5 great social video strategies in 2023
Ask any marketing agency or team from about 15 years ago, and neither of them would have told you that social media would play as big a role in marketing strategies for brands worldwide to the extent that it does today. And as the world turns its attention more towards video, being able to utilise social video marketing has become even more important, especially when combined with other marketing tools like creating a successful TV advertising campaign.
The evolution of social media into a robust marketing frontier is nothing short of remarkable. For instance, Facebook, once a simple platform for connecting with friends, now boasts a suite of advertising features, with businesses investing heavily in video ads to engage their audiences. According to a study by Animoto, a whopping 93% of marketers have landed a new customer thanks to a video on social media. The ripple effect of these advancements extends beyond mere engagement; it’s reshaping marketing strategies, urging brands to integrate video to stay relevant and competitive. The symbiotic relationship between video and social media is a testament to the dynamic nature of marketing, showcasing the need to adapt and innovate continuously.
In this article, we’ll unfold five stellar social video strategies that have taken the marketing world by storm. From leveraging product demos to humanizing your brand through company culture videos, we’ll walk you through how these tactics can be your game changers in the marketing playground of today.
What is social video marketing?
Source: Brainpulse
This is a video marketing strategy that focuses completely on social platforms. Social video relates to any social media platform that accepts video posts — which is a large majority of them, at the moment.
The videos used for social video marketing are designed specifically with engagement in mind rather than boosting sales, which is a metric more commonly sought out by advertising (although sales do tend to come after!). Plus, compared to video adverts, social video content needs to be approached in a completely different way and created in a different format.
Which platforms can you use social video marketing on?
As we mentioned, practically all social media platforms nowadays have video-sharing capabilities. Back at their conception, Facebook and Twitter were text-focused platforms — with “statuses” and “pokes” — before they first introduced image sharing. Then, slowly but surely, alongside the likes of the image-focused Instagram, these platforms started introducing video functionality, giving their users more options in regards to what they can share with the world — and also giving marketers more strategies to play with.
So, as of writing, the seven major social media platforms that marketers can strategise for social video are:
- Snapchat
- TikTok
Although, technically, marketers can utilise YouTube as a platform, it isn’t generally used as a social media platform, so we didn’t include it on our list. While Google’s video-sharing platform has, in more recent years, introduced its “Shorts” feature, the main focus of the YouTube platform is content creation. Marketing on YouTube requires a much different viewpoint and strategy compared to more “traditional” social video strategies.
5 types of great social video marketing campaigns
Source: iConcept
With all that said, social video marketing strategies have been around long enough that a lot of the content will fall into several categories of social video. These categories are very similar to the various types of TV ad campaigns that you can also utilise for your marketing campaign. Although we’ve mentioned that the goals of social video are different compared to that of more traditional video advertising, marketers are still able to utilise similar strategies to create a much more comprehensive marketing campaign overall by combining different mediums — which we highly recommend!
There are countless types of social video marketing campaigns that you can utilise for your social video strategy. Here are five of the best types to use for your social media video strategy:
1. Product demo
Perhaps a new feature has been added to an existing product, or a brand-new product has been offered by your brand — how do you normally advertise it? You’ve spread the message through press releases, an updated website, a blog post, and perhaps even host a live event. Honestly, what else is there to do? There’s only one more thing you can do: a quick video detailing the new features of your product and spread them across your social media profiles.
When you introduce a completely new product or feature, you have the opportunity to create so many social videos for each of its aspects, providing you with a wealth of material for your marketing team to schedule. Moreover, it’s not hard to produce those videos to fit the format of each social networking site, ensuring that they’ll be viewed by your current consumers and potentially shared with prospective new ones.
2. How-to
In this day and age, people are reading fewer instructional manuals and are watching instructional videos on anything under the sun. As long as a person has a question about something, they’ll look a video up on it. One great way that marketers can harness this trend is by creating social video content that answers questions and gives guidance on whatever your customers may wonder and ask for.
The CRM platform HubSpot love to post how-to social video content to answer various questions within their niche — usually to compliment their related blog articles. This type of social video content is also a magnificent way to showcase your product’s unique selling points (USP) as a great solution to helping people solve their problems. Not only do you help solidify your product or service as an answer to any issues your customers may have, it will also help you solidify your brand as a resource which tends to boost brand image.
3. Company culture
The biggest change that the rapid growth of social media has done to branding strategies is that it has forced companies everywhere to humanise. From company lunches to anniversary celebrations, there are quite a few ways that you could capitalise on the “company culture” social video marketing strategy. Nowadays, the best way to build brand loyalty and a more positive relationship with your customers is by showcasing the humans behind the brand name — and, according to Deloitte, the numbers have proven it.
One company that does this well is the challenger bank Monzo. Across their social media, Monzo shares images and, more importantly, videos of their employees as a part of their social media strategy. Not only does this humanise the company itself, but it allows its customers (and potential customers) to see that this is a “people brand”, which leads to more trust in the company and increases brand loyalty.
4. Event recap
Another way to showcase the personality of your brand is by sharing recaps of company events as a social video strategy. While most companies tend to share images of those events all over their social profile — just as we did for our 20th-anniversary celebrations — another, perhaps more engaging idea is to do the same but in video form. So, in addition to sharing those event images, you could pre-record the events and put together recap videos.
It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a private or public event; they’re both perfect for making recap social video content. The best part about the event recap video is that you don’t necessarily have to hire a professional film crew to document the whole thing. It’s another great way to get your employees involved to record videos of the event from their points of view.
