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9 Video Trends Ruling 2018 that Brands Should Hop On

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For brands that wanna be big influencers on Facebook and YouTube (so … basically every brand), the Tubular Labs‘ State of Online Video Q2 2018 report is a veritable goldmine of information.

Here are the important bits:

Influencers Rule YouTube & Facebook

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Influencers (basically YouTube celebrities) wrack up way more views than brands and also upload way more than brands. In the first quarter of 2018, the breakdown for YouTube views was:

  • 84% influencers
  • 13% media companies
  • 3% brands

Influencers clearly trounce companies, but they also uploaded way more content than media companies or brands. The breakdown for uploads is:

  • 89% influencers
  • 9% media companies
  • 2% brands

When you consider those numbers, media companies and brands actually got pretty good bang for their buck considering how little they uploaded.

Over on Facebook, the viewing numbers were:

  • 56% influencers
  • 40% media companies
  • 4% brands

That compares to the following upload numbers:

  • 56% influencers
  • 38% media companies
  • 6% brands

So, brands fared slightly worse for the amount they were uploading on Facebook in Q1 this year.

Clearly, if brands want to be influential on social media platforms, it would be a good idea for them to partner with influencers on the sites. These influencers can have millions of views of their videos and any endorsement they give can be a huge boon to a brand.

Part of the reason they can accumulate so many views is that they either jump on or initiate trends that sweep through the platform they’re on. So, if you identify a type of video that is trending and you can somehow shoehorn your brand into an influencer video about that trend, you may find a winning combination.

What are some of these trends?

The report classifies 11 trends into four categories. Let’s look at nine of these trends across the four categories.

Vicarious Living

Fernando/Flickr

One of the great things about social video is that it allows viewers to spend some time seeing how other people live. The category of Vicarious Living lets people step into the lives of these influencers (visually, anyway).

Switching Lives

As the name implies, Switching Lives videos are when an influencer switches lives with one of their friends or another influencer. It can be simply switching clothing or cosmetics or it can be switching possessions. The popular ones, as you could probably guess, involve extreme switches, such as a man trying to live as a woman for a day and dressing like her and wearing makeup, etc.

24 Hours

This trend is when viewers are invited into a subject’s life for a full day or subjects take up some kind of challenge for a full day, like being handcuffed to someone or staying in a mall for a full day, for example. Other videos that use this trend are finding things to do in a certain city for 24 hours. The videos are, thankfully, not actually 24 hours long.

Room Tours

Whether it’s a room, an apartment or a mansion, giving people a peek inside where an influencer lives, works and plays is an ongoing trend that brands can take advantage of if the influencers happen to leave something with a brand’s logo laying around.

Food Fanaticism

Photo and Share CC/Flickr

Food is something we all share in common. Nobody can live without it. A couple of big trends in food videos in 2018 are eating a lot and eating off the streets.

Mukbang

A trend that started in Korea, (mukbang translates to “food broadcast”) this is where influencers eat food in front of a camera. Now, that in and of itself probably wouldn’t create a trend, but it’s the twist that’s put on the eating that made it a trend.

That twist is usually people eating copious amounts of food. Think people eating more of one type of food than you can even imagine in one sitting. Sometimes they just eat a normal amount, but in an unusual setting.

Street Food

This is a trend that you can actually find on television, too. People love to learn about the various types of street food one can find around the world and, apparently, they love to see people eating said food.

But, it’s not just eating, either. Videos showing street food vendors making their dishes are also popular, as well as interesting street food vendors with fascinating stories to tell.

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Anti-Tutorials

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While tutorials are highly interesting and helpful, for entertainment value, influencers have gone in the other direction and have made anti-tutorials a big trend on Facebook and YouTube.

Not To Do

These can range from serious videos about what not to do while you’re visiting other countries to silly videos highlighting fails or social faux pas.

Tried Following

The tried following trend is a variation on the tutorial video, as it follows an influencer as they try to follow a tutorial, usually failing at it in the process, making it all the more entertaining.

Evergreen Video Trends

Another two trends worth noting are so-called evergreen trends, meaning they’ve been around for awhile already, but are still on the uptick.

