9 Social Video Branding Tips That Will Make Your Content Go Viral
The world is moving quickly. We're all bombarded by content at such an unprecedented rate that we've got to keep up! We need to learn how to break through the noise.
In a world where Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are places for brands and businesses, social video marketing is gaining popularity. It's a great way to build your brand while giving your viewers something to discuss on social media. But creating good social video content is easier said than done. Many mistakes can lead to a poor social video experience for your brand and viewers.
So why is Social Video branding such an exciting new marketing channel? Because it gives your brand a chance to connect with its audience in a way that traditional media (print, TV and radio) can't.
But it's still important to remember that social video should be used as part of a larger strategy.
Table of Contents
What's the difference between social video and branded video?
Social video is often characterised by an engaging personality who tells the story. Brands are typically trying to share the latest news. The idea is to create a buzz about your brand or product.
Branded video is defined by the fact that the story is more than just the brand. It's the story of the brand told through a personal voice.
So while the personalities behind social videos often have a larger purpose, the stories of the brands themselves are more about the company's goals, values, and beliefs.
When people hear “branded video,” they typically think of television commercials. While that is indeed the main focus of most branded videos, the truth is that there are several different types of branded videos.
You can use all of the tactics discussed here for any video, whether a commercial, branded, or social video. The only real difference is that a social video has a built-in audience. That means that a successful social video should also be well-promoted.
How do you know if your brand is ready for social video?
Whether you're just starting to explore the possibilities or already considering a social media video strategy for your brand, there are several vital points to keep in mind to ensure that your content reaches your target audience.
Social video marketing requires a specific level of brand readiness. As a marketer, it's your job to create awareness, build trust, and position the brand in front of the decision-maker before you step up to the plate with social video.
Here's a simple tip: If you have any experience producing and distributing video content, you already know the answer to this question. If you don't, you can take some simple steps to help you decide if your brand is ready for social video.
The first thing you should do is answer this question: Do you have a specific audience in mind? Or are you simply interested in expanding your reach?
Why are people watching YouTube videos in the first place?
The answer to this question is one of the most interesting I've ever seen. People are watching YouTube videos because they're entertaining. That's it. What could be easier than that? The reality is far more complicated.
What kind of videos are people watching? People watch the news, sports, entertainment, music videos, educational videos, and even instructional videos. The point is that there are many reasons why people watch videos on YouTube. You need to figure out how to get your brand message in front of these viewers.
YouTube videos are popular because they offer a quick, easy way for people to get their news. People like the ability to skim through many videos quickly and decide if they want to watch each video or not.
9 Social Video Branding Tips
1 – Know Your Audience
It's easy to get carried away with the social media craze and forget about the basics. Social media is only successful when it's done right. A brand must be consistent and know who its audience is.
If you have no clue who your audience is or what they're looking for, you'll never achieve success in social media. Make sure you have a clear understanding of your brand, your audience, and what makes your brand unique. Then start making videos that appeal to them.
Who is your Target Audience?
Many people are sceptical about using social media as a business tool. However, many marketers starting with social media, rely solely on Facebook and Twitter. Many of these companies are not looking at their social presence outside of these two platforms.
By simply utilising YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest, you can take your social media marketing to a new level. By creating a strong brand on social media sites such as YouTube, you can establish yourself as a credible voice within your niche market.
2 – Know Your Story
We live in a world where consumers are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. But they're also savvy enough to recognise ads and brands.
According to the Harvard Business Review, “80% of us trust recommendations from friends or family, and 75% say that word-of-mouth advertising is the most influential form of marketing.” To attract customers, you need to ensure that your brand and marketing message is consistent, authentic, and memorable.
The most successful social video marketers know that they are sharing a story. Whether it's a story about your business or brand, your products or services, a funny video of a dog, or even just a personal story, knowing and understanding your story makes for a much more compelling, engaging, and memorable video marketing campaign.
What is the Objective?
In a world where people often watch social videos on their mobile devices and the number of video views grows exponentially, it is no longer enough only to produce and upload quality content.
Today brands need to consider that social video branding can be as effective as traditional branding. Brands must make the same considerations as any other branding campaign. Namely, they need to develop a strategy, identify the objective of their brand, and then execute it.
Social video branding is not just about video. Branding videos convey key messages, but they are also an excellent tool for building brand awareness. Creating a branded video requires much creative thinking, including brand guidelines and a plan for what you want to achieve through the content.
