The popularity of video content has skyrocketed in recent years and is still steadily growing. Video content can meet many needs, from providing entertainment to spreading news. Another instance video content has excelled in is marketing. It has proved to be an excellent channel to engage an audience. Video marketing has eclipsed its predecessor strategies, like radio, written media, and even T.V marketing. The use of social media platforms, alongside time spent watching videos, has increased worldwide. Particularly in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic.
This dramatic rise in the popularity of video content, coupled with the increase in the use of social media, presents businesses with an excellent opportunity to fuse the two in their marketing strategies. By factoring social media video marketing into your strategy, you will have access to the most prominent form of communication, plus the largest global audience currently available. Better yet, you have a huge range of approaches to take, from uploading brief video clips to animated explainer videos. To cut a long story short, there has never been a better time to delve into video marketing!
What is social media video marketing?
As you have probably guessed, it is a form of video marketing that focuses on using social media platforms to deliver video content to an audience. Precisely what content will be up to you. Certain brands and businesses will mesh well with some approaches but not so well with others. For example, short and snappy video bites on Instagram may be great for a fashion brand yet fall flat for others. Now onto the bigger questions – how can social media video marketing help your business, and is it even worth it?
Building a community
One of the best things about social media video marketing is how powerful a tool it is in creating communities. By uploading your content to social media, you will have access to huge audiences. Many of which will be interested in what you have to say. Contrary to other means of marketing, like television, you can speak directly to your audience and vice-versa. This can help build a strong community, as your audience can interact with themselves and you directly. Additionally, this often has the effect of developing a loyal community, as interactions are much more personal. People speak directly to your business representatives, rather than corporate emails or simply listening to ad reads.
Improve your customer service
The direct line of communication you have with your audience can be great for customer service. Your customers will be able to give feedback straight to you. Allowing you to see a near-immediate response to how your content is received, in addition to increased awareness regarding problems or concerns. By the same token, you will be able to respond to your customers quicker and, hopefully, solve their issues quicker too.
One potential problem with this is perspective, particularly when you get big. Some customers may encounter a very rare problem, then make lots of posts about it. This can have the effect of convincing others, or even members of your business, that the problem is worse than it is, especially if you take long to respond. As people tend to post more about negative experiences than positive ones. It is easy for a small issue to skew toward the negative. Ensuring you respond quickly can counteract this and will even make you look better as a result.
Increase traffic to your website
Building an online presence via social media video marketing can offer tangible benefits to a business. One of which being more traffic to your sites. By developing communities on social media platforms, you are able to direct a steady stream of traffic toward a specific place, most often a brand’s main site. There are several advantages to this; of course, more leads generally means more conversions, which in itself is fantastic, but this isn’t the only plus point to an increase in traffic.
Over the past few years, social media has had a steadily growing impact on SEO. Search engines like to see social media platforms linking back to your site. Even more so if a reasonable degree of traffic comes with it. This can affect your natural growth, as a better SEO rating will mean a higher page rank, leading to more traffic. As you can see, a good social media presence can have a compounding effect on brand exposure and the growth of your business.
A cost-effective method
While an effective means to increase revenue, social media video marketing is just as effective at decreasing marketing costs. Unlike other marketing alternatives, using social media does not come with any startup costs, with any costs further down the line being entirely optional. For example, setting up a Facebook account is completely free for individuals, groups, and businesses alike. However, if you have some flexibility in your marketing budget, you could opt for some paid advertisements. Though this is not necessary, it can make social media investment more beneficial more quickly, making it a more feasible solution for bigger businesses while not locking out smaller businesses due to high costs. Contrast this to ad placements on T.V or printed media, which often cost hundreds for a single slot.
A downside to social media video marketing
Although a brilliant marketing strategy, social media video marketing does not come without its issues. One big problem is how long it can take to build up a presence, especially from scratch and without much financial investment. It can take a while to develop your style of content, to build up an archive of content, and for it to start gaining traction. Because of this, it is best to start as soon as you can, as you won’t see results immediately.
Final thoughts
On balance, social media video marketing is one of the best current strategies available. You have access to a global audience, possibility to increase leads and improve the SEO rating of your site, and can execute this strategy essentially for free, though you will likely have better results with a bit of investment. As such, it is a perfect fit for big and small businesses alike, as the key factor here is your content rather than your marketing budget. For these reasons, in addition to the seemingly unending rise in social media’s popularity, there has never been a better time to get started.