ASMR

coolio-claire/Flickr

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos have been around for a decade now, but they are really taking off right now. These types of videos are basically just people doing quiet activities like whispering, tapping on things lightly or brushing their hair, for example. The quiet sounds are meant to stimulate a physical and emotional response in people. Many people love listening to the quiet audio stimulation and they can easily be crossed with other types of videos, like the makbang ones.

Sent Me

An offshoot of the popular “unboxing” and “haul” type videos, Sent Me videos are where influencers unbox things that they’ve received from fans or sponsors.

How do you get in on the trends?

While it’s tempting to hop on one of these trends and partner up with a social video influencers, it’s worth noting that a trend becomes uncool approximately eight seconds after brands start using it for marketing purposes. So, it’s best to try and “sneak” your brand into a video rather than making it too obvious.

If an influencer is seen using your brand, their cultish followers will take note, so it’s best not to draw too much attention to your brand and just let it somehow make its way into a video naturally. 

Having said that, allow us to draw some attention to our own brand. One type of video that never goes out of style is the tried and true animated explainer video, like a whiteboard video, for example. Click here to get started on planning and pricing your very own whiteboard animation video.

Improve Your Paid Social Media Advertising with these 7 Easy Steps

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When it comes to paid social media advertising, you’re either getting a great return on your investment and connecting to the exact people you need to, or you are spending a lot of money without converting. If your social media paid advertising strategy is more of the latter than the former, the good news is that it is easy to fix.  

And you need to fix it if it isn’t working, because paid advertising on social media is more important than ever with organic reach quickly drying up.

If your paid social media advertising requires some repairs, try these seven steps.

Set an Objective (No, not likes.)

viZZZual.com/Flickr

Like with all advertising and marketing, you need to know what it is you’re working toward. You need a specific, focussed objective and it cannot be to get “likes.”

Decide what action you want audiences to take when they see your ad and then structure your ad and overall campaign to guide the viewer to take that action. Use data from past campaigns to create target performance goals and continually optimize your present and future campaigns to help you reach those goals.

Rather than just getting people to click on a thumb, try these for campaign objectives:

    • Traffic – Drive people to your homepage, a specially created landing page or a specific product page.
    • Engagement – Encourage comments, shares, use of hashtags you’ve created or anything else that will get people to do more than just click on the thumb.
    • Awareness – Increase awareness of your brand or a product you’re pushing. This is where engagement is especially valuable.
    • Leads – Promote valuable gated content that people have to sign up for with an email address to access.
    • Sales – Pump up interest in a product by promoting its features and how they help customers and then push it with sales and specials.

Pick the Right Platforms

magicatwork/Flickr

Some businesses treat social media as a monolithic entity, forgetting that it consists of many different platforms, all of which appeal to different demographics and are best suited to different purposes.

For example, LinkedIn probably isn’t the best place to promote a contest where people have to share your company profile. That’s more likely to work on something like Facebook because it has less of a professional vibe and users are more interested in consumer products.

If you are targeting people below the age of 25, you should avoid Facebook, where participation is dropping among young people, and get into Snapchat, which nearly 80% of 18-24 year olds use, many of them daily.

While these generalized numbers on social media use in the United States are helpful, the only numbers you can truly trust are your own. So, dig into your own data, identify who you’re targeting and determine which platforms would have the largest number of your target audience.

Whichever platforms you go with, you should get consistent engagement on them and not struggle too much to pull people away from your competitors. Pick your platforms and concentrate your efforts on them.

Find the Middle Ground

We all know that targeting on social media platforms like Facebook can get crazy specific. However, the more specific you are, the smaller the group gets. To avoid going too narrow and having too small of a targeted audience, try broadening your targeting features and finding a middle ground. You could slightly increase the age range by a few years both up and down or you could choose a slightly larger metro area. Collect data on these different targeted campaigns and use that data to experiment and fine tune them.

Offer Valuable Content

Strive to make your content valuable to people and try to make it look organic so people are more inclined to view it. Close to 90% of users say they are interested in following brands on social media, but about 60% of them say they end up unfollowing brands because they get annoying with over-promotion or cringeworthy posts.