3 – Provide Value
When people think about brands in the social space, they tend to think about brands as having personalities. This is undoubtedly a key component of branding, but social video allows companies to present a human side to their brand.
Brands like Red Bull, Nike, and Puma understand that they have to give their audience a reason to care and share their videos. While this isn't an easy task, there are ways to help brands connect and interact with their audiences.
Many brands don't realise that you can add value to your brand in video marketing. They view the medium only as a means to deliver a message or sell a product. However, the more value you can provide in your video, the better off you'll be.
The best example of this is an organisation like Nike. The company has created many highly regarded online videos, such as the one below from the “Find Your Greatness” campaign. These videos give the viewer a real sense of what it's like to be part of the Nike culture.
What is the Value Proposition?
Your value proposition is the selling point or benefits you provide to your audience. A typical value proposition is the main reason your audience should buy from you or do whatever it is you are trying to persuade them to do.
Making your value proposition compelling communicates what benefits your audience will derive from using your products and services.
The value proposition for social video branding is clear. It creates videos that help promote your brand and ultimately build its identity. People who watch these videos will know about your company, products and services, and what you stand for. They find out about your brand through your social video branding.
4 – Include humour
Many people who create social videos are trying to sell their brand. They assume that humour is a way to connect with their audience. But humour isn't just for marketing. It's an essential part of everyday life. We laugh at ourselves. We laugh at the people around us. We laugh to cheer ourselves up.
Humour often addresses topics that many don't feel comfortable discussing. So, if you're trying to get the point across about your business or brand, consider using humour to reach an audience.
It's easy to forget that the first rule of any successful social media marketing campaign should always be to stay consistent. In terms of humour, consistency is critical.
For example, stick to the same tone if you're creating videos for your brand. Be careful not to overuse comedy. Remember, you're trying to entertain your audience, not mock them.
You also need to be conscious of the context. If you're shooting a viral video with a friend, don't use the same jokes every time. If you're filming a serious conversation, keep the laughter to a minimum.
Be Uniquely Authentic
Do you want to make the kind of videos your customers want to share? Here are some quick tips to help you create compelling content for your brand. Think about how you want to be perceived by your audience.
- What are the things that make your company stand out? Is there something unique or special about you?
- Are you a member of a group that people may not understand?
- Do you have a personality that doesn't fit the usual mould?
Maybe you have a particular skill or ability. Whatever it is, find ways to connect with your audience by being authentically yourself.
In social media, authenticity is vital. If you aren't authentic, people will recognise your brand as a fake and not trust you. It would help if you were unique and authentic and not copycat others.
So, the second thing you need to know is that, as a marketer, you don't need to be authentic to everyone. You want to be authentic to your audience.
5 – Keep it Short and Sweet
Think about the last time you shared a video on social media. Was it a long video with lots of content and subtext? Did it include much text? Or was it short and sweet?
A social media video can add much value to your social media marketing strategy. With over 200 million people sharing videos online every month, they can help you reach a much larger audience than text or image content alone could.
But there's a good chance that many of those videos don't go beyond the minute mark, and only 6% of the population will even watch the entire length of a 30-second video.
6 – Be Consistent
Today, every brand wants to create videos that stand out. To help them achieve that goal, brands need to be consistent. This is true even if they have no intention of creating any promotional videos themselves.
When customers see a brand's logo, they often look for visual cues to better understand the brand. They'll assume the two go together when they see a brand's logo and a product shot. So if you're using many product shots, you should be using the same ones in all your marketing materials.
Don't start every video with a new character. Starting with an introduction, make sure your intro lasts less than 30 seconds. Also, if there are multiple characters, make sure the first one introduces the entire cast. After that, you can introduce new characters and share brief biographies.
Understand the Social Media Landscape
People are watching more videos than ever, and those watching are consuming videos dramatically different from how television used to be consumed.
People are consuming video on their phones, computers, tablets, televisions, set-top boxes, and smart TVs — just about everywhere. This means brands need to be sure that they're available to consumers wherever and whenever they consume content.
There are three primary ways people watch videos today: mobile (smartphone and tablet), desktops, and television sets.
YouTube is the most popular platform, followed by Facebook and Twitter. The total number of videos watched on YouTube alone surpassed the number of hours spent watching TV in 2012. The rise of mobile and tablet usage has also made video a vital part of the digital landscape.
According to a recent study, the average internet user watches 3 hours of online video per day. So businesses must understand the social media landscape for video branding.
