video marketing Archives

3 Tips to Boost Your Social Media Presence using Video

July 12, 2018/by Corey Padveen

The average American checks their phone 46 times per day. Whether your audience is using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or another social media platform, video stands out on their feed.

Using video to increase visibility and engagement, however, is often overlooked by account managers as part of their social media marketing plan despite being an effective strategy. The following suggestions will help you create videos that make an impact on your audience and establish your social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Add Subtitles

Adding subtitles to your videos can effectively increase the view-through rate (VTR) of your videos. It defeats the potentially disruptive aspect of audio and allows viewers to enjoy videos throughout their day in public or in private. In addition to increasing the ability to view videos in places where they may normally be disruptive, subtitles can help grasp the attention of your audience. All three mentioned social media channels have auto-play video features. However, the volume of videos remains muted until a viewer decides to activate sound. Adding subtitles can help your audience quickly understand what your video is about, and whether or not they want to watch it.

Grasp Attention Quickly

With an endless amount of content being delivered to social media users, your video has to stand out from the crowd of posts if you want it to be noticed. As users are scrolling through their feed, they don’t stop to look at everything. The first 3 seconds of your video must be able to grasp the attention of your audience. Use high-quality visuals, humor, shock, interesting subtitles, a gripping story, etc. to capture a viewer’s attention. Tip: Try to keep your video less than 60 seconds long. With the average human attention span lasting only 8 seconds, keeping your audience focused for longer than a minute may prove more difficult than you’d think. Hubspot recommends a maximum of 30 seconds for an Instagram video, 45 seconds for Twitter, and 60 for Facebook.

Tell a Story

If you own or work for a small business, your brand story is what sets you apart from the big brands which often don’t have genuine, relatable, human qualities. Big corporations are veering towards high-quality production. However, it comes with a loss of authenticity and charm. Use video to tell the captivating story of your company with your audience. An effective medium for telling your brand’s story is the use of Instagram and Facebook Stories. Instagram Stories see over 400 million daily users while Facebook stories have grown to over 150 million daily users. Effective storytelling can portray authenticity and establish trust with your audience. As a small business owner or account manager, you are most likely surrounded by the day to day activities of your company. Take advantage of the situation and film different aspects of your company, or have employees record their daily highlights. Ex: If you own a hot sauce company: film yourself making hot sauce, going to visit suppliers, engaging with the community, making sales, designing packaging, etc. Remember, anything can be interesting if you frame it the right way. The camera quality doesn’t have to be professional grade – many of today’s smartphone cameras are able to achieve amazing video results. Post your stories consistently to achieve optimal audience growth.

These guidelines for creating captivating videos can easily increase and boost your social media presence and keep your audience interested. As they become increasingly popular in 2018, now is the time to take action and dive head first into the world of social media videos.

5 YouTube Best Practices for Improved Results

May 10, 2016/by Corey Padveen

Improve the results you drive from your videos by adopting these YouTube best practices right away!

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, right after its parent, Google (obviously). Nearly a fifth of all online traffic finds itself on the video search engine, which means that for as valuable as video content is, it can be hard for your audience to find it.

The YouTube best practices outlined here can help you drive better results in a shorter timeframe from your video content on YouTube.

Standardize Your Content

When you’re driving down the street and you see those big, golden arches peaking through a sea of billboards and highrises, you know that you aren’t too far from a McDonald’s. Your videos should be equally recognizable.

Now, this is not to say that you need to have an instantaneously recognizable brand, but your video content should be properly branded and that branding should be consistent. Whether it’s something like an intro, music, or a style of video, people should be able to identify that they are watching one of your videos from the get go.

Create Playlists

Playlists are great tools for organizing your YouTube channel, and they are just another way to categorize and tag your videos, which is hugely beneficial for search.

Again, with so much content being shared on the video engine every second, the more you can do to walk people through what they are seeing and what value the content will bring to them, the better chance you’ll have of getting your videos seen and retaining your audience for a longer watch time.

Commit to Consistency

If you’re going to share a video today, then another one tomorrow, then a third in two months, another a week after that and so on without a clearly consistent production and publishing schedule, it will be hard to build a loyal following, and your YouTube channel will never really get to where you want it to go.