The best way to offer valuable content that seems organic is to know your audience and create content in the vein of what they like to view. Do they like animation? (You know they do. Everybody does.) Try an animated video, then. Give them a strong call to action at the end of your content.

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Fit Your Ads into Your Campaign Funnel

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Few people purchase something directly after clicking on an ad. They go through a process (or journey, if you prefer, where they have to think about it and do a bit of research before they commit to buying.

What you want your content to do is coax the person into making a purchase. Give them a little bit at a time, showing them the features and letting them know what those features will do for them. The objective is for them to keep getting content as they mull over the purchase and become a little more enticed as they move through the stages of the sales funnel, from awareness to interest to evaluation to decision to purchase.

People at the top of the funnel who aren’t even aware of your brand will need an introduction to it, (which is where an animated explainer video fits in nicely, by the way), while someone lower down the funnel who is closer to making a decision may need something like a free demo.

To really get people to connect with your brand, it’s a good idea to get them to do something interactive, like a 30-day challenge where they can keep track of their progress on an interactive checklist or something like that.

Interaction like this means people will make more of a connection with your brand than just watching or reading something.

Set Your Budget and Bid Strategically

Financial Times/Flickr

When it comes to bidding for ad space on social media, you don’t want to bid too low or your ad won’t be seen by anyone, but you don’t want to bid too high or you’ll end up overpaying. It’s a good rule of thumb to start in the middle of the bid range you are given. You won’t see as many impressions as you would at a higher bid, but you also won’t end up paying too much for those impressions.

If you want to get mathematical about your bidding strategy, use your historical data to find some numbers that will inform your bidding.

You’ll need your:

  • Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
  • Average Cost Per Click (CPC)
  • Average Conversion Rate

Set a maximum CPA that you’re willing to pay for a sale. Let’s say $18.

Dig into your data and find your average conversion rate. Let’s say 1%

You can then multiply your max. CPA by your average conversion rate: $18 x 1% to get an average CPC: $0.18. This would be your maximum bid to attain your set CPA.

This isn’t a set-in-stone formulation that will work for every single campaign. If you have a particularly well converting campaign, you may bump up your bid or you may want to play with different bidding strategies to see what works best for you.

Measure Results, Test Different Content and Modify Ads for Consistent Improvement

Make like a kid at a science fair and experiment. Use past data to make educated guesses on current and future campaigns to make them perform better. Try new copy, different images and a variety of offers to see which version of your campaign performs the best. You can also try aiming the same ad at two different target groups to see which one it works with better.

Something that always works well with people is a good animated explainer video, which WizMotions can help you with. Click here to use our price estimation calculator to see approximately how much your video will cost.

Tips, Trends, Tidbits & Tools: 9 Video Marketing Articles to Help you Slay with Your Video Marketing

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Video marketing is all the rage now. Everywhere you look, you see one of those sideways triangles imploring you to click and play a video so you can hear someone’s marketing message. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes educational, video marketing is going to continue to dominate business marketing budgets.

If you’re just getting started with video or you have already gotten your toes wet and are now slogging around with soggy shoes, these nine articles will help you with your video marketing:

How to Mimic the Masterpiece Video Marketing of PBS

Matthew Hurst/Flickr

In this piece by Tubular Insights, Bree Brouer talks about what makes the Public Broadcasting Service so good at video marketing and how you can learn from what they do and use it in your own video marketing efforts. Plus, it has a super cute video starring Cookie Monster, so there’s that.

Read it here.

B2B video marketing trends: firms challenge publishers to help them do more

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This NetImperative piece references a study conducted by LinkedIn that says video marketing is the biggest priority for B2B businesses. However, businesses are also not sure about how to measure the effectiveness of video marketing and they want publishing platforms to do more for them in this area.

Read it here.

How To Create High-Performance Video Marketing

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From the vaunted (virtual) halls of Forbes comes this offering by Chris Frantz, which suggests that businesses concentrate on one or two high performing platforms for video rather than trying to spread themselves over multiple platforms. It also contains the cute, little phrase: “thumb-stopping content,” which we just love.

Read it here.

