By: Cori Widen, Product Marketing Lead at Boosted by Lightricks

If you’re a small business trying to market your products and services on social media, it’s time to add video to your strategy. Video is the ultimate marketing superhero with endless powers: Video can engage distracted customers, encourage followers to act, evoke powerful emotions, help build trust, build brand awareness, and more.

And you don’t need a professional production crew, actors, special skills, or a huge budget to leverage video quickly and easily either. You can grow your business and reach more people by creating inexpensive, high-impact videos. It can be done!

Why to Use Video on Social Media

Video is speaking louder than words every single day. Fifteen years after YouTube hit the internet, it’s estimated that the average person will consume more than 100 minutes of online video per day by 2021—that’s the equivalent of watching 25 videos per day!

With so much time spent watching videos, why not make sure those videos are yours? According to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey, 92 percent of marketers said that video is an important part of their marketing strategy, and it looks like it’s paying off, with 87 percent saying video has increased their website traffic and 83 percent saying video has helped them generate more leads.

If your fans and followers are millennials, video is the ultimate key to connecting with potential customers and fans. According to Brightcove’s 2018 Video Marketing Survey, 85 percent of millennial shoppers said they made a purchase after watching a video.

Choosing the Right Social Channel

No matter where you plan to post your video content, be sure you know where your fans and customers are so you can get your videos in front of the right people at the right time. Although Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the most popular social channels for posting video, don’t forget about Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

How to Make High-Impact Videos for Social Media

If you’re like the 13 percent of marketers who say that they don’t use video for marketing because they just don’t have the time to invest in video marketing or the 20 percent say they don’t use video for marketing because it costs too much, there are plenty of ways to create great videos quickly and easily without a huge investment.

Whether you opt to use your iPhone camera and some Instagram filters or leverage a fully loaded and easy-to-use tool like Boosted, you can make many different types of videos quickly and easily. Additionally, if you don’t have the budget to hire a professional (like most small businesses), you can also check out these 6 Ways to Create Video for Social Media in 2020 for some ideas on how to make it happen in-house.

Just remember that social videos should aim to be short and sweet and timely. Here are seven ideas for videos you can put together for your small business’ social channels:

1. Product launch: Create videos building excitement around a new product or service and then create additional videos about the launch itself.
2. Special event: According to Eventbrite, 95 percent of event creators said that video was an effective event promotion strategy for an upcoming event. You can also live stream an event on Facebook or Instagram to keep viewers at home involved and feeling seen.
3. Explainers and tutorials: Use video to succinctly explain difficult concepts or give fans a clear window into exactly what it is that you do. Check out this guide if you are creating a video tutorial for Instagram Stories.
4. Behind the scenes: These types of videos are great and easy to create for social. Embrace transparency and give viewers an all-access pass to your business: introduce staffers, tour the office, go live for Q&A, and more.
5. Trending: If there are trending topics that you can leverage for views and likes, create a quick video and post it. Think the office coffee break for International Coffee Day or show the world your office pets on TYDTWDay® (that’s Take Your Dog to Work Day!).
6. Vlog style: When in doubt, just talk to the camera and let viewers in on your business and who you are. Transparency is king for consumers, and the more you let them in, the more they’ll engage and stick with you.
7. User-generated content (UGC): If your fans are posting tons of awesome video talking about your company, get reposting! UGC is a powerful (and usually free!) way to leverage authentic experiences to grow fans and your business.

Once you create and post video to your social channels, be sure to stay on top of how your fans are viewing, sharing, saving, and engaging with your content. Maybe your fans love live video and product launch clips, but they aren’t keen on animated explainer videos or tutorials. This will let you repeat what’s working and maybe pass on what isn’t performing so you can deliver exactly what your customers want to see.

Pro Tip: Don’t let the word “viral” take down your video strategy. Remember: You can’t make a viral video. Viral is an organic outcome, not a marketing strategy or goal. If a video of yours happens to go viral, celebrate the happy coincidence, but don’t bank on it happening again.

Action Items:

1. Make sure that you’ve got SMART goals set so you can get the most out of your video marketing efforts.
2. Review your social media metrics to see where your fans and followers are spending the most time and start posting videos there first.
3. Spend some time looking at the types of video that your competitors are putting out and how people are responding.
4. Pick an app or tool that can help you create impactful, interesting videos quickly and easily.

Cori Widen is the Product Marketing Lead at Boosted by Lightricks. She has been leading product marketing campaigns and doing qualitative market research in the tech industry for 10 years.