Social media, social media, social media. It may have been the most prominent pairing of words you’ve had running through your head whilst diving into your digital marketing campaigns.
You may love it, or you may hate it, but I’m sure you’ve realised now that there is a lot of potential across a lot of platforms that could reap benefits for your business.
This is absolutely true (and possibly even more so) when it comes to making video content for social media.
Social platforms have now long been ways to connect with clients and customers, find out what they are after and strengthen the perception of your brand.
You don’t need me to tell you that video content is the most valuable form of content across pretty much all social media platforms.
I’m guessing it’s because you know this why you’ve ended up here. It’s all very well and good knowing that video content is a highly effective way of communicating across social media platforms, but making video content for social media is a whole other challenge.
Fear not. Although I may be a big fan of throwing huge cameras around and setting up massive lighting rigs, you don’t even need to get close to anything like that to produce highly effective video content for social media that is actually going to connect with the audience you want it to.
By the time you’ve finished reading this, we will have whipped through 4 separate insights into making video content for social media. These are;
- Making videos with your smartphone
- Styles of videos you can easily produce
- How to be more experimental
- How to step up your production level
Making social media video content with a smartphone
First step. Pick up your smartphone and film a video. Simple.
Don’t for a second think you can’t make good quality video content for social media with your smartphone.
What is it we are trying to achieve as a business when producing video content for social media? To connect with the audience.
That’s what it boils down to. Yes, there are different aims within that, but much like filmmaking, digital marketing aims to create a connection with a specific audience.
Notice here, that the aim isn’t “to win an Oscar”. Higher-end video production will definitely help in the aim of connecting with an audience in many circumstances, however, to get the ball rolling with social media videos you want to create content that people are going to connect with.
This is why filming with your smartphone is not an issue at all.
Think of all the video content you have watched yourself that have been short clips shot either by friends or those in the public eye you are intrigued by.
A good chunk of it is self-shot. You aren’t always connecting with the quality of the content itself, you are connecting with the story or message that it is sharing.
Just a few initial pointers, will really help you get started.
Start with your message
Once you know the message you are looking to share, there are plenty of ways your smartphone can help you out in making video content that is going to be fit for social media use.
Some of these include;
Talk To The Camera
We’ve all become unbelievably used to this over the last few years and as you may have noticed, so much of TikTok and Instagram is made up of this.
This does mean you have the danger of getting lost in a sea of like-for-like content, but this is true for most elements of marketing. The trick here is to make your message unique and impactful.
Whether you are raving about how much you love working for your company or you’re at an event where you can’t contain your excitement, or even it’s a little more mundane and you just want to share some insights from your office about the benefits of a service you offer. Fire up that camera and start chatting.
Pass the phone around to different team members and let their passion and insight shine through. This sort of video should be raw.
The aim is to get across the emotion and realness that your customers and clients will connect with.
Testimonials
The exact same logic from the previous idea applies here. You’re basically just passing the phone to your customers and clients and asking them to speak passionately to the camera.
Potential customers and clients love hearing social proof. It’s proven! So why not ask those who’ve actually enjoyed working with you to tell everyone just why they enjoyed it?
The joy here is you have to do less and you have an even more powerful mouthpiece sharing your message across social media.
If you’re worried about all this content getting a bit samey, remember all through this you will naturally be putting your own brand style and voice across it.
This is what will make you stand out. Just ensure you approach making video content for social media with the same mindset you would approach any of your marketing campaigns. Channel your brand voice and don’t be afraid to be creative.
If someone is engaging with you on social it is because they want to see the more informal side of your brand. This isn’t a corporate sales pitch. It’s you casually telling people why you are so great.
Behind The Scenes Or A Day In The Life
No matter how exciting or full you may view the industry your business operates in, you’re going to have plenty of days where you’re super proud of what you’re business is doing.
Even if this doesn’t involve winning an award, having a library named after you, and signing a multi-million-pound contract, you still surely want your clients and customers to know what your business has been up to.
This concept is again very simple. Give the smartphone to one employee and have them film short snippets of their day and what they have been up to.
Whether this is documenting a momentous day or if it is just shedding some light on a specific role in your business, the value covers a lot of areas.
This could help in a recruitment drive as you show off the ins and outs of a job role you a hiring for. Or, it may be increasing the transparency with your customers so they feel even closer to the individuals behind the brand.
This is content that is again easily filmed, but can be used in all sorts of settings.
Be yourself and show off your business. After all, everyone you work with will have worked hard and put plenty of thought into developing the business and the brand. All you are doing is documenting it for all across social media to see.
What Styles Of Video Content Can I Produce For Social Media?
We’ve gone through a few initial ideas that can easily be dived straight into just by picking up your smartphone. But now you’ve got the bug for making video content for social media, what other styles are achievable? Most importantly, what other style will be good for your marketing campaign?
Let’s have a look.
User-Generated Content
I touched on this with the notion of getting your customers and clients to record their own testimonials. Let’s build on this.
Incentivising customers to create their own content surrounding your brand is a brilliant way to gather some really creative video content via social media.
Whether it be via a competition, an incentive, or just for the love of your brand, there are two huge benefits to encouraging your customers and clients to create their own content.
- Tap into an extra creative resource. Those keen to make a video will offer their own unique creative take on your brand. They may develop ideas you wouldn’t have thought of with it coming from a totally different perspective. Plus they are doing it for you!
- Secondly, you are once again gaining a review of your brand that comes from an impartial source. These people love you because of what you’ve done or produced. Once again, the social proof element here is really strong. The passion for your brand will shine through without it being a forced piece of messaging.
