As much as we as B2B Marketers need to learn how to create high quality videos for our business, we need to ensure that video gets consumed by the right audience through the right social media channels.
Creating and posting videos on social media should always help you drive toward your existing marketing goals.
For example, if your goal is to get more people to download an ebook, you could create a short teaser or how-to video and post the full link to the ebook's landing page in the copy of your social post.
Let's drill down into best practices for each social network.
Promote a new blog post, engage with your audience, or even drive viewers to a landing page with Twitter videos. When teasing a blog post or piece of content on Twitter, always keep your video short and sweet – brevity is a core factor on this channel.
Short clips that are easy to consume tend to perform the best. Try pinning your video to the top of your profile for some added exposure.
If you want to get a little more experimental with using video on Twitter, you can try making short, custom videos to engage with your audience. These highly personal, one-to-one response videos are an awesome way to make your brand more human while building personal connections with your engaged followers.
Here is a great example from Drift:
When you walk onto a bus or train for your morning commute, how many people are scrolling through their smartphones to see the news and content they've missed overnight? Pretty much everyone – but not everyone is wearing headphones.
For this reason, make sure your video works with or without sound. BuzzFeed revels in silent auto-play. The reason their silent auto-play strategy works so well is because of this rise in mobile video views and the way people scroll through and consume content on social media. They often post quick recipes or quick how-to’s, often with easy-to-follow imagery or helpful text to describe what is happening.
Facebook also favors longer videos in their news feed algorithm. The goal with this shift is to better surface videos that are most relevant to the viewer. So what does this mean for you? Don't panic; this just confirms what we already know is true. Creating the "right" content for your audience is more important than churning out it out for the sake of it.
Secondly, upload videos directly to Facebook. Facebook continues to make a compelling case for uploading your videos natively to the platform — the primary reason being that your content will be seen by more eyes.
Brand awareness videos that are light-hearted and entertaining tend to perform well on Facebook for this very reason – their algorithm takes into account a user's previous video-related actions when determining what videos to show them on subsequent visits. Make a video that's super relevant to your audience, share it on Facebook, and see what type of engagement you can drum up!
Did you know that Instagram was the first social channel to initiate silent, auto-playing videos? It's true! Shortly after, Facebook followed suit, so it's safe to say that catering to this type of video when creating content for social media is the way to go. It might seem daunting to try and grab someone's attention so fast and without sound, but here are a few best practices you can use to make things easier:
a) Start off your video with motion to grab your viewer's attention while they're scrolling through the feed.
b) Videos that feature people speaking are great for landing pages or your website, but try to stick to visually stimulating videos for Instagram, unless you're going Live
c) Incorporate text or include captions so that viewers can follow along with or without audio.
Here is a great example of impressive Instagram campaign by Slack:
YouTube
YouTube reports over 1 billion unique users per month – and it is almost like a giant social media gold-mine.
On YouTube, post with a specific strategy in mind. Think of YouTube as a giant library of video content where people go to either educate themselves or to be entertained.
Before leveraging YouTube as a dedicated B2B video channel for your brand, it's important to ask few questions yourselves:
a) Can you make the specific video content they're searching for there?
b) Do you need these prospects to end up on your website?
c) If you're purely seeking some broad brand awareness, is YouTube the right channel for you?
Establish and grow a dedicated channel of subscribers by creating informative, educational content that is in high demand, and you'll start to see some real success!
Here comes the grand daddy of all B2B social media channels! For a long time, LinkedIn was one of the less video-friendly social networks, that's changed. Users can now upload videos, and brands (whether that's your company brand or personal brand) can now get even more creative with the content they share.
LinkedIn recommends four different themes for creating video to be used on its platform:
a) Show it.
If you're in a fast-paced industry that's always evolving, brands and thought leaders can take the lead by showcasing new technologies in video format, or providing tutorials on how a new physical product works.
b) Transport them there.
Video is the perfect medium for giving audiences a taste of what it's like to really be somewhere. The most obvious use case here is industry conferences and events. If your company hosts them, uploading videos of the event to LinkedIn is a great way to demonstrate the buzz you're creating in your industry.
If you're working on your personal brand, bringing snapshots of the things you're learning at the event to your connections can be the perfect way to help your community or develop your own thought leadership by sharing your perspective of everything that's happening there.
c) Teach it.
If you have a time-saving hack to share or have learned something new that might help other people in your network, video is a super effective medium for sharing that knowledge. If you're thinking about this on behalf of your company, ask yourself what your buyer personas often struggle with, and see if you can teach them a solution in video format.
d) Share it.
This is one for the opinionated among us. If you have thoughts on a recent announcement or piece of industry news, let people know what you're thinking in a video! Likewise, if your company has some news, or has made a recent key hire that your followers and wider industry would want to hear about, a video is a personable take that can be used alongside the traditional press release.
Of course, you don't have to stick to these four themes — get creative and test to see what works best for you.
Lastly, upload videos directly to LinkedIn and see your engagement going up!
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