You already know that social media is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience and establishing brand presence. You also probably know that video content is one of the most effective tools to use on socials, offering an engaging and dynamic way to connect with followers. What is less known, however, is that creating effective video content takes so much more than hitting record on your phone…

There are a number of elements that should always be considered when creating effective video content for your socials, including audience, goals, and the platform you will be posting on. These will not only influence the style of content, but also video length, narrative, and user optimisation.

Understand your audience

Knowing your audience is step one in so many aspects of branding and promotion, especially in creating content for social media. Establish your ‘target persona’ which should include, among other things, demographics, interests, hobbies, what they do for work, and importantly how they use social media. Harness this information to tailor the video content you create. The videos you post should be providing value and resonating with this audience, keeping them engaged and coming back for more.

Optimise video length

We all know that video content is popular on most (if not all…) platforms. What is lesser known however is that one size does NOT fit all. Unfortunately, yes, that means that you can’t just create one video and post it across all of your socials accounts. Not only does that create additional risk of alienating different audiences and users across platforms, there are distinct differences in user behaviour and platform support around video length. If you’re really short on time, you can re-purpose videos, but if you want greater results we’d suggest that the extra time investment is well worth it. You can find out more about optimised video lengths for different platforms here.

Set goals

They say “a goal without a plan is only a dream”, and though that might be a little dramatic in this context, it’s still relevant. Without setting clear goals, it’s impossible to measure success amd subsequently refine your approach to improve outcomes! Before you start creating video content, decide whether you are looking to increase brand awareness, improve reach or engagement, drive traffic to your website or generate leads. Tailor your content accordingly! Don’t forget to revisit these goals at regular intervals, because they will change over time.

Platform optimisation

When creating video content for social media, a pretty standard rule of thumb is to film portrait, not landscape. This ensures that videos are optimised for use on mobiles which, obviously, are the most commonly used devices to access social platforms! This element ties in neatly with audience and video length – users on TikTok and Instagram are easier to catch with a hook in the first 1-3 seconds and then a succinct message delivered over the next 30 or so seconds. If you’re targeting a more professional audience on LinkedIn however, videos that use captions/subtitles and deliver information to business users professionally and concisely will perform better.

Analyse, measure, iterate

Don’t forget to regularly analyse the performance of your video content! Tracking video performance will allow you to make adjustments as required. You can also discover information that you mightn’t have considered – perhaps a different audience is engaging more with your content and you can find an untapped market, or certain platforms drive greater engagement that you didn’t previously expect. Metrics such as views, reach, and engagement can be used to determine what is and isn’t working, and this data should be taken in to account to optimise future video content creation.

So, in conclusion, video content is an exceptionally powerful tool to harness on social media. If you can get the right video content recipe for your brand, you can create video content that drives you towards success.

Need some support in understanding what video can do for you? Reach out to our team here.