Why Your Facebook Videos Need to Be Different From What You Put on YouTube

Douglas Scortegagna/Flickr

Kinda sorta related to the last entry (but not really) is this one from Torrey Tayenaka on Entrepreneur, which talks about how you have to differentiate video on Facebook from video on YouTube because people are usually on these two sites for different reasons and in different circumstances. Therefore, you have to adjust your videos accordingly.

Read it here.

11 Ways to Create a Strategy for Live Video Marketing

Ron Mader/Flickr

Specific to live video, this Edgy Labs blog post by Sophie Fitzpatrick goes into detail about how to use live video to draw people into your brand, which platform would be best for your specific business and what you need to do to make it must-watch television. Well, must watch video, anyway.

Read it here.

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Google launches Reach Planner for YouTube & video ad forecasting in AdWords

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Straight up news here, as Ginny Marvin outlines the newest tool from Google to help marketers figure out how far their video ads will reach. This sounds like it’s going to be a highly useful tool. It’s currently in beta testing. We bet it’ll see a lot of usage once it gets fully released.

Read it here.

Google expanding YouTube Director onsite video ad service to more than 170 cities

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More exciting news from Google, as Amy Gesenhues outlines how the company is expanding its YouTube Director onsite service from just six initial launch cities to a whole heckuva lot more now. If you’re not familiar with YouTube Director onsite video ad service, it’s basically coaching from a personal ad director who will help you create a professional looking ad as long as you commit to spending at least a minimum amount on Google ads.

Read it here.

Stop Thinking of Video Content Like TV: Creating a Modern Video Experience

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Apparently a lot of marketers still think of online video marketing in terms of television and Jonathan Crowl implores those marketers to stop thinking of it that way. He instead says brands should take inspiration from Lowe’s on how to come up with a video strategy that employs a connected content creation and distribution plan that puts the brand front and center rather than YouTube or any other platform.

Read it here.

How to Use Video Design To Increase Your Conversion Rate

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“Video design” isn’t a term you hear a lot of when talking about video marketing. It’s the general look of your video and how all the shots are set up and what title cards are used, etc. In this Business2Community piece, Anton Eliasson tells you how you can create a professional looking video without having to shell out a buncha money.

Read it here.

No matter if you’re big or small, a startup or well established, if you’re in the business of making money, you’re going to need to use video to entice your audience and turn them into customers. One type of video that works amazingly well for that is a 2D animated explainer video. Click here to get started on planning and pricing your very own 2D animation video.

How to Create a Purposeful Video Marketing Strategy

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Video marketing isn’t just uploading videos to YouTube and hoping people stumble across them. It takes a concerted effort and a solid strategy to get people watching your videos and then to turn those video watchers into customers.

Having a purposeful video marketing strategy is akin to having a road map so you know where you’re going. Your strategy doesn’t need to be super detailed to start out since it’ll probably need some tweaking after you release your first couple of videos. But, it should be detailed enough to align your video content with the goals of your business.

Your Mission

As with any marketing strategy (or pretty much anything you’re trying to accomplish), you should have a mission statement to help guide you. Not some 500 word creed, but just a one-line statement that covers:

  • The type of content you will be creating.
    • Mainly educational?
    • purely entertaining?
    • super artistic?
    • A mixture?
    • The general tone of your brand and the needs of your audience will help you decide.
  • Who you’re making these for.
    • Outline your target audience in as much detail as you can muster.
    • Having individualized customer personas will help you with this.
  • What this audience should get out of your videos.
    • What is the value of your videos for the people who watch them?
    • What will your videos help your audience do?

Your statement should read something like this:

[Company name] makes [adjective] video content for [target audience] to help them [what you want your videos to accomplish for your audience].

For example: Company X makes educational and entertaining video content for people who want to listen to their favorite music while living an active lifestyle.

Often when companies start using video, it’s not just for sales and marketing. Large enterprises may use them for many reasons across many departments, both internally and externally. You may need multiple mission statements for each department that is going to use them. Obviously, your internal videos for your employees will be for different purposes than your externally facing ones.

For example, you may have videos for sales, HR, corporate events, internal communications, products, etc.

