Improve your social media videos with these 7 tips

Summary

There’s no successful video marketing strategy that doesn’t involve social media. So how do you improve the effectiveness of your social media videos?

Let’s explore it through 7 tips:

1. Build a long-term strategy, but with room for flexibility;
2. Optimize your videos according to the different social media platforms;
3. Focus on the very first seconds of the video, the time that must capture viewers’ attention;
4. Design effective videos even when they are viewed without audio;
5. Include calls-to-action that are consistent with the story line, and in the right place;
6. Know your audience and make personalized videos;
7. Evaluate the results of your campaigns and continually recalibrate them.

There is no successful Digital Marketing without video. Why?

Because it’s a matter of effectiveness, engagement, and personalization that video guarantees compared to others. The data confirms the importance of video as one of the most engaging types of content and by the video marketing trends for 2022.

But it’s important to add another piece: there is no complete video marketing strategy without social networks. Why?

In the next paragraph, we’ll give you some quick and very clear answers. And then we’ll jump right into 7 tips to help you improve your social media video campaigns.

Why does video need social?

To the question above, we could answer very simply: because the vast majority of the audience is on social media. And they’re spending more and more time on it.

• There are now more than 2.9 billion monthly active users on Facebook (source: Statista) 1.62 billion people, in particular, use Facebook every day (source: Zephoria).
• Instagram, which began in 2010, recently passed the 2 billion monthly active user mark (source: Cnbc). And 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day (source: Hootsuite).
• There are about 211 million active users on Twitter (socialmediatoday.com)
• The growth of TikTok, a social network born in China in 2016, is based on videos, which has achieved a huge success, especially among younger people, in a very short time.

According to the most accredited data, monthly active users have already reached one billion people (cnbc.com). Now, let’s focus on video on social networks, its diffusion and its effectiveness:

• More than 4 billion videos are viewed every day on Facebook alone (99firms.com).
• From 2013 to today, there has been an 80% increase of videos on Instagram (yumyumvideos.com).
• Also on Instagram, video content has an engagement rate that is, on average, twice as high as other content (searchenginejournal.com).
• Overall, video on social networks receives 48% more views than all other types of content (themarketinghelpline.com).
• 93% of brands say they have acquired new customers through a video on social media (lemonlight.com).
• 87% of video marketers say they are satisfied with the ROI of their social media video campaigns (hubspot.com).

We could go on and on; but we’re sure the picture is already clear enough. Now, as promised, let’s take a look at 7 tips to improve your social media video performance.

1. Strategy first

This first piece of advice seems obvious, yet, often it is not.

Always remember that each social media video is part of a larger marketing campaign, which in turn is part of the strategy and image of a product (or service) and then of the brand itself.

So, it’s all about planning everything down to the smallest detail. Objectives, market surveys, research on the target audience, competitor analysis, conception, publication schedule, budget distribution; and – finally – analysis of the results (to which we will return later).

But that’s not all: even the single video must be planned and built according to an internal strategy. Translated: you must always have a detailed script. And this is true both for videos of a few seconds and for videos of several minutes.

Finally, a specification: having a defined publishing plan is essential. Be careful, however, not to turn this schedule into a cage: maintaining a good degree of flexibility in planning is essential to have a certain grip on current events, riding the wave of new trends, and even sudden changes in sentiment.

To understand what this means, it’s enough to think back to the first moments of the pandemic, when all the brands had to radically readjust their communication in a short timeframe.

2. Optimize by platform

Video is always the most effective tool on social media. But each social platform has its own rules, its own habits, and its own differences in terms of audience.

Consequently, it is wrong to think that the same video can be effective – for example – both for Twitter and for Instagram stories.

It ranges from the very first and trivial technical levels concerning the format. Orizontal? Vertical? Square? Again, it depends on the platform.

But that’s not all: there are also differences in tone and style. Which in turn depend on the target audience.

And all of this also has a strong impact on the optimal length of social media video.

