For quite a while now it has been known how effective video content can be as part of digital marketing campaigns. Its usefulness is magnified when we look at its impact on social media, with its overall use increasing as well as its effectiveness across platforms.
However, it’s not as simple as just uploading a branded video and suddenly your marketing campaign will fly. Time, thought and skill needs to be put in to ensure the benefits video marketing offers are fully reaped.
But don’t panic, this doesn’t necessarily mean a meeting room of fifteen (insert modern job title) executives need to bang their heads together over a latte to get to a successful endpoint. There are a few, quick and clever actions you can take when producing your video content that will make it go much further on social media.
Optimised Edits
Straight away a simple, yet often overlooked trick, is optimised edits. I say trick, however it’s really just the sensible thing to do. When each of the major social media platforms host videos optimally in different dimensions, it completely makes sense to re-edit your same video content in multiple ways.
I won’t bore you with all the technical specs as there is a fantastic (always up to date) post on Sprout Social’s website with specifications for video on each platform. However, there’s a simple way of picturing the editing process to ensure you’re covering all bases each time.
The checklist we always go through is; landscape, portrait and square. These three types of edit will pretty much cover you for all basis. Landscape to be used on set piece posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter. Square for your main Instagram post, plus any Facebook mobile campaigns and portrait for Instagram Stories, Instagram TV and any other mobile campaigns you run.
This is your bread and butter. Ensuring all videos are edited to these specifications each time, means that your content will be optimised across all social platforms and your video marketing campaign will have the best chance of succeeding. These principles can be built on and it is definitely worth looking into the different video dimensions Facebook ads support as well as the optimal resolutions for each platform.
The moral of the story is, optimise your video content to each and every social platform you are using.
Be Friendly To Each Platform When Filming
Being friendly to each social platform when editing is all very well and good, but if you can only see half the face of the person chatting to camera in a portrait edit, then it’s pointless producing one.
Bearing in mind the social media specifications whilst filming will ensure the content itself is more appealing to the viewer. Making sure the subject in centred as well as leaving room above and below the central point for text and graphics is an effective way of ensuring each video you film will produce the best viewing experience on each social platform.
Future Proof For Re-Edits
Filming is a time consuming activity. As easy as it may seem in the planning stage to film someone describing the five best things they did in Spain, the hours can quickly tick by. While we’re on a streak of optimising things, let’s label this one as optimising time.
The key here is to think ahead. When planning the content you want to film, take some time to consider whether you could repurpose any of the content for future usage. Then, if you can’t, what could you film that would be more flexible?
Of course you don’t want a day’s worth of general material, however, being smart about it can save a lot of time in the future. When interviewing someone, gain some shots of them laughing and engaging in other activities. If someone is giving a guided tour of a location, stop them in keys areas to talk about something related to a future marketing campaign. If you are just causing carnage in a “how quickly can we paint the boardroom?” video. Cause more carnage and use the extra footage for a behind the scenes later.
The point of this is, not everything you film has to be used straight away. Setting up a video shoot as much fun as it is, takes a lot of effort. So, make the most of all this effort and put a bit of footage in the bank for a rainy today. You’ll be grateful to your past self when the next marketing campaign is about to kick off and you already have half of the content in the bag.
Invest Time In Quality
By incorporating all these elements into your video productions, you are buying yourself more time that can be spent elsewhere. With edits that can be used across multiple platforms, as well as a wealth of content that can be repurposed for different campaigns, time is saved when it comes to filming more content. So where better to spend this time than on improving quality?
As ridiculous as it sounds, the quality of the content in social media videos is often overlooked. Once again I emphasise that simply uploading a video to a social platform doesn’t immediately give you a free ticket into the world of killer marketing campaigns. At the end of the day these are still videos that people are going to be watching and if they ain’t good, they won’t watch ‘em.
The three main elements to improve quality should be; the concept of the video, the execution of the concept and the quality of the filming. Simply put, this means spend time developing an interesting concept for your video, ensure that everything is in place for the concept to be executed and then don’t let it all down with poor production quality. This may seem a lot, but with the quality of tech available to us all, on top of those super sharp brains I know you all have, a quality video is not out of your reach.
If you like the sound of these social media video ideas but just want a bit of support in producing them then the Glacé team are always on hand. Just contact us with some information about the project you are working on or want to get started and we’ll get rolling with some top end social media video content.