Your Topics

Once you know what you will be using your videos for and you have your mission (or missions) clearly outlined, you should decide what types of stories you will need to tell to fulfill each of these roles.

Dan Taylor-Watt/Flickr

Let’s say that you have the following functions you want to use videos for:

  • Sales
  • Support
  • Human Resources
  • Corporate Events

Under each function, you’ll want to come up with a few themes to build content around. Your themes will depend on exactly what your company does. For example, if you make and sell waterproof bluetooth speakers for active living, you may decide that under the Sales function, you want to build videos around the themes of Active Lifestyles, Sound Quality and Amazing Design. These become your Content Pillars to build video concepts and campaigns for. Keep ‘em broad and don’t make them too product-heavy.

In our example, we’re marketing bluetooth speakers to people who like sports and being active. So, we have the themes of Active Lifestyles, Sound Quality and Amazing Design that will appeal to our audience. You might make a video about the best biking trails in your state that would be centered around the theme of Active Lifestyle. 

Once you know your Content Pillars and you know the types of stories you want your videos to be telling, you can brainstorm some ideas for the types of videos you want to create.

Some common types of marketing videos include:

  • Recorded webinars
  • How-to videos
  • Thought leadership interviews
  • Product explainers and demos
  • FAQ answers
  • Behind-the-scenes corporate culture videos
  • Customer testimonials
  • Documentary-like case studies
  • Corporate event recaps

Find out what questions your audience has and create content that answers those questions. You’ll enhance your SEO and become the go-to expert for whatever the topic is. You’ll also want to make videos that showcase high-level brand stories.

Check out some of our other posts for help with building brand awareness, creating various types of business videos and promoting those videos.

Your Creators

Who will be making your video content will depend on what kind of production quality you want and how much of a budget you have. If you aren’t that concerned with quality and you are on a shoestring, you may be able to just get away with some phone-shot videos.

If you want high production value and you can afford it, you might be able to get your own in-house videographer and some equipment. For maximum flexibility, going with a videography agency is a good call. If you’re going to mix in some animation (and you totally should), it’s probably best to go with an animation agency. (We can recommend a good one.)

We’ll just leave this here …

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Regardless of how you decide to proceed, make sure you outline how the work will flow by determining:

  • Who is responsible for coming up with creative concepts
  • Who writes the scripts
  • How final approvals are procured
  • Who organizes the logistics of video shoots or creation
  • How you get feedback for the videos
  • Who distributes the videos when they’re complete

If you decide to work with an agency, many of these things will be done in conjunction with the agency.

To get started and answer some of these critical questions, you can start small and see if you have anyone within your organization who can create a short video series for in-house use. Depending on how that goes, you can decide whether to continue producing in-house or to go with an agency.

Your Content’s Home

Markus Trienke/Flickr

Although it’s perfectly fine to have a YouTube or Vimeo channel and host your videos there, or upload them straight to Facebook for that platform, you will also want them to live on your site. Like any website, the likes of YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook all want to keep people on their site. That’s not good for you because they can easily get distracted. You need to try and get people onto your site and keep them there.

Put links back to your site in your video description boxes and have a landing page ready for people to start them on a content journey where they become increasingly immersed in your branding experience and hopefully end with them converting to a sale.

A lot of big brands have entire video sections where they either host their own videos or have their YouTube videos embedded on their sites. You can embed your videos on your site in relevant blog posts to start off and then when you create enough of them, you can create a space on your site, organized by category, where they can all live.

Your Performance

Your brand isn’t just creating videos for the heck of it. You’re creating them to act as a content gateway for people to draw them into your brand. To see if what you’re doing is working, you need to dig into your analytics and make sure your investment is generating a strong ROI.

Look at your video data to see which ones are being watched, how long they’re being watched and what platforms draw the most eyeballs. Some of the more important numbers are:

  • Drop-off rates – How much of your audience watches all or or most of your videos?
  • Click through rates – How many people click your CTA link at the end of the video?
  • Consumption rates – How many of your videos do your individual leads watch in a given time period like a day, week or month?

For more help with the numbers, check out this post, which tells you the four most important video metrics to track.

