Nearly every business owner knows the importance of social media marketing – and video is the most effective form of online advertising content, generally achieving better audience retention and engagement when compared with other formats like still images. This ultimately leads to a higher click-through rate and more sales. However, that’s only when you use video on social media in the correct way. Here is your six-step action plan for successful social media video marketing.
Step 1) Create 4 short videos each month
Assuming you post one video each week, making four short and engaging videos all in one ‘batch’ saves a lot of time – being part of your monthly to-do, rather than weekly. To ensure suitability across multiple social media platforms, your marketing videos should be no longer than 59 seconds. This also helps with viewer retention, as you won’t be requesting too much of their time. Each video should be highly engaging, with a ‘hook’ at the beginning to keep viewers interested.
Step 2) Export each video in both Square and Portrait aspect ratios
Aspect ratio basically refers to the ‘crop’ or ‘shape’ of the video, such as landscape (widescreen), square, or portrait. Typically, these would be referred to as 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16 respectively. As most social media videos are watched on phones, your videos should be uploaded using the most suitable aspect ratio, to ensure that they take up a lot of ‘real estate’ on a phone screen. This means you should opt for square (1:1) and portrait (9:16), as these are the most favourable across various social media platforms. Make sure you export each of your four videos in both square and portrait, effectively creating eight videos.
Step 3) Post square videos on Facebook and LinkedIn
Facebook and LinkedIn can be awkward places to post portrait videos, as you usually find that a portion of your video (e.g. the bottom quarter) is covered up by the platform’s interface and buttons. Particularly if you then boost the video, Facebook will crop a portrait video to make it less tall, potentially hiding an important part of the video content. It is best, therefore, to post the square aspect ratio versions of your four videos to Facebook and LinkedIn.
Step 4) Post portrait videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
These platforms are designed for 9:16 portrait videos, allowing you to dominate a phone screen’s real estate and achieve maximum attention from your audience.
Step 5) Boost the videos to reach a big targeted audience
Some business owners believe they will have success with social media video marketing without actually ‘boosting’ their posts (paying Facebook, for example, to show the videos to more people). However, it’s just not realistic to expect a return on investment if you don’t make an investment. You should ideally spend at least £50 per video to reach a big and targeted audience. Videos without any ‘boost’ budget don’t even reach all of your page followers, while a boosted video can be seen by many, many more people and specifically target your demographic and geographical region.
Step 6) Make it really easy for yourself
If you want to make life easy, get the very best high-quality content, and be left only to post and boost the videos, you should look to hire a video production company that specialises in this kind of videography. While some such companies might charge thousands per month, Glowfrog Video Production are currently offering a social media discount bundle deal, in which you get four videos each month – in both square and portrait aspect ratios – for just £99 each! Just click here for more information or head to www.glowfrogvideo.com/bundle.