In concrete terms: TikTok has an extremely young audience, and it’s all about video content that is fresh, quick,, and short (followed by Instagram Reels).

In Instagram stories there is a very specific limit: 15 seconds.

For long-form (i.e. videos longer than a minute) it’s better to go to IGTV, Facebook, LinkedIn; as well as YouTube, of course.

Then there’s live broadcasting and live streaming.

In short: the perfect format and style doesn’t exist. But what does work is the ability to adapt your video depending on the platform on which it is distributed. All without compromising the unity of the tone of voice of a campaign and the brand that promotes it. In short, it’s a matter of balance!

3. Focus on the first few seconds

We all know the social media ecosystem: these are digital places where the competition to capture users’ attention is extremely high.

In the midst of this myriad of stimuli, the challenge is to make people spend time on your video. How to do it?

By knowing the people in front of you, first of all…but we’ll focus on that in point 6.

And then by taking the utmost care in the conception and creation of the first few seconds of the video.

There is a study by Microsoft, now famous, that has shown how people, on average, end up losing attention after just 8 seconds (Source: Time.com).

And it is this very short period of time that is decisive for the effectiveness of social media videos. It’s in these crucial seconds that the user decides whether to continue viewing (…until they get to the call to action), or to move on.

So what is needed?

There’s no universal recipe, even in this case. But some elements certainly help: direct questions to the viewer.Strong hooks that create suspense and anticipation. References to current events. Provocations.

Pay attention to one important aspect: in these few seconds your brand must be immediately recognizable, but not invasive. So, pay attention to the way you insert the logo, the product name, the tag line.

4. Make silent videos “talk”

A Verizon survey of Americans revealed that 93% of people prefer to watch social media videos without sound, on their mobile devices (nexttv.com).

The indication, then, is very clear.

And the need is to make the message understandable even when it is “silent.” Translated: subtitles are essential. A very simple and decisive suggestion.

5. The call to action in the right place and in the right way

We have seen above how crucial the first few seconds of a video are for capturing the increasingly weak attention of users on social networks.

Of course, you can’t stop there.

The video must then have a relevant narrative development, which revolves around a strong and unified core (the one that will remain impressed on the viewer) and that can then lead to a call to action that is calibrated based on your objectives.

For this, we have two suggestions:

1) the call to action must be in line with the narrative of the video, it must be its natural final capstone. If not, click-through and conversion rates will end up being very low;

2) Be careful not to build calls to action that are all about the sale, as they risk annoying users. To be clear, calls to actions like “learn more,” “explore our offers for you,” or even “visit our shop” are certainly more effective and performing than a direct call to action like “buy.”

6. Know your target audience

Here we come to what we think is the decisive point and our most important suggestion.

We’ve already mentioned it above, and now we’re going to address it directly.

The real secret to soaring social media video effectiveness is knowing your target audience.

And therefore basing the message and the call to action on the recipients. In short, going from a single, indistinct target to many micro-targets that you reach with tailored communications.

All of this is made possible by the analysis and interpretation of user data, with the consequent segmentation of the audience. This is the starting point of the data-driven video marketing revolution that we’ve discussed many times on our blog.

The latest frontier is that of personalized videos, which can be created using specialized platforms such as Babelee.

We’re talking about videos built based on the characteristics of individual recipients, which can be distributed through the most diverse channels…and, of course, through social networks.

7. Continuously recalibrate

Thanks to data you can know your audience so that your communications are always more effective.

But data analysis is also a great ally on another front: that of evaluating the results of a video campaign. Always remember that there is no such thing as the perfect campaign: but every campaign can be continuously improved if you learn to correctly read the information about its impact.

There are many questions to ask: how many people did our video reach? How many clicked play? How many viewed it to the end? Are there points where abandonments are concentrated? How many people clicked on the call to action? And, even deeper, what are the characteristics of these people?

Again, the answers are found in the data. Of course, you have to know how to collect it, you have to know how to interpret it…and you have to have the right mindset – open, resilient, and focused on continuous improvement.