When creating video for social media, the format and overall design needs to be a bit different than for other mediums. That’s logical, but as you work to create the next video for your company, how do you know what steps to take?
Recognize Solution Media Is Different
Perhaps the most important step is to recognize that social media is a different type of marketing than other forms. Your goal should be to promote your brand, your services, or your products – but not in the traditional sales method. Rather, you need to get social and creative.
What Do You Want Your Viewers to Do?
Before you begin the process, define what you want your customers to do at the end of the video. Are you using the video to drive people to visit your website or do you want to build your brand? Are you hoping to engage with more people? For visitors, aim to use teasers on social media with a link to the video on your site. Using a brand awareness campaign designed for Instagram can work well. Or, if you are looking to increase engagement get people talking, post the entire video on social media, especially Facebook, and interact.
Editing Your Video
There are a few key things to remember about editing your video for social media:
- First, edit your video the way people will see it first – with the sound off.
- Choose a thumbnail image that is interesting and attractive enough to get attention.
- Most often, you have existing tools available to help you with video editing in the social media platform. Use them.
- Focus on the length based on the social media site. For example, 10 to 30 seconds on Facebook is all that’s recommended. For Instagram stories, aim for 15 seconds, Twitter for 45 seconds, and LinkedIn for as long as 5 minutes.
- Be sure the video is designed in terms of size specifically for the format you plan to use it in.
- Remember, people are using social media on their smartphones, which means square videos tend to do better than others.
- There are other simple things you can do to speed up the process, such as uploading the video right to the platform instead of a third party website.
When it comes to handling video for social media, it tends to be more effective and efficient to hire a video production company to help you.