You don’t necessarily need to be creating dozens of videos every month, but you should be at least somewhat consistent in the frequency with which you’re publishing videos. That is especially true if you’re creating videos as part of a series, where your subscribers and series followers are expecting new content every so often.

Properly Tag Your Videos

With options to improve search potential so easily accessible, it’s surprising that there are still marketers who do not take advantage of these elements.

When you have completed a video and are ready to upload it, add in specific tags (it helps if there are some auto-populated based on existing categories) and take advantage of the descriptions, geo-tagging, subtitles (when applicable, or auto-populated), video elements, etc. Every option should be used when it applies, as each of these are categorization and classification elements (just like the playlists discussed above) and can help improve your videos discoverability.

Keep Your Videos Short and Focused

Ideally, your videos are going to be under two minutes in length. The reason is simple: data shows that the average online attention span is roughly 8.25 seconds. So, even your most engaged audience might not be willing to give you more than a couple of minutes of their time. You’ll need to create content that is almost immediately captivating and brief enough that people will stick around until the very end.

The easiest way to go about this is to keep your videos relatively straightforward. You’re not hosting an hour long talk show; this is a small bit of easily digested content that engages your audience and provides value. There is no easier way to do this than to ask a question and use your minute or two to answer it. Pay attention to your analytics, as those will give you an idea of your audience retention, and in turn provide insight into how long your videos should be.

Conclusion

Of course, every marketer and brand will have different uses for a network like YouTube. But, in order to find success with the network, you’ll need to know about some of the best practices, and these five are a good start.

How to Optimize Facebook for SEO [VIDEO]

November 2, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Do you know how to optimize Facebook for SEO? It’s easier than you think!

Instagram Video or Vine? Which Social Video Tool is Better for Business?

June 26, 2013/by Corey Padveen

To Instagram or to Vine? That is the question. Which social video tool is better for business?

The newest video feature on Instagram is one of the hottest topics in the world of social media, and rightfully so. This newly integrated social video tool means that Facebook (which owns Instagram) has taken yet another step further in controlling the social world.

A few months ago, Twitter introduced their social video tool, Vine. This was a big deal then and now everyone wants to know: which of these two platforms has more advantages for business?

Though they both possess some strong characteristics, when it comes to business, Instagram video has the edge. Below is a comparative justification for the advantages of Instagram for business.

Quality

One word: Cinema. This is the feature on Instagram’s video service that allows users to stabilize videos. This may not seem like much, but for businesses, it means the ability to create videos that appear somewhat more professional. Users can also edit videos on Instagram instead of scrapping them entirely and having to start over (which is a downside to Vine).

Second, as with it’s pictures, Instagram Video allows users to apply over a dozen filters to videos whereas Vine is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get platform (for now).

Length

You can do a lot of creative stuff on Vine in only six seconds, but imagine what you could do with twice that much (and a little bit more).

Videos made with Instagram can be up to 15 seconds long, lending businesses the opportunity to convey their message with a little more clarity. It also allows for a call-to-action to appear for an extra second or two. And in the online world, a second or two is a lifetime.

Embedding

Vine certainly has the edge here, and it is a big one.

Videos on Vine can be easily embedded while Instagram still has yet to include this feature. That’s a big plus for Vine, because it allows businesses to share their videos on different platforms, including their WordPress blog with the plugin, Embedly.

This is not unexpected. Facebook has been notoriously streamlining all of their efforts in order to, as we mentioned earlier, take over the Internet. Although it should not be long before we see some version of embedding capable with Instagram videos.

The same cannot be said for sharing, however.

Sharing

Videos on Instagram can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Flickr and via email. With Vine, your videos can only go as far as Facebook and Twitter.

Audience

Finally, the biggest difference of them all: the audience.

Vine currently has about 13 million users. Instagram’s user-base is ten times that! With such a vast audience on Instagram, you have to wonder if Vine is still a relevant and viable option for businesses on social media.