Having a purposeful video marketing strategy will help you avoid throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. An animated explainer video will be a great addition to your arsenal. Click here to schedule an appointment with WizMotions to see how we can help you make the perfect business video for your brand.

Over a Dozen Easy Ways to Extend the View Time on Your Facebook Videos

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One of the most important metrics for Facebook video is watch time. You don’t just want people to watch your video, you want them to watch the whole thing. In a busy world with a ton of competing content, that’s not always easy. But, there are ways you can increase the chances of your audience’s watch time.

The good news is; it’s easy to do. The bad news is … wait, there is no bad news. Let’s get started, shall we? Here are 15 ways to increase watch time on your Facebook videos. 

1. Upload Videos Directly to Facebook Instead of Sharing a Link

The subhead basically says it all. In retrospect, I guess I should’ve made it shorter and explained it more in depth here in the body of the post. Here are some statistics: A Quintly study from 2017 found that on average, videos uploaded straight to Facebook received a 477% higher share rate and generated 530% more comments than a shared YouTube link.

If you’re currently cross posting on multiple sites by uploading to YouTube and then simply sharing the link, it’s worth the extra time to upload to Facebook separately.   

2. Make Videos Square or Vertical

Garry Knight/Flickr

People love convenience and hate putting effort in. That means even something like turning their phone from vertical to horizontal can be too much for them to do. You can take advantage of this innate human laziness by making videos that don’t require people to rotate their phones 90 degrees.

Square Facebook videos get more shares, views and engagement and they reach more people — especially on mobile — than their horizontal counterparts, according to this comprehensive Buffer study on the subject.

Facebook itself announced in early 2017 that it was improving the vertical video watching experience for users. Some experimentation is in order.

3. Make Shareable Videos Your Focus

Obviously, if it were up to a company, all their videos would be shared all the time. But, you can increase the chances of your videos being shared by focusing on content that is more likely to be shared.

According to Buzzsumo, who analyzed 100 million Facebook videos, the ones with the most engagement are entertaining, humorous, professionally done and offer value. Also: food. Turns out the fastest way to your audience’s heart is through their stomach.  

Of particular interest to Facebook users is how-to videos and videos that offer any kind of useful tips. (And food.)

Storytelling obviously plays a big role in shareable video. Try creating a story with your brand by supporting a cause or finding something your audience is passionate about and starting a conversation about that. Anything with some human interest and that’s uplifting is sure to get people clicking the “Share” button. (Also food.) 

4. Focus on Intros and Thumbnails

There’s no room for slow starts with Facebook videos. You’ve gotta hit the viewer with something as soon as the video starts to keep them watching (no, not your logo). An interesting camera angle, bold imagery, anything that will grab their attention.

If you’re telling a story, you don’t need to start at the start. You can start near the climax, go back and fill the rest of the story in, and then end off with the actual climax. Do what ya gotta do to keep interest piqued.

And don’t forget an interesting thumbnail. Never forget the thumbnail.

5. Include Text

holytimeland/Flickr

Most people watch videos without sound and prefer to not have sound on autoplaying videos, particularly ads. In addition to that, captioned videos have a 12% advantage in watch time over non-captioned videos. Include captions. That way, even if people are watching your video with the sound off (and they probably are), they’ll know exactly what’s going on and will be more likely to share the video. Also, you should just include captions to make your videos accessible to everyone.

6. Enhance the Copy

Every video upload comes with the opportunity to add some text.

  • Title: Make it descriptive, searchable and compelling.
  • Preview text: Use keywords to summarize what your video is about.
  • Description: Use more keywords to add information about your video and encourage shares and comments.

7. Get Your Timing Down

Finding the right time to share videos on Facebook is a fine art … just kidding. It’s kind of a guessing game. But, several outlets have tackled the question of when to post. CoSchedule compiled a bunch of these studies and found the quick answer to the question of when to post is:

  • 1–4 p.m. late into the week and on weekends.
    • Saturday and Sunday at 12–1 pm
    • Thursday and Friday at 1–4 pm
    • Wednesday at 3 pm

If you want a schedule that is more pertinent to your audience, dig into your analytics and do a little experimenting and you’ll find the posting window that is best for you specifically.

