Video is becoming more important – and more widely used – in digital marketing.
With (generally!) better internet, video is now a more viable option for sharing information. It can be used on your website or on social media – or both! and can massively improve results.
Video for Algorithms
Social media platforms are updating their algorithms to favour video, in various forms.
Google loves video, especially on its own YouTube platform, so it can also improve search results for your website.
Users are engaging more with video, which gives better results in your analytics – especially on social media, where post engagement is, generally, hugely improved by the use of video.
Video for Users
Apart from the numbers, users also love video.
Video content is more dynamic, which is why it tends to get more engagement.
Posting a video is a really great opportunity to improve your connection with your audience. Our clients who regularly post video content have an audience who feel like they know them, regardless of whether they have ever met.
Trust is massively impacted by use of video. Your audience will feel like they can trust you, once you post content that is authentic (which is true of any content you post online!).
Where to post video content?
You can add video posts on your Facebook page feed. These posts will get more engagement and, depending on their content, more likes and shares.
You can also “go live” on Facebook, which means streaming a live video on your page. This allows your audience to interact by commenting as you speak and can be a great way to connect. The video can be saved and reused once you end the live session.
Instagram started as an image based social platform but have massively embraced video content, especially over the past year. The timeline of changes to the platform in the last 12 months is impressive, partly as a response to covid and partly as a response to general trends on socials.
Like with Facebook you can post video to your Instragram feed in the same way as you would post a photo (be aware that some social media managers do not allow you to post video to Instagram).
You can also go live on Instagram and a growing number of people are taking advantage of this feature to share live video with their audience and generate connection and engagement.
In addition, you can post video to your Instagram Stories.
Have we saved the best for last? Instagram Reels have massively taken off and are a great way to share video on the platform. You can tag people or places, add audio or text and publish video quickly. They also vanish quickly, only staying on your page for 24 hours, so they are a great way to experiment and have fun as they don’t hang around long enough to embarrass you too much! You can read more from Instagram about Reels here. Reels are getting great engagement as they are more likely to be seen by people who don’t follow you.
YouTube
YouTube is an art form in itself, but if you are posting video content online regularly then it is potentially one to consider.
YouTube is the second most used search engine (and owned by the first!), so if your blog post isn’t found on Google then your video may be found on YouTube. Google also shows video results in its general search results.
In addition, by posting your video on YouTube you are saving storage space on your hosting (where your website lives), which can keep costs down.
What to post?
This will massively depend on your business.
For some, it makes sense to invest in a professional videographer to create video content on a professional level.
For others video recordings of yourself or what you do is a great way to connect with your audience and show you what you are about.
As with photography, you have the option to download and use stock video. We would recommend this if you don’t have your own video or until you create your own but it can be a nice way to quickly and easily add some video to your content.
To get started you could try creating basic video graphics in a tool like Canva, which allows you to use your own or Canva supplied images to generate simple animated graphics in a video format.
Stock video and video graphics are a great option for blog posts, if you want to enrich your content but don’t have the time or skills to create video content for every post. Click here for our post on blogging.
Be Brave
Video gives such great results that it’s worth braving the initial fear that many of us have in being seen and heard online.
Challenge yourself to practice and get over “the fear”, ask a friend to hold you accountable to posting video regularly. I promise it gets easier!!
Have fun!
One of the biggest advantages to using video in your online content is the ability to connect with your audience and let them see what you are really like. So have fun with it and enjoy it, if you have fun then your audience will too.