Vine is an intriguing tool, and can be a lot of fun. (Just look at comedian Will Sasso’s Lemon Compilation on Vine.) But when it comes to the benefits of a social video tool for business, Instagram certainly has the edge.

Have you used Instagram Video or Vine for business? Which one do you think is more beneficial? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Video Blogging

May 31, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How is there a benefit to Social Equity from video blogging?

When it comes to video marketing, it is no secret that there can be substantial benefits and value derived from the practice. On Facebook, photos might generate twice as much engagement as text updates, but videos are shared 12X more than links and text posts combined!

With that kind of engagement, and the already existing Social Equity derived from blogging, it is no wonder that video blogging can add considerable value to your business.

(For more great info on the value of visual content on social media, click here.)

Giving a Face to Your Brand

People do not like to interact with a business, they like to engage with a personality. Social media is designed for one thing: engaging. You build a brand personality on social media and it is with that personality that people engage.

Video blogging provides a face for your company and humanizes your brand. With a more humanized brand comes a more approachable brand, and with a more approachable brand comes growth.

Make the Pitch

While one of the most regularly repeated rules on social media is that you should not focus on selling, video blogging provides a slight loophole in this regard.

The ability to tell a story using video means the ability to showcase a problem. When you showcase a problem, you allow yourself an opportunity to showcase a solution – your solution. Thus, with video blogging, you can sell your product in a way that is much less direct, and therefore much less intrusive than with other forms of social marketing.

Say a Lot More with Less

A minute of video can say what a thousand-word blog post cannot. And that is mostly due to the fact that most people would not sit around and read a thousand words.

Frankly, people do not care about how important your information is. If it takes too much time to get through, they are not going to read it to completion. Now, with a video entry sharing the same content with some added visuals, you can expect to see your engagement increase significantly, which means that the important information you need to get across will be much more effectively delivered in a video blog than in a traditional post.

Video blogging can be a great asset to your business. It compliments your social marketing strategy nicely and provides you with an entirely new avenue of marketing. With regards to Social Equity, a great deal of value is derived in terms of the aforementioned benefits that come along with video blogging.

Do you video blog? How has it helped your business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: KLM Airlines

March 21, 2013/by Corey Padveen

This week’s social media case study focuses on one of the most socially innovative airlines around: KLM.

When it comes to social media case studies, airlines often prove to have some of the most impressive, influential and trendsetting results. Yet, despite all of the data that supports the adoption of innovative social media marketing initiatives for airlines, few seem to be as willing to go the distance as KLM.

KLM’s social media program is brilliant…and they know it. When it comes to converting social media fans into paying customers, KLM is among the most successful brands around. In fact, on the KLM Facebook page, there is a section that breaks down their social media campaigns, explains how they went about executing them and posts the results. Effectively, they are their own social media case study as to why social is important to business. But our focus is a little deeper than that when it comes to our weekly case study. We aim to pull out the lessons marketers can learn from the KLM social media program as a whole.

The Campaigns

Featured on the KLM Facebook page are seven of their most successful social media campaigns. These campaigns include everything from “KLM Surprise” whereby special gifts would be presented to passengers who checked into flights using Foursquare or Twitter, to the “KLM Tile & Inspire” campaign whereby Facebook fans were asked to convert their Facebook profile picture into a Delft Blue tile and complete that tile with an inspiring message to be used as part of a mosaic design on a KLM aircraft that would travel across the globe. Below are two videos breaking down these campaigns.

KLM Surprise

KLM Tile & Inspire

Each campaign was equally inspired and generated similar results. For the two campaigns above, KLM reaped some considerable social benefits. The breakdown of the two featured campaigns by the numbers is below:

KLM Surprise Analytics

Foursquare	17.528 followers
Youtube	154,722 views
Twitter	1.597 followers
Tweet reach	2,6 mln

KLM Tile & Inspire Analytics

Created tiles	120.000
Number of countries where tiles were created	154
Views of the 2 videos	1.3 million
Number of destinations the 777 flew to	23

While the analytics are impressive enough as it is, the fact that KLM went on to further convert many of these fans is all the more notable. But what we wish to focus on is what KLM did that was as innovative and bold as it was simple and calculated.

