal snaps between friends, your company can use the Snapchat Story feature. Snaps and videos that are posted to your “story” are available for viewing for 24 hours before they disappear. Just like vine, you can let viewers in on the company culture around the office with fun snaps, and even snap photos or videos for a behind the scenes look at a current project or event.
Is there another form of social media your company uses to share social media video? Let us know in the comments!
