Social Media Video Production: The 2021 guide

Social Media Week reports viewers retain 95% of video messages they watch. Fifteen percent of all content on Facebook in 2020 was video according to Social Insider. Seventy-plus percent of YouTube viewers said that the platform makes them aware of new brands. 

That’s just the beginning of the astounding statistics regarding video marketing on social media. 

In this blog, we’ll look at what video social media marketing is, why you should do it, and a brief introduction on how to do it well.

The present of social media is in video.

The team at CNIP New Media are experts on digital marketing and advertising. Over the years, they’ve worked with SMEs all over the globe, TrendsTop 500 companies, and startups to create outstanding digital assets, build brand awareness, and deliver verifiable increases in sales.

Let’s jump right in!

What is Social Media Video Marketing?

As its name states, social media video marketing is using video as part of a social media marketing. You can use video in almost any situation on social media. Video can be inserted into posts, advertising, responses to customer reviews, and much more. 

Video allows users to listen to, understand, and respond to a lot of information in a short time. Whether the information is a direct sales appeal, just informative, or a how-to video, viewers can learn a lot quickly.

Why choose Social Media Video Marketing?

The statistics above should be enough information to show you that social media video marketing is vital in 2021, but here are a few more reasons:

• Facebook expects to be 100% video soon. 
• TikTok has grown exponentially in the last five years and it’s 100% video.
• One billion hours of YouTube videos are watched every day.

All of this video content is being created for one reason: people are watching it. Video is the medium of the modern internet. 

The advent of 5G high-speed mobile phones will make watching video from anywhere even easier and faster. 

Social media video marketing is a vital part of marketing now and will probably be the majority of marketing in the near future.

How to do social media video marketing

In this section, we want to touch on some hints and ideas. A comprehensive guide to doing video marketing might fill a book, but there are some fundamental points that everyone should consider.

• Set goals for your video campaign. You need to know where you’re going before you try to get there. Be sure that your goals are attainable. Of course, you’ll need to make sure that you have metrics in place to know how you’re progressing and when you’ve been successful.
• As with all marketing efforts, you need to clearly define your audience. In this case, after figuring out who your audience is, we need to consider where they might watch videos. For example, TikTok has a younger crowd, whereas Facebook and YouTube reach all ages. LinkedIn is the perfect platform for reaching business people.
• Define what type of videos you’re going to do. For the most part, straight commercials aren’t great. That might work for brands that the viewers know, but it’s not really going to work for a new, unknown brand. You can do how-to, explainers, live, interviews, and more. Knowing your audience will make it easier to decide what types of videos to do and how long the videos should be.
• Keep the video production value high. Even if you’re just doing videos of you sitting in front of your computer, use proper lighting, sound devices, etc. Today’s viewers are sophisticated. They want to see videos that have decent production value. If you're producing longer videos or more elaborate videos, it will be helpful to hire a professional video production company. Your videos are forever. You don’t want to have them looking like something you didn’t work hard at.

Different platforms, different video lengths

Each social media platform has its own recommended length. 

• Instagram: 30 seconds
• Twitter: 45 seconds
• TikTok: 1 minute (if created in the app; longer if uploaded)
• Facebook: 1 minute
• YouTube: 2 minutes

You can break the rules, but those are the lengths the experts have decided are the most watched and engaged with. 

Before you create videos for social media, watch a lot of them. Make notes on what’s engaging and what doesn’t work. 

Notice most of the videos have closed captions, text on the video, and other features that make it easier for the viewer to enjoy the videos.

Ads or posts?

The answer is really about who your audience is and which type of video they’ll respond to best. 

Ads are excellent for including a call-to-action button. Inserted randomly in a person’s feed, ads often look like native videos. If you create video ads, don’t make them annoying or full of a lot of over-promising. Most consumers are savvy to these techniques and will scroll past.

Posts allow you to create curated content for your brand. Those videos will always be found on your profile. This allows you to build a library of interesting and useful content. If a person lands on one of these videos, they're more likely to click on others by you. 

If you’re going to create video posts, it's wise to consider “evergreen” content. This is content that is useful for a long time after it’s posted. For example, how to powerwash (reset) your Chromebook would be evergreen content. It might not be valid forever, but it will be useful for months or years.

Video is Marketing

Video is marketing today and will be marketing into the future. Watch any science fiction movie that’s set in the future and there’s video playing everywhere.

If you’re looking for a powerful marketing tool to land more customers and make more sales, you need quality video production and a great marketing plan.