The Lessons

Be Bold (But the Right Way)

KLM has had far from a conventional approach to their social media program. From presenting new meal options using Facebook videos that introduce the “chefs” (the “KLM A La Carte” campaign) to the controversial “KLM Meet and Seat” campaign that gave passengers the ability to preview their seat mates based on social profiles, KLM has dared to be innovative with each of their social media campaigns. But it is important to keep something in mind: the marketing execs at KLM knew exactly what they were doing, and these risks were as calculated as any.

By understanding the lead to conversion process, the KLM executives were able to put these campaigns together using careful market research, amalgamated and improved data from their own failed exploits (discussed below), and a clear understanding of the sales process for both the customer and the brand. You don’t garner new customers from social media by doing the same thing as everyone else (hence, the “Be Bold” part of the lesson) but you certainly won’t find them if you scare them away (and that covers the “Right Way” aspect). So keep in mind that for a social media campaign to work, you need to impress your audience and have the data to support your seemingly daring decisions.

Never Be Afraid to Try Something New

Social media is still in its infancy, and social media marketing even more so. There is no shortage of innovation out there, and with the ever-changing landscape of social media, you should never be afraid to be first to market. Your first-mover advantage will be huge when people see you doing something that no one has done before. KLM understands that and they have capitalized on it at every turn.

The airline only jumped into social media in 2009, but in these short few years they have managed to try their hand at virtually every campaign available on social media. Whether it is a Facebook campaign, a Foursquare promotion, a YouTube contest or a Twitter “Live Reply” campaign wherein the airline responded to user tweets using up to 140 REAL people to spell out the message, you should never be afraid to try something that has never been done before. When it comes to social media, people want something they have not yet seen.

Try, Fail, Fix, Repeat

No one knows failed experiments better than KLM. Sure, they might have the budgetary luxury of making these mistakes, but over time they have learned exactly what they should not be doing in order to perfect their social campaigns. And on a smaller scale, you should never be afraid of the mistakes you make when it comes to social media. As we noted above, this is an incipient form of marketing; people are bound to make mistakes. But when you do, note your errors, redraft your campaign taking that into account, and start again.

For KLM, one of their big blunders came in 2011 when they offered a promotional gift to the first 50 male and first 50 female “Likers” of a post. Within minutes they had 1,500 “Likes” and no way of knowing which came when. Oops! But what is important is that KLM recognized their mistakes, fixed them and, more importantly, accepted their failures. And that brings us to our final lesson.

Humility is an Underrated Trait

People appreciate humility. It is a humanizing trait, particularly when it comes from a company as large and reputable as KLM. That is why the last important lesson to pull from KLM is that, while you might be a big brand, social media is a place for you to simply be a voice in the conversation. While an image needs to be maintained, you can be a little less corporate and little more fun when it comes to social (respecting professional boundaries, of course). As we never tire of pointing out, social media is about exactly that: being social. Not only does KLM have a post on their blog detailing some of their yearly bloopers, but they also make an important point in their step-by-step guide on running their social media program:

“Not that campaigns always need to be global and spectacular. Many of our establishments have successfully launched their local pages, and we’ve learned that the power often lies in simplicity — like showing the interior of a cockpit, or thanking someone for notifying us about broken lighting on our KLM sign. Our creative editorial board delivers a daily dose of captivating, engaging posts through our various channels.

Social campaigns have won us several awards, but it hasn’t been one success after the next. We’ve certainly had our share of bloopers. But rather than hushing them up, we decided to make them public and take them as a learning experience. And as it turned out, people liked us even more for it.”

Well said.

What lesson do you think is most important in the case study of KLM? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 YouTube Best Practices for Improved Results

May 10, 2016/by Corey Padveen

Improve the results you drive from your videos by adopting these YouTube best practices right away!

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, right after its parent, Google (obviously). Nearly a fifth of all online traffic finds itself on the video search engine, which means that for as valuable as video content is, it can be hard for your audience to find it.

The YouTube best practices outlined here can help you drive better results in a shorter timeframe from your video content on YouTube.

