Speaker 1: Not long ago, creating social media videos for marketing purposes was something that set you apart. Now they're necessary just to keep up. Hello world, Mike Ploeger and VizMee here yet again with another video to help your marketing adventures soar into new galaxies. Today we're talking social media videos. Yes, those videos you see when scrolling your feeds and think, gosh, I really should come up with something like this for myself. Well, now's the time. Social media videos take on all kinds of different sizes, shapes, and styles. Some are wide, some are vertical, some are stationary, and some are moving. Some highlight a product that's newly available, others inform you on a process that you hadn't known before. Marketing through social media has completely blown up in recent years, and now if you're not doing it, you're falling behind the curve. So welcome to our crash course on social media videos. Soon you'll understand why they're necessary, tips for creating effective videos, and I'll show you some examples to help get those brain gears turning. Shall we? Are you skeptical that videos through social media will truly help boost your performance? Well, let me put that to rest with some simple stats. 92% of marketers say video is a major part of their social media marketing strategy. One billion hours of YouTube videos are watched every single day. 93% of brands say they've gotten a new customer from social media videos, and 84% of consumers say they've made a purchase after watching a brand's video. Need I say more? It's vital that you're creating and sharing video content on your social media platform. Now how do you make sure you're doing it right? I'm glad you asked. There's things you gotta do if you really want to make the most out of your videos. Posting a video is just step one. Let's dive into nine tips that'll help beyond simply hitting record and publish. Our first tip is hopefully a no-brainer. You gotta post content that your viewers will value. Where are they going to get out of it? Your promotional videos will soon get old, and before long, your viewers will be scrolling right past your posts. Instead, try writing a video that will educate or inspire your audience. Maybe you have tips for them, like this video has tips for you. You have to find a way to provide value for your viewers, rather than just post as a way to bring value to yourself. Now when you're posting on your channels, keep in mind that you don't need the next a splash. I'm sorry, that wasn't funny, I couldn't help myself. What I mean is you don't need a long video to make an impact. Actually, the most successful social media videos are right around just two minutes in length. The shorter the videos, often, the more engagement. Here's a question, when are you on social media? Maybe at work, on public transit, in class, or another public setting? If so, you're likely watching without the sound on, and that's when captions come into play. 85% of the videos on Facebook are watched on mute. Crazy right? But not necessarily when you consider where people are watching. By adding captions, you not only make the content easier to consume, but it also helps with SEO, or search engine optimization, and ensuring your video content is more accessible. So make sure you take the time to add any captions necessary to the bottom of your videos. Unfortunately, one size does not fit all when it comes to social media videos. YouTube dimensions are your standard 16x9, but Instagram is likely going to be a square or 9x16. If you recorded something vertically on your phone, that's great. But if you didn't, you may have a challenge sizing your video to fit Instagram's platform. Take the time to consider where you'll be posting, and create accordingly. Once you're in post-production, there are still factors that you need to consider in order to reach the largest audience possible. Everything from your title to your description and tag words need to include the keywords your video is about. Don't think that description isn't necessary. It's actually vital to make sure you're reaching the proper audience. If your video is about alligators, you should be including the words alligator, swamp, reptile, crocodile, marshland, teeth, chomp, anything that may lead people to think alligators. Include these words naturally in paragraph form, kind of like we did with our video on infographics. We used the word infographic 9 different times in our title and description, leaving no doubt what the video is about and optimizing for YouTube SEO. If you're creating the same type of video over and over again, it won't take long for viewers to catch on and scroll right past. As you continue to create great video after great video, don't get stuck in the same old pattern. Stay inspired and try new things. I'll have some ideas for you coming up here in just a little bit. Another post-production tip is to draw viewers in with your thumbnails. If the video doesn't naturally start when they scroll to it, you have to have a thumbnail or cover that will draw them in to hit play. There's actually templates you can use just like this one here that could work as excellent thumbnails. Just beware of going the easy route and using the suggested thumbnails that YouTube provides. There's often better options that you can create yourself. While your video is the main entree, don't look past the copy as that excellent side dish. You need both to complete a fantastic meal, or a video in this case. Judy Fox, a LinkedIn business coach, wrote four steps to create engaging copy. Step one, hook the viewer. Use your headline to stop a viewer in their tracks. Step two, intrigue. Appeal to your viewers by having them constantly guessing what's coming next, maybe with a stick around for, or an option to click a link for more material. Step three, offer value. What can you do for them? Answer that, and step four, follow up with a call to