Image-Based Video Content
This is where creativity and simplicity fuse together in perfect harmony.
It may shock you to know, but videos don’t need to contain any video content at all.
Once you’ve developed a strong message, this can of course be shared through photography. It‘s served us well for decades already.
The only difference here is that you are utilising the other storytelling elements of video such as music and on-screen text to enhance what these photos are doing for you.
AirBnb are the absolute masters of this and have been churning out some amazingly powerful TV adverts (yes TV adverts) for a long time now that don’t feature any video content at all.
Think of it as a slide show presentation that is really capturing the imagination of the viewer.
Without a doubt you will have a variety of images related to your brand.
Utilise them!
Think about the message they look to tell on their own and weave these into a narrative that comes to life even more when developed into a video.
This is absolutely the definition of simple but effective.
Re-purposed content
As you’ll already have realised, making video content for social media is time consuming. So it absolutely makes sense to make the most of your time investment.
That is why re-purposing content as much as possible is a must.
What do I mean by this? Here are just a few examples;
- Re-edit archived videos
- Record a webinar
- Turn a podcast into a video (double content!)
- Edit longer videos into shorter pieces of content
The logic behind this is the important part. It’s a matter of thinking about how many different pieces of content you can get out of an original piece of content.
(The theory also works the other way around)
This can often mean not having to film anything new at all. A great way to start is going through old videos and re-editing them to fit a new purpose.
This could also mean going through audio recordings and turning them into a video format.
You get the picture. Don’t let this list stop here, let it be a springboard for your imagination. A piece of social media content doesn’t just have one life, it can have many many different purposes.
Get creative with this and before you know it you’ll have more content than you know what to do with.
Being More Experimental With Your Social Media Content
You may have just flown through my initial suggestions and thought it was all obvious and I’ve just wasted a whole chunk of internet space.
Maybe so (and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been accused of that). But if you have already made some good advances with your social media video content, there are plenty of directions you can go in to step up your game and be a bit more experimental.
If you’re still keen for a little bit more inspiration on the social media front before you dive fully in, here’s a helpful little read.
New Equipment
If you’ve squeezed every last inch of video life out of your smartphone and you want that production level to step up, it’s time to bring in some new equipment.
You don’t want to be doing this just because you got carried away in a Jessops and thought a shiny camera would look nice dangling from your neck.
The reason you want new equipment is to step up the quality of your videos and open up more possibilities for the type of video content you can produce.
Some content is fine shot on a smartphone. But when the message you want to portray is centred upon quality, you want this to come across in your videos as well.
But have no fear, you don’t need to empty the company bank account and build yourself a studio to do so.
You can even get some fantastic pieces of equipment at a snip of the price when you go second-hand.
The pieces of equipment we suggest that will get you rolling into new production avenues are;
Here you are stepping up a lot on a lot of fronts without going too crazy on the spend.
Where you’ll really see some difference is with lighting and audio. Two areas often forgotten, however, good lighting and good audio make the world of difference. They don’t often get the credit they deserve, but they lift your production level in an instant.
Extra time to hone your skills and train with the new equipment is essential, but this will be time well spent.
Product Videos
With your new equipment in hand, you can have a shy at some tip-top product videos.
As well as being a wonderful form of ad content, product videos play an important role across e-commerce platforms.
With just under 25% of all retail purchases being made online, showing off a product in the best light possible across e-commerce platforms is imperative to ensure sales hit the required levels.
Video content provides the ideal opportunity.
Use that new lighting to cast some cool shadows and establish captivating moods as you work the camera around your product of choice.
Again the imagination is your only limit here. The product is the star of the show and it’s up to you to decide upon the world it is going to live in and what its storyline is going to be.
From the plain old informative product video where the product very simply introduces itself to the world, to the more glamorous all singing all dancing narrative advert, product videos can be golden and are a stellar form of content to start filming and splashing across social media.
If you want a few more tips, check out this blog.
Table Talks
Elegantly segwaying to a point I made earlier, getting people’s faces on camera is an instant way of making your brand feel more personable.
Vlogs are a great way of doing this and simply sticking someone in front of a camera to chat is another. However, we can push the boundaries a little more than that.
Tapping into the modern phenomena of podcasting and the even more modern revelations that you can actually film someone making a podcast, casual conversations between members of your team is a video content gold mine.
Firstly you have the opportunity to get a lot of friendly faces on the screen. But secondly, it’s a format that gets the best out of those on camera.
Sitting in front of a camera in a traditional way is pretty intimidating. But getting your colleagues to ask you questions (and vice versa) or simply chatting with them sat across from each other at a table is much more informal and triggers more natural conversations.
This leads to loads of little snippets that can be re-purposed, taps into the love of podcasts and often provides a few comedy moments along the way.
Think the usual interview style is a bit too old-hat and wooden? Then this is definitely the way to go.
Taking Social Media Video Content To A Professional Level
You’ve turned your hand to social media videos and produced a bunch of great content. But we get it, sometimes that extra level of professional quality is needed to fire those videos into the stratosphere and allow them to soar.
Have no fear, the Glacé Media team are on hand to help.
As much as we always encourage you to dive in yourselves and start making content, we have churned quite a few of these videos ourselves out in the past.
If you want that extra industry insight adding to your ideas or you’ve now simply got so many video ideas you need to extend your video team, we’ve got you covered.
Whether it be product videos, interviews, animations or short films, there are so many areas of social media video content we can dive into and start producing alongside you.
If you have some ideas rumbling and would like to hear our thoughts, just drop us an email. We’re a friendly bunch and are always happy to chat all things video.