For example, videos posted on Facebook receive three times as many views as those posted on Twitter. On YouTube, a video with more views received ten times as many likes. And on Instagram, the video with the most likes received nearly 20 times as many views.
7 – Make It Visual
Whether you're making a corporate social media video, a personal one, or an educational video, it needs to be visually appealing, says Brian Hennigan, CEO of Lyris.
That means the video should feature a compelling visual. For example, if you're making a corporate video, it would make sense to include the company logo or mission statement. But if you're creating a video for a nonprofit, there's no need to show a logo; instead, focus on conveying the organisation's message.
Your social media brand needs a strong visual identity. You're not paying attention to what you see in your social media feed. However, your audience consumes everything on social media like you consume your social media feed.
People are spending their time looking at your social media accounts. They're paying attention to your brand. They're taking in everything. So, your branding needs to look good. It needs to be appealing. It needs to be interesting.
8 – Build a Community
As a business, you're always looking for ways to connect to and interact with customers, but there are specific ways to do that better than others.
A social video is a powerful tool in brand building. It offers businesses a chance to connect with people personally, build relationships with followers, and ultimately help businesses become more profitable.
Brands that incorporate social video into their marketing strategy enjoy the high engagement, higher conversions, and increased overall ROI.
When creating a brand video, it's crucial to have a community in mind—as with any online branding tool, creating brand videos should be done with the end goal in mind and not just to create a piece of content.
Think about how the community will feel when you're finished and how it will react. This community may comprise existing customers, potential customers, influencers, bloggers, journalists, or local businesses. In other words, what is your target audience, and how do they interact with brands online?
Make it Easy for Customers to Contribute
The best social video marketing tools make adding a social aspect to a video marketing campaign easy. If your customer wants to share your video on Facebook or upload it to YouTube, they don't have to go to a separate site to do it.
The most accessible tool to incorporate this into your video marketing allows customers to embed videos from your site onto Facebook. This feature is available on almost all web hosting services, so make sure you use one.
On social media, you should avoid talking down to your audience. They're intelligent and eager to contribute. If you want their contributions to be helpful, you need to give them something meaningful to say and act accordingly. Be respectful of your audience's intelligence, but don't be afraid to ask for it.
9 – Promote On Multiple Channels
If you want to create a brand video that generates positive word of mouth, knowing what your audience wants is essential.
What they want might be obvious, but what is not so clear is that if you are using multiple channels to promote the video, some of them might be better suited than others. So, what is the best place to promote a brand video?
With an estimated 50% of the world's population owning a mobile phone, it's no surprise that social video is exploding. Social video is becoming more than a way to share funny cat videos.
Now, brands use social videos to promote and communicate with customers. There are many reasons why social video is an increasingly popular marketing tool. Here are just a few:
- Social Video Creates More Shareable Content: When a customer shares an inspiring video, it creates a lasting impression in people's minds beyond any other form of marketing.
- Social Video Increases Conversions: Videos are proven to increase conversions. And that includes email signups, website registrations, and even purchases.
- Social Video Builds Credibility: For brands, social video provides an excellent opportunity to build trust and credibility with customers. Consumers see social video as a trustworthy source of content and are much more likely to take a recommendation from a company that's already built a reputation in that area.
- Social Video Improves SEO and CTR: Social video doesn't have to be solely a social network channel to succeed. Today, more people share videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other websites. When a video becomes popular, search engines like Google start showing it to users in search results. If it shows up in search results, the chances of someone clicking on it
Build a Following
One of the best ways to build a following is to share videos on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. When you create a social video, there are two main goals to drive traffic to your website: firstly, you want to get as many views as possible and secondly, you want to drive those views to specific landing pages.
The best way to establish your authority in the eyes of consumers is to develop a strong presence online through your content.
One of the best ways to do that is with social media. The social sharing aspect of social video branding gives consumers a reason to view the content and follow you. By encouraging them to share your videos online, you invite consumers to view your brand and trust it.
Conclusion
If you have a YouTube channel, it's essential to keep your brand consistent across all channels. A video created for YouTube might not necessarily fit the needs of Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.Â
So, you may find that some of your videos work better on specific social platforms than others. This can lead to your audience losing interest or feeling confused. So, as you continue to upload content, keep in mind which platforms are your audience's favourites.
And, don't forget to share your content to other social networks, like Twitter and LinkedIn, where you can reach a wider audience.
Knowing which tactics work is essential if you're using social media branding and marketing to promote your online products and services. These were some tried-and-tested tips from the experts.
