How to use social video effectively in 4 ways

We were asked recently “can you help me with social video?” Having walked our client through the ways in which we could help, I thought “why not share these useful tips more widely?” So, here they are! I’ve included a number of examples – Vines and Instagram videos – a man on his phone to professionally produced videos so you can see the breadth of scope for social video.

1. Demonstrate your product benefits

A social video can help to show the main USP’s of your product in an engaging, succinct and quick way. Visible Measures reports that 20% of viewers click out of a video in 10 seconds or less.  Buyers are bombarded with a ridiculous amount of product messages and Vines 6 second loop and Instagram video’s 15 seconds limit encourages you to think creatively to share your product benefits.

Consider these two social videos by Logitech and Mini.

Logitech #keystogo

Mini

For Logitech, you are under no illusion that your keyboard will happily survive wine, coffee and water spillages! And for Mini  you can feel confident of precision parking.

These two product benefits could be the deciding factor that prompts a viewer’s purchase or an enquiry.

2. Offer tips and lessons

“How to” content is popular online. A survey by Levels Beyond found that 67% of consumers use how to product videos or tutorials. Social video can help you deliver this in a creative way, for example you could run a series of social “how to” videos.

Beauty brand Sephora has done just this by creating #Sephoratipsin6 – These vines provide a series of digestible, simple and quick beauty tips from nails to lipstick.

Similarly, Lowes Home Improvements #lowesfixinsix series  provides a series of home improvement tips from tiling to cleaning the BBQ.

sephoraLowes

Both these ideas help position these brands as go to brands within their respective sectors.

3. Promote your products, a sale, an event, your team, a news event……..

Social videos are perfect promotional tools. Build excitement around a new product; anticipation for an up and coming event; sales around a calendar occasion e.g. Mother’s Day – basically anything you have planned!

Samsung promoted their Galaxy S6 Edge Iron Man limited edition with a simple Vine

samsung

Austin Food and Wine Festival put together a video to say thank you to all those who attended the festival  It not only served as a thank you, but by showing the festival atmosphere on the day it can be used to drive anticipation for the 2016 festival.

Austin

And Dunkin Donuts linked in with Mother’s Day  to remind us to give our mum’s a morning coffee in bed.

dunkin

All these can drive traffic to your website, boost sales and help brand raise awareness.

4. Encourage a relationship

Encourage your audiences to get involved with your business, this could be as simple as running a competition or as ambitious as joining forces with an industry influencer.

Nissan ran a social video competition for followers to submit their Vines and Instagram videos – the winning video ultimately became the advert for the product launch of the new Nissan Versa – there are some clever, smart, fun, lovely submissions.

Nissan

Similarly, Tide linked up with top Viner Batdad  to gain exposure to his 2.4m followers (as opposed to the brands 5,000) to engage with dads in an amusing way on…….laundry!

Tide

Both these ideas helped build new relationships with untapped audiences, as well as nurture loyalty from existing ones.

These examples may be household names but social video isn’t out of reach for smaller businesses – the principles are the same regardless of size.

Social video needn’t be overwhelming or refined to make a huge yet measurable impact for your brand. If you would like to talk more about these useful tips, please get in touch hello@fromthehipvideo.co.uk

 

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