8. Get Your Timing Dow — oh wait, I used that for the last one

Figuring out the optimum length of a Facebook video is another area where you’re basically just going to have to experiment and study your analytics to see what length of video gets the best engagement. Facebook’s internal analytics are extremely helpful here, telling you how long people watched your video for. If the majority of people watch up to the 30 second mark and then there is a steep drop off, you’ve got your answer.

Common sense would say keep it short, but try some different lengths and see. As we’ve discussed before, for animated explainer videos, right around the one minute mark seems to work best, but you should always aim for clarity regardless of length.

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9. Embed Your Facebook Videos on Your Site

Not everyone is going to engage with your brand on Facebook. Some of them will do it on your website, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be privy to your Facebook video. The native Facebook video player makes it possible to like and share embedded Facebook videos right from your site.

10. Go Live

Facebook Live doesn’t just give you a more immediate and direct connection with your audience, it also gives your non-live content an engagement boost, too. Plus, since Facebook automatically records and publishes your Live streaming video after you’re done, you get the added benefit of that without having to do any extra work.

If your brand doesn’t lend itself well to live video, you’ll just have to brainstorm, experiment, brainstorm some more, experiment and throw a few things at the wall to see what’s sticky. While spontaneity is great, you should put some planning into it and make sure you announce it so people know when you’re going live ahead of time.

11. Tag Intelligently

Steve Snodgrass/Flickr

Tag anyone who is related to your video in some way. If they worked on the video, if they’re mentioned in the video or even if they just inspired it. Let them know why you tagged them if it’s not obvious. People are more likely to share and like a video they’re tagged in. Don’t tag a bunch of people who weren’t involved in the video at all. That’s just tacky.

12. Specify a Featured and a Cover Video

You can specify a featured video for the top of your “Videos” tab, which you can find out how to do here, and some brands can now make a video their cover photo … which would make it a cover video, we guess. Since both of these types of video autoplay, they will help capture attention of visitors to your page.

13. Organize Playlists

An ideal video marketing strategy will see your brand uploading different types of videos on a regular basis. Maybe a how-to video on Mondays, an FAQ answer on Wednesdays and a short, live Q&A on Fridays, for example. In order to make your videos more organized and searchable, arrange them into playlists on your “Videos” tab.

You can organize by subject, show type, week, month, however would make the most sense. An organized “Videos” tab looks better and helps visitors discover more of your content easily.

14. Promote Videos with Ads

You can boost video posts or create specific video ads that point people back to the videos you’re promoting. You’ll of course want to target these ads so they’re being seen by the right people. Facebook allows you to get extremely specific with your targeting.

15. Don’t Forget the Call-to-Action

Whether it’s in the form of copy in your description or a mid-roll CTA, which Wistia found to work best for converting, always include a strong CTA that tells viewers exactly what you’d like them to do next. Even if it’s sharing the video they’re watching, that’s an unambiguous action you’re asking them to take, so it counts. And, in fact, 48% of watch time for Facebook videos is the direct result of shares, so it’s a good CTA to include. Whatever your CTA is, don’t leave people guessing what the next step is. Let them know and encourage them to take that step.

Follow along with these 15 steps to getting longer view times on your Facebook videos and you’ll increase your video view time on internet’s main social media platform. If you are looking for a killer Facebook ad ideas, just click here to download The Ultimate List of Facebook Video Ad Ideas and learn the same video ad secrets that businesses just like yours have used to generate 158+ MILLION views on autopilot with zero advertising costs.

5 Easy Ways to Boost Your Social Media Strategy in 2018

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Is your social media strategy just kind of … ok? Like, is it perfectly adequate? Just kinda chugging along and existing?

You oughta do something about that. Namely, inject it with some adrenaline ‘cause your social media strategy should be much more than adequate.

Now, before you go and grab a bunch of Tide Pods and call everyone into your office for a group Tide Pod challenge, try these things first …

Write Down Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Just like with studying, writing down marketing plans makes a big difference. According to CoSchedule, marketing professionals who take the time to document their marketing strategy are over five times more likely to achieve success.  In addition to that, 88% of people who set concrete marketing goals achieve them.