5. Customer testimonials
Positive feedback from customers does wonders for a company’s bottom line and, even more so, its public image. That’s because people are much more likely to believe the views of their contemporaries than they are to believe company rhetoric. Because of this, you should consider including testimonials in your next social video campaign, especially because they are continuously one of the most watched types of social video.
Since (ideally) your business will always have satisfied customers who are prepared to brag about their positive experiences with your brand, customer testimonials can be an effective long-term video strategy. Testimonials are also a great way to promote your customers across your social media channels, especially if you do this with videos actually made by your customers! Thanks to this, you can reuse these imaginative promotional videos across several channels, providing you with a steady stream of social video material.
Pros and cons of using social video
Although the benefits of utilising social media for a brand’s marketing strategy is undeniable, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages to using social video marketing strategies in particular.
Advantages of using social video
When executed correctly, brand and companies have reported glowing results when using social video — and you definitely can too. Here are some of the advantages to utilising social video within your next marketing strategy:
- Low-cost but long-lasting medium
- Video is the best way to grab attention
- Build a genuine relationship between your brand and your customers
Disadvantages of using social video
However, much like most things, there are also disadvantages to using social video within your marketing strategy. Here are some of the more stand-out disadvantages:
- Social video has limited scalability
- Certain platforms have a tendency to inflate engagement numbers
- It’s not easy to “delete” badly perceived videos once published
6 steps to a successful social video marketing strategy
Now that we’ve taken you through the best social video marketing strategies you can utilise across your brand’s social profiles, let’s talk about how you can ensure that those posts do what they need to do — get your brand’s followers engaged. Thankfully, there are just six straightforward steps to creating a successful social video marketing strategy:
1. Set realistic goals
While this is a given, you’d be surprised to hear that there are still a great many companies that insist on setting unrealistic goals for their social media and marketing teams. And sometimes, these companies insist on merging the two teams together! Everyone understands that, much like the power of TV advertising, social media is a powerful marketing tool that a brand needs to wield.
Before you, as a marketer, go forth and create social video content for your brand’s profiles, gather your team (and the social media team, if any) and discuss the metrics that you should be focusing on for your social media video strategy. From there, define realistic goals to strive for with your video marketing content. It’s important not only to define the metric-related goals at this point but also the overarching rationale behind creating this strategy in the first place.
2. Decide on the type of content
Once you’ve set realistic goals, it’s time to decide on exactly which type of content makes sense for the overall goal at hand. Are you looking to boost your brand image as a knowledgeable resource? Then, you should create a few how-to videos to match those goals. Is there a product or feature launch around the corner? If that’s the case, then perhaps a product demo would make more sense.
It may be very tempting to record a video for all the types of social video strategies that we’ve mentioned earlier in order to “boost engagement”, but that’s absolutely not the best way to go about creating a successful social video marketing strategy. Deciding on the right type of content that fits the overall goal of the marketing campaign is crucial for its success. However, if reading those strategies earlier gave you a few ideas that you can execute, then definitely jot them down and save them for a more appropriate time!
3. Thoroughly plan production
It may seem like once you’ve decided on a goal and the type of content, producing it would be the easiest aspect of the process — but it takes a bit more thinking than you might think. The best marketing campaigns are well thought out, and it really isn’t any different when it comes to social video. Thorough planning really is key to developing a successful social video strategy.
Would the video be animated or live-action? If the latter, who should be featured in the video? What should they say? Where should you film the videos? If the former, what needs to be showcased within an animated form? More importantly, who is going to create the animations? These are all but some of the many questions that need to be answered when planning a successful social video marketing strategy.
4. Don’t forget post-production!
Post-production is something that many take for granted, but it’s a vital step to a successful social video marketing strategy. We know for a fact that post-production processes are as important as the creative itself. This is especially because those processes provide the opportunity to showcase a polished, finished product that hits the brand’s message home exactly right.
Once you’ve filmed the social video, be sure to edit it into the right format for the social platform that you’re posting to. Making sure that there are no awkward pauses is another good edit to make so that the video doesn’t drag. And another great tip: for video posts on TikTok and Instagram, be sure to add captions to make your video watchable even with the sound off (and make it more accessible to those hard of hearing!).
5. Schedule the video appropriately
Much like creating the best TV advertisements, it’s absolutely essential to pick the right time to publish your social video content. Discuss this with whoever is running your company’s social media — find out when the best times to post are. Or, better yet, utilise social media management tools that will help do this for you with incredible accuracy.
You might have created the most profound video marketing content, but it’s absolutely no use if you’ve posted it at the wrong time. Be sure to schedule the video to be posted at an appropriate time so that you can enjoy maximum results.
6. Analyse the results
Last but not least, once some time has passed after publishing the social video, you need to sit down and look at the numbers. Data and analytics are powerful tools, regardless of which medium you are marketing on. With the analytics at hand, you’ll be able to better understand what kind of video marketing content works and what doesn’t — and use this knowledge for future social video marketing campaigns.
Final thoughts
As the landscape of the world leans towards video, developing successful social video marketing strategies will become even more important as time goes on. The social video strategies we’ve highlighted above aren’t just powerful for now but probably for the future, too, especially when planned and executed properly. While we can never deny the power of social media, marketing campaigns are much more successful when multiple mediums, such as TV and radio advertising, are combined with it.
Keen on seeing what social video marketing can bring to your brand? Get in touch with an experienced advertising agency who can help you get the job done!