Quality content increasingly involves multimedia, which is not surprising: people love to experience things through a variety of senses. Video is the most interactive and engaging type of content to date, appealing to hearing, vision and giving us a sense of motion.
As an entrepreneur, you probably have limited resources in time, people and budget you can spend on yet another social media site. But, hear me out – don’t bother with another social channel until you leverage the power of video content on the platforms you’re on already.
Facebook, Twitter lead the pack.
Not so long ago, the social media giants made adjustments to their algorithms to push video content into more feeds. Plus, videos enjoy greater prominence on these sites through increased resolutions, player sizes and so forth. Facebook is encouraging businesses to have a featured video on their pages.
Take advantage of it by uploading your videos natively to every platform you’re active on. The organic reach for video posts is usually a little higher than simple text and image updates. Also, over time, you can build an extensive multimedia library on all platforms, improving and enhancing brand experience away from your website.
Go live on Facebook, Periscope, Meerkat.
Don’t want to spend time creating content? Just go live for a few minutes! Share latest company updates, create sneak peeks of new products or host a short Q + A session! Video marketing doesn’t get more exciting than showing your human side because you remember, of course, that people want to do business with people, not logos.
It might be intimidating the first couple of times, but you’ll quickly get a hang of it. You can also designate one camera-loving person who will appear in live videos and act as a spokesperson on these platforms.
New-ish sites like Vine, Instagram and Snapchat.
The relatively latest additions to the marketer’s toolbox are making a push for videos as well. Instagram recently increased its video length limit. Vine, while not dropping its six-second limit, acknowledged that users find a way around the said limit.
In fact, your videos don’t have to be long to be engaging and informative. People these days don’t like to spend too much time on a piece of content anyway. Case in point, Wistia analyzed video lengthand compared it to audience engagement and percentage watched. Unsurprisingly, the definitive result stated “the shorter – the better,” with videos under a minute performing the best. While the study was performed in 2012, I’d guess that people in 2016 have even less time and shorter attention spans.
The video giant YouTube.
Finally, no one denies the power of YouTube. It is still the second-largest search engine in the world after Google. If you want to demo your products or create a short how-to piece of content, video should be your format of choice. It’s faster, easier to understand, and more effective in getting the job done. Plus, hosting video on YouTube has a positive effect on SEO of your site.
The choice is clear: video content is the king. You can upload your video files to multiple networks, creating a more immersive and engaging brand experience. People are visual creatures, so stop boring them with your text-heavy updates and start having fun with multimedia.
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by LESYA LIU
