April 21, 2017 •tanmay
Photographs, infographics, regular graphics and text are old news. In fact, by this stage, you might say that they are so last year! The future for social media is video, video, video, and if you want to be impactful and relevant with your social media strategy, then you better get your business on board right now.
Whether it’s live videos on Facebook, 5 second videos on Snapchat, a quick clip on Instagram, a review on Twitter, a full scale film on YouTube, or a video on any other number of social media platforms, your customers (and the social media website algorithms themselves) are focusing on video first and foremost these days. And depending on the platform, there are a few different things to look out for which we will discuss below:
Facebook
There’s no doubt about it, if you want your business to able to reach new and existing customers online, the best way to do it is by using Facebook. There are literally millions of people scrolling through their Facebook timelines 24/7, and your product or service could be exactly what they are looking for. In the past few years Facebook has put more into video than they have any other aspect of their service, and from the rather annoying (but effective) auto-play feature and similar content suggestions to their new video advert products, video is becoming more and more prevalent on people’s newsfeeds whether they like it or not.
Now, it’s not enough to simply post a video to YouTube and share the link through Facebook anymore, Facebook want you to be uploading those videos to Facebook natively, so much so, that the website will even reward you for doing so by showing your video to more and more people online. Invest a bit of money in boosting your videos, targeting them to people who might be interested in what you have to offer, and you will definitely be able to boost your business thanks to videos on Facebook.
The ability to target videos to be shown to the exact people who are interested in your product is a mind-blowing advancement in advertising, meaning that if you run a pet grooming business in South London, you can specifically ask Facebook to only show your pet grooming video to people who live in South London and have pets; so you’re not wasting anybody’s time, you’re not annoying people who won’t be interested, and you have a much higher chance of gaining a new customer. What more could you ask for?
As if videos and video adverts weren’t enough, Facebook has taken live video to a whole new level in recent years, allowing you to instantly post live videos to Facebook, to see people’s reactions, comments and input right there on your smart device screen. Perfect for sharing news, drawing competitions and showing off relevant events, live videos are not only interesting to people, but there are extremely relevant and unique in that the content can’t be replicated.
Twitter
As with a lot of new features, Twitter is late to the video game, but now it’s finally arrived, their game is definitely strong. Twitter’s new video feature means that you can record a video right within your tweet, editing it and sending it out to the world with the click of a button. Quick, easy and powerful, video on Twitter is less about polished adverts and more about honest reviews, quick updates and engaging with real people.
Just like Facebook, Twitter have a live video service too, this time it’s called Periscope and it allows you to engage directly and in real time with your fans, existing customers and potential customers. Start a live video and you can interact with its viewers straight away, answering questions and showing them things that it would be hard to explain through a simple tweet.
The very nature of Twitter is that the platform is fast moving, and a simple tweet of 140 characters can get lost very quickly in the maelstrom of information that flows through your newsfeed at any one second, however videos have much more of an impact. Not only are the visually more prevalent on Twitter, they can also contain far more information than 140 characters, allowing you to have more of a conversation with your customers.
Snapchat
What may have started out as a crude sexting app, has now turned into a multi-billion-dollar company, and Snapchat knows it. With more than two billion video views a day, Snapchat allows for a really intimate, personal and realistic view of people’s lives, and that can help your business out in so many ways.
For example, if you run a beauty studio, you could take 5 minutes out of your working day to posting a short video review of some new make-up, to show a tutorial for a hairstyle, or to give beauty tips to your customers. If people are interested in this content then they can come back every day in their own time and view more of what you have to offer.
It is this idea that with Snapchat you don’t need to be constantly scouring a newsfeed or a timeline to find great content, it’s all waiting for you every single day that really makes Snapchat videos such a powerful tool. Any videos or photographs uploaded are available for 24 hours and then they disappear, making your content exclusive and meaning that people need to be checking your Snapchat every day or they will miss out. This urgency is a huge bonus when it comes to customer interaction and engagement.
Snapchat also allows you to be extremely creative with your videos, drawing on top of them, fast forwarding, rewinding, adding stickers and more! Thus, making it even more powerful in terms of creating and conveying a message to customers, fans and followers everywhere.
Whether it’s live, scripted or improvised, social media videos are undoubtedly the future, and if you want to offer your customers the best and more cutting edge service available, then you need to join the movement today!
If you would like any more information then please get in touch with us here at
The Bright Click on: 0208 614 3294