Today’s online users gravitate towards social media for bite-sized morsels of entertainment and storytelling, and with that comes new challenges for businesses trying to maintain engagement. No matter how unique your product or service is, your audience may not feel the same way. While reaching out to a professional, cinematic-quality production house is indispensable in getting good content out there, it doesn’t hurt to brush up on the essentials of social media video creation and posting. Today, let’s go over them to ensure you don’t just meet expectations but also blow past them.
Every Platform is Different
If you’re posting on Twitter, keep your videos short and motivating with a call-to-action before it meets a finger swiping in search of something more interesting. On Linkedin, maintain a professional approach and feel free to divulge more info in your messaging. When it comes to Instagram, you’ve got to be creative, fun, and vibrant. For Facebook posts, make those first few seconds as attention-grabbing as possible while casting a wide net to bring in as many viewers as you can (just don’t let your messaging, quality or brand identity suffer).
In short, every platform is used differently, and users on them expect different varieties of media content to be presented to them. Some companies simply copy-paste their social media videos across all the platforms they maintain a presence on, which can work in a pinch. However, going the extra mile to trim, add effects or produce entirely unique videos gives something new to the audience and communicates a dynamic approach catered to them.
Quality Control
When it comes to social media video content, quality is everything – and no, that doesn’t mean overstuffing it with detail and exposition. What really counts is that you balance the messaging with the way the video is produced. The right lighting, filming resolution, and audio can make or break your viewership – if someone feels like the content is half-baked and represents you in a subpar way, they’re not going to hang around and watch until the end. This can happen even if the video is a mere 30 seconds long. Therefore, adding video content to your social media presence isn’t a drag-and-drop solution, but rather a more delicate process.
Pacing
The last thing you want to do is post a video on social media that is long, drawling and irritates the audience. Pick up the pace and establish a consistent speed that makes the content feel more fluid and alive. This can be achieved by switching camera angles in a carefully timed fashion that makes it feel like everything is moving along more briskly. Additionally, avoid long scripts and keep the talking points to a minimum. Instead, let the content contain more visual elements to carry the messaging. The trick to good social media marketing is to avoid telling the whole story yet inspire higher clickthrough rates.
Stabilization and Setting
Nobody wants to watch a social media video that feels like an advertisement, so be sure to avoid the direction of an individual talking to the camera amidst a drab background with shaky camera work. Instead, opt for an approach that is dynamic, refreshing and capable of better connecting with your target audience. Even if you represent a major corporation, there’s a good chance that going this route will produce better engagement. With the help of a professional film production house, your video content can be filmed with specialized stabilizing equipment, lighting, microphone arrays and other innovations that can really give it a pop of character for the better. While vloggers can whip out a smartphone and livestream to their heart’s content, your audience will likely expect you to put in even more effort depending on who you are and what the aim is.
Optimization is Key
Whether you need to trim a longer film down to 15 seconds or are thinking of posting a video tour of your fancy new office, stop and consider whether your content is optimized correctly. Larger video files can be detrimental to the user experience on mobile – if it buffers or chugs along, say goodbye to potential likes, shares, and even sales later down the line. This is because nobody is going to wait for your video content to catch up with them when there are other, properly-optimized posts out there to enjoy. Compression without sacrificing resolution quality is essential