How Videos Are Shaping Content Consumption on Social Media

Social media generates the highest percentage of leads for any business as compared to most other modes of marketing. Before you green flag your digital marketing strategy, it’s imperative to understand the factors involved and how they mix with each other.

With approximately 5 billion video views on Youtube, 10 billion video views at Snapchat, and approximately 500 million people watching Facebook Videos every day, there is no doubt that video content is the new fad.

How it reflects on business is, however, complicated. Influencers stay the most effective mode of marketing at the leading platforms like Facebook and Youtube, owing simply to the overwhelming amount of content they create.

Along with how it is created, the real results you desire depend highly on how your content is consumed. Your audience, the platform, the video itself; all are indispensable factors which control the success of your campaign.

How to make Video’s impact in Social Media work for you?

The most important question of them all.

There are five basic rules to develop video content that creates maximum positive returns for your business.

#1: Know your Audience and their preferences

Knowing the demographic, lifestyle, and preferred social media platforms of your audience can’t be emphasised enough. This knowledge is vital for drafting the very skeletal structure of your digital marketing strategy.

How so?

Well, the social media platforms are different. Your potential user base isn’t fragmented across platforms, instead, chances are higher that they are segmented.

For example, Facebook is dominated by users of age group 25-34 years, followed by users of age 35-44. If your product is a quirky clothing or accessories, you’d have better returns from Instagram where 64% of the users are between the age 18-29 years.

Also, there are visible trends of migration among various social platforms. While the younger generation is more inclined towards Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat; the rather mature audience is on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Also, remember the magic numbers:

  • For Snapchat, a video may be 10 seconds at longest and always, make the first snap interesting.
  • At Instagram and Snapchat, use the ‘Live’ feature to showcase the product, unbox it, give backstage peeks, and announce interesting offers.
  • At your Facebook page and Youtube channel, make sure the ads at the beginning of the video are short and your call to action features within the first thirty seconds of the video.

#2: Choose efficient influencers

Activate(an independent strategy and technology consulting firm) finds that influencers who start at one platform, mostly can’t replicate the same success on other platforms.

Once you have figured out your audience’s demographics and their preferred platforms, you need an influencer who is revered at that platform. For example, the Kardashian sisters are Instagram goddesses, Superwoman (Lily Singh) is a gold class Youtuber, while Roman Atwood is a cherished vlogger (including on youtube).

If you wanted to market your Whey Protein Brand, Jason Momoa is any day a better choice than Miley Cyrus. Point made?

#3: Customize to the platform

As mentioned earlier, your client base today is segmented. You need to adapt to each of these segments (or as many as you can adapt to), to make your outreach more productive.

For example, the cultural perceptions of one nation might be wildly different from another. In advertising, this difference can make or break your campaign.

The ‘Suede Gully’ video by Puma, ‘Da Da Ding’ by Nike are both examples of captivating and out-of-the-box video content, customized and hence highly appealing to Indian sensitivities.

Along with the video content, the device used to view the content is also important.

While a viewing ratio of widescreen 16:9 is perfect for videos viewed on desktops and laptops at sites like youtube, Facebook etc; an aspect ratio of 16:9 is ideal for mobile devices.

Considering that 60% of Youtube videos are viewed on mobile devices, the aforementioned suggestion becomes critical to the viewing experience of the customer.

In a nutshell, do not use the same video across cultures or platforms, you might as well be throwing your money down the drain.

#4: Use supporting infographics

When posting on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter etc., use self-explanatory and beautiful infographics which further or at the very least, support the cause of your video content.

Your video might get skipped after 30-40 seconds of attention, but one glance at a pretty and informative infographic is bound to do its job, may be even pull the interest back to the video itself.

#5: Evolve your Company’s tone

While you need to make sure that the brand image is kept intact and valued, over time you might need to make a few updates to it.

While knowing ‘when’ could be tricky it helps to keep a close eye on the feedback of all your marketing campaigns and scrutinize the reactions they are eliciting.

This is quite textbook but feedback is always your best bet of knowing how far you have gone. Taking a few calculated leaps of faith has inadvertently reformed the future of many brands.

For example, rebranding based on feedback and mood of the audience, brought Old Spice (deodorant), Burberry, Apple, McDonald’s and so many more back from their imminent dissipation.

It’ll be interesting to see what wonders will unfold once video content achieves its predicted majesty. However, to stay relevant and sustain your clientele, the best day to hop on the innovative video content bandwagon was yesterday.

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About the Author

Pooja Bhargava is a content strategist and Head of Operations at italics, a leading content writing and video production company, based out of New Delhi. When she is not developing killer content for clients, she is studying psychology.