Standardize Your Content

When you’re driving down the street and you see those big, golden arches peaking through a sea of billboards and highrises, you know that you aren’t too far from a McDonald’s. Your videos should be equally recognizable.

Now, this is not to say that you need to have an instantaneously recognizable brand, but your video content should be properly branded and that branding should be consistent. Whether it’s something like an intro, music, or a style of video, people should be able to identify that they are watching one of your videos from the get go.

Create Playlists

Playlists are great tools for organizing your YouTube channel, and they are just another way to categorize and tag your videos, which is hugely beneficial for search.

Again, with so much content being shared on the video engine every second, the more you can do to walk people through what they are seeing and what value the content will bring to them, the better chance you’ll have of getting your videos seen and retaining your audience for a longer watch time.

Commit to Consistency

If you’re going to share a video today, then another one tomorrow, then a third in two months, another a week after that and so on without a clearly consistent production and publishing schedule, it will be hard to build a loyal following, and your YouTube channel will never really get to where you want it to go.

You don’t necessarily need to be creating dozens of videos every month, but you should be at least somewhat consistent in the frequency with which you’re publishing videos. That is especially true if you’re creating videos as part of a series, where your subscribers and series followers are expecting new content every so often.

Properly Tag Your Videos

With options to improve search potential so easily accessible, it’s surprising that there are still marketers who do not take advantage of these elements.

When you have completed a video and are ready to upload it, add in specific tags (it helps if there are some auto-populated based on existing categories) and take advantage of the descriptions, geo-tagging, subtitles (when applicable, or auto-populated), video elements, etc. Every option should be used when it applies, as each of these are categorization and classification elements (just like the playlists discussed above) and can help improve your videos discoverability.

Keep Your Videos Short and Focused

Ideally, your videos are going to be under two minutes in length. The reason is simple: data shows that the average online attention span is roughly 8.25 seconds. So, even your most engaged audience might not be willing to give you more than a couple of minutes of their time. You’ll need to create content that is almost immediately captivating and brief enough that people will stick around until the very end.

The easiest way to go about this is to keep your videos relatively straightforward. You’re not hosting an hour long talk show; this is a small bit of easily digested content that engages your audience and provides value. There is no easier way to do this than to ask a question and use your minute or two to answer it. Pay attention to your analytics, as those will give you an idea of your audience retention, and in turn provide insight into how long your videos should be.

Conclusion

Of course, every marketer and brand will have different uses for a network like YouTube. But, in order to find success with the network, you’ll need to know about some of the best practices, and these five are a good start.

Case Studies: KLM Airlines

March 21, 2013/by Corey Padveen

This week’s Case Studies focuses on one of the most socially innovative airlines around: KLM.

When it comes to social media case studies, airlines often prove to have some of the most impressive, influential and trendsetting results. Yet, despite all of the data that supports the adoption of innovative social media marketing initiatives for airlines, few seem to be as willing to go the distance as KLM.

KLM’s social media program is brilliant…and they know it. When it comes to converting social media fans into paying customers, KLM is among the most successful brands around. In fact, on the KLM Facebook page, there is a section that breaks down their social media campaigns, explains how they went about executing them and posts the results. Effectively, they are their own Case Studies as to why social is important to business. But our focus is a little deeper than that when it comes to our weekly case study. We aim to pull out the lessons marketers can learn from the KLM social media program as a whole.

The Campaigns

Featured on the KLM Facebook page are seven of their most successful social media campaigns. These campaigns include everything from “KLM Surprise” whereby special gifts would be presented to passengers who checked into flights using Foursquare or Twitter, to the “KLM Tile & Inspire” campaign whereby Facebook fans were asked to convert their Facebook profile picture into a Delft Blue tile and complete that tile with an inspiring message to be used as part of a mosaic design on a KLM aircraft that would travel across the globe. Below are two videos breaking down these campaigns.