action. Get your audience to take the next steps to engaging with your business or your product or whatever you're highlighting. And tip number nine, repurpose your videos. In other words, see how you can use them on other platforms. Wonder how many places we use videos just like this one from the Make Information Beautiful series. Not only are these found in our YouTube channel, but they're also found in our learning center on visme.com as well. See if you can share to multiple platforms to reach even more audiences. Now that you have an idea of how to get the most out of your videos, let's explore 11 different video types that you can start creating for your own social channels right now. You'll definitely want to create some video advertisements for your social channels. Every fourth post on Instagram is an advertisement. And if you're running a business profile, you can run targeted ads to ensure you're reaching the audience that's most likely to take action. Video ads are also great for YouTube and Facebook, and they don't have to be lengthy and complicated. Here's an example of a visme template you can easily edit and run right now. While ads are informing viewers of your business or product, listicles are great videos for educating your audience. By providing bite-sized information in a short video, your brand will make an impact on a viewer as they soak in what you just showed them. These videos look kind of like slides, as you can see with this template in example here. What visme and I are doing right now is an educational video. These are a little longer and more detailed, but can provide a lot of value to the viewer actively searching for your help. If you need more examples, our own YouTube channel has dozens more for you to scour. An entertaining video idea would be a behind-the-scenes video. These are fun for you to edit and produce, and also give your audience an inside look at what happens when cameras and eyes typically aren't looking. Give your viewers a glimpse at what makes your company successful, like when Five Guys allowed the Food Network to come in and record how they make their famous burgers and fries. And along the same lines are how-to videos. These are similar in that viewers may often see the final product, but not understand how the creator got from point A to point Z. These are especially great if a process is simpler than people may have expected. Create a video explaining how something can be done, and the value you're creating for a viewer is immeasurable. They'll appreciate you and want to engage with your brand again later on. A reason why a lot of people follow MailChimp, they're often using how-to videos on their own Twitter page. With all this talk about providing value, one way your customers can provide value for you is by leaving a rating review. Typically these are written, but a recorded video of them speaking on your product would be an excellent social media video. And if they're a little camera shy, that's okay. You can still turn their written word into a video with movement animation and text. Consider this example and Visme template if you need some inspiration. Live streaming is another opportunity that you can take advantage of on your social channels. If you have a product announcement, a tutorial that you want to share, or maybe you want to host a Q&A, these are all great reasons to incorporate live streaming into your marketing plan. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Periscope are some platforms where you can get started. Promo videos sound like ads, but they don't have to be. They can simply announce a sale, a new product, a discount code, or you name it. If there's something you think the public should know about, put it into a video and share it with the world. Promo videos are excellent ways to convert followers into paying customers. Here's another template you could consider using to do this. Similar to testimonials are case study videos. These are done by customers and their specific experiences with your company. Record them discussing how your company or product changed their lives. Again, they don't have to be on camera if you solely want to use their voice like Visme did in our next video. While you and your staff may be experts in your field, see if you can reach out to other experts in the same line of work and do interviews with them. Sit down and talk about your experiences together. By working together, you're likely to reach an even larger audience since you both have similar followers. This has potential to become an entire series rather than just one video if you have the time and dedication to keep it up. And our last video type is the animated video. You may not realize that a company like Visme can help you create quite impressive animations. But when it comes to completely original, never-before-seen animations, you probably want to work with an animator. That's what we did when introducing Visme on TikTok. And if that little character paired with this video doesn't make you want to explore Visme's website right now, I don't know what will. Visme is the perfect platform for you to turn your social media video ideas into reality. Whether it's for Instagram, Facebook, a testimonial, or an animation, Visme has the templates to basically create your videos for you. You just have to make the easy adjustments and fill them in with your own information. Try it out on visme.com right now. But wait, before you do, if you learned anything or liked this video, please do me and Visme a favor by liking this video and try subscribing to our channel. We're producing videos like this regularly because we want to help people like you improve the way that you market yourselves and your companies. Thank you so much for watching today. We wish you the very best of luck with your next social media video adventure. For now, I'm Mike Ploeger with Visme, helping you make information beautiful.