You can split your strategy into high-level and low-level portions.

kellywritershouse/Flickr

High-Level

This section should include overarching goals for your strategy. It should:

  • Describe how social media fits within your overall digital marketing plan.
  • Include guiding principles for brand voice.
  • State what values you want your brand to express.

Low-Level

The low-level strategy is more about the nuts and bolts about how things are going to be done. It should:

  • State how often you want to post per week or per month.
  • Outline what platforms you plan to post to.
  • Plan a budget for the next quarter.
  • Determine the sources of the content you want to share.

Putting it in writing helps you stay organized and consistent and makes it easier to share your strategy with others like employees or contractors. You can simply show them.

The biggest benefit is that it prevents your social media strategy from being aimless, which is the worst thing for a social media strategy.

Coordinate Social Posts with Specific Campaigns

A lot of social media posting is of the “just because” variety, as in: you post just because you feel like you should be posting something.

Of course, you should be posting just because it’s something that businesses basically have to do nowadays, but in 2018, try tying some of your posts to special events, promotions or specific sales campaigns.

For these special events, create customized graphics and post ideas that are different from your usual posts. Think visually so you can capture attention and use some strong call-to-action posts to try and collect early sign ups to your event.

These specialized, limited time social media campaigns help you evolve quickly with your platforms by getting you to set concrete goals at the beginning of the campaign and monitoring how close you came to those goals at the end. This allows you to make more informed decisions for the next special event campaign. Think of each specialized campaign as a little learning experience and a chance to experiment.

Develop Content Marketing Assets and Landing Pages Just for Social

Edith Soto/Flickr

A lot of business social media is just shooting links at people, but you are doing it wrong if you are just being a link cannon. Make 2018 the year you stop scheduling a bunch of links to be fired at your followers. Instead, make it the year that you start creating content pieces of real value for your audience.

Not just blog posts, but content pieces that get actual traction like infographics, which get around 41.5% engagement, on average. Only video gets better ROI than infographics.

Along with these content pieces, have multiple landing pages so you can send specific audience segments to different landing pages rather than sending them all to a generic “Contact Us” page.

One lead capture landing page might be focused on 18-year-old college students while another one is geared toward 30-something professionals and another one toward new parents. Each of these segments could have their own call to action that would cater specifically to them, increasing your chances for getting them as a lead.

Developing specific content marketing assets and tying them to targeted landing pages helps connect your social media posts to revenue generating customer actions.  

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Invest in Professional Video

Oh, look! This post has something about video. Who woulda seen that coming?

[First we start with some statistics.]

Businesses that use video marketing:

  • Generate 66% more qualified customer leads than businesses that don’t use it.
  • Earn 54% more brand awareness than businesses that don’t use it.
  • Experience significant benefits and positive ROI, according to 77% of small business owners who use it.
[Then we layer on some logic.]

If you haven’t done it yet, dip your toes into video by turning a photo slideshow into a short video or make a few live videos that showcase your expertise in an area. (Answering customer FAQs is a great way to do that.)

[Now we slyly tell you how what we do fits into this.]

If you really want to upgrade your social media presence in 2018, though, you need to invest in some professionally done video assets that you can share on social media because not only will these get attention, their professionality will reflect the quality of your services. Only a high quality business would bother investing the money in a high quality video, right?

They provide you something to link to within other campaigns and you can embed them on your site, in your blog or in an email. They make a much better sales pitch than a bunch of text and you can reuse them for multiple purposes. For an especially attention grabbing video, we suggest a high-quality animated video.

[See how smooth that was?]

Promote Posts to Targeted Audience Segments via Paid Social Advertising

With Facebook recently announcing that business posts are going to have less organic reach on the platform, paid advertising is going to be important in 2018 on Facebook and other platforms.

Target accordingly.

Put all this stuff together (but especially the animated video part) and you’ll have yourself a completely revamped social media strategy for 2018 that will rocket your brand to the top of people’s minds when thinking about your industry. Click here to use our price estimation calculator to see approximately how much a professionally done animated business video will cost.

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