KLM Surprise

KLM Tile & Inspire

Each campaign was equally inspired and generated similar results. For the two campaigns above, KLM reaped some considerable social benefits. The breakdown of the two featured campaigns by the numbers is below:

KLM Surprise Analytics

Foursquare	17.528 followers
Youtube	154,722 views
Twitter	1.597 followers
Tweet reach	2,6 mln

KLM Tile & Inspire Analytics

Created tiles	120.000
Number of countries where tiles were created	154
Views of the 2 videos	1.3 million
Number of destinations the 777 flew to	23

While the analytics are impressive enough as it is, the fact that KLM went on to further convert many of these fans is all the more notable. But what we wish to focus on is what KLM did that was as innovative and bold as it was simple and calculated.

The Lessons

Be Bold (But the Right Way)

KLM has had far from a conventional approach to their social media program. From presenting new meal options using Facebook videos that introduce the “chefs” (the “KLM A La Carte” campaign) to the controversial “KLM Meet and Seat” campaign that gave passengers the ability to preview their seat mates based on social profiles, KLM has dared to be innovative with each of their social media campaigns. But it is important to keep something in mind: the marketing execs at KLM knew exactly what they were doing, and these risks were as calculated as any.

By understanding the lead to conversion process, the KLM executives were able to put these campaigns together using careful market research, amalgamated and improved data from their own failed exploits (discussed below), and a clear understanding of the sales process for both the customer and the brand. You don’t garner new customers from social media by doing the same thing as everyone else (hence, the “Be Bold” part of the lesson) but you certainly won’t find them if you scare them away (and that covers the “Right Way” aspect). So keep in mind that for a social media campaign to work, you need to impress your audience and have the data to support your seemingly daring decisions.

Never Be Afraid to Try Something New

Social media is still in its infancy, and social media marketing even more so. There is no shortage of innovation out there, and with the ever-changing landscape of social media, you should never be afraid to be first to market. Your first-mover advantage will be huge when people see you doing something that no one has done before. KLM understands that and they have capitalized on it at every turn.

The airline only jumped into social media in 2009, but in these short few years they have managed to try their hand at virtually every campaign available on social media. Whether it is a Facebook campaign, a Foursquare promotion, a YouTube contest or a Twitter “Live Reply” campaign wherein the airline responded to user tweets using up to 140 REAL people to spell out the message, you should never be afraid to try something that has never been done before. When it comes to social media, people want something they have not yet seen.

Try, Fail, Fix, Repeat

No one knows failed experiments better than KLM. Sure, they might have the budgetary luxury of making these mistakes, but over time they have learned exactly what they should not be doing in order to perfect their social campaigns. And on a smaller scale, you should never be afraid of the mistakes you make when it comes to social media. As we noted above, this is an incipient form of marketing; people are bound to make mistakes. But when you do, note your errors, redraft your campaign taking that into account, and start again.

For KLM, one of their big blunders came in 2011 when they offered a promotional gift to the first 50 male and first 50 female “Likers” of a post. Within minutes they had 1,500 “Likes” and no way of knowing which came when. Oops! But what is important is that KLM recognized their mistakes, fixed them and, more importantly, accepted their failures. And that brings us to our final lesson.

Humility is an Underrated Trait

People appreciate humility. It is a humanizing trait, particularly when it comes from a company as large and reputable as KLM. That is why the last important lesson to pull from KLM is that, while you might be a big brand, social media is a place for you to simply be a voice in the conversation. While an image needs to be maintained, you can be a little less corporate and little more fun when it comes to social (respecting professional boundaries, of course). As we never tire of pointing out, social media is about exactly that: being social. Not only does KLM have a post on their blog detailing some of their yearly bloopers, but they also make an important point in their step-by-step guide on running their social media program:

“Not that campaigns always need to be global and spectacular. Many of our establishments have successfully launched their local pages, and we’ve learned that the power often lies in simplicity — like showing the interior of a cockpit, or thanking someone for notifying us about broken lighting on our KLM sign. Our creative editorial board delivers a daily dose of captivating, engaging posts through our various channels.

Social campaigns have won us several awards, but it hasn’t been one success after the next. We’ve certainly had our share of bloopers. But rather than hushing them up, we decided to make them public and take them as a learning experience. And as it turned out, people liked us even more for it.”

Well said.

What lesson do you think is most important in the case study of KLM? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!