Posting video boosts engagement on social media
To give your business, brand or organization an engagement boost on social media, incorporate more video into your posting schedule. Social media algorithms on Facebook and Instagram prefer video, popular platforms like YouTube and TikTok are video based, and people generally are starting to prefer interacting with video posts rather than photos, images, graphics and text posts. As a viewer, video is easy to engage with. Information is presented to a viewer in a passive, information rich way, instead of a text post where someone has to read text to engage with the post, without any other visual or auditory elements. Posting video will give your customers and followers something easy to engage with that can be dense with information.
The Verge reports that, “Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app, according to Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram.” Furthermore, “Mosseri said the company is looking to lean into entertainment and video after seeing the success of competitors like TikTok and YouTube.” Because social media companies and algorithms are beginning to prefer to promote video over static posts, posting more video means that you will gain more reach with your posts.
Facebook is also now promoting Reels from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, on the main Facebook app because of how well video performs on social media platforms. As stated by Facebook in a press release, “with the ability to create reels and have their Instagram reels suggested to people on Facebook, creators — whether they’re just starting out or already have a large following — will have more ways to express themselves, grow their communities and reach new audiences.”
This holds true in a survey of marketers reported on by Oberlo that states, “video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year,” that “video marketers achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness,” and that “93% of marketers say they’ve landed a new customer thanks to a video on social media.” When social media algorithms promote your content to a wider reach of people, that means that your content has a greater opportunity to reach more people than you could have by just posting static images. This can be thought of as a boost to your business, brand or organization’s lead generation strategy, because your top-of-funnel social media posting will reach more potential customers.
People also turn to video for information when they are making purchasing decisions. According to Oberlo, "most people (96 percent of them, to be exact) turn to videos to learn more about a particular product and/or service.” These can be product reviews, unboxing videos, informative videos released by a company on how to use a product, or even just someone checking to see if a business, brand or organization is taking the time to publish content that is worth spending money on. Given two similar products, when researching, a potential customer will likely choose a product that is sold by a company that publishes informative, quality, video about that product, rather than a product sold by a company that doesn’t post at all.
Now that your content is reaching more potential customers or followers, pay attention to your analytics and figure out what works best for your operations. Are you seeing an overwhelming increase of traffic to your socials and website? Double down on whatever you’re posting, and see if that results in a further increase in traffic. Are there certain themes that people seem to be reacting more strongly to? Are people engaging with your commerce related posts more or less than your informational and entertainment posts? Figure out what those who follow your social media accounts like and start to incorporate more of that into your posting schedule. Don’t only do what the analytics says all the time, or pigeonhole yourself into one specific post. Experiment, iterate, learn and keep your content evolving along side your brand, business or organization.
With these benefits to posting video content in mind, marketing in general is shifting to video. To keep up with the latest effective marketing strategies, it would be a good bet to try posting at least a little bit more video than you are now, if you aren’t already. According to Oberlo, “87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool” in 2019. Almost 90% of marketers are using video as a tool to reach their client’s audiences because it is a tool that has proven effective. Video gets more reach, grabs the attention of someone scrolling a newsfeed better than images or text, and people like engaging with media rich posts, such as video. Continuing, “88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI [return on investment] of their video marketing efforts on social media.”
Your video content absolutely doesn’t have to be professional, cinema level, production value. Video can be text over video, a clip of someone speaking directly to the camera, or a short clip of something interesting happening nearby to where you operate. If you don’t post any video yet, try a video Instagram Story or Facebook Story. These go away after 24 hours, so you can figure out what works before you post on your profile. If you’re already making Instagram Reels and posting on TikTok, then try posting longer form on YouTube. Video isn’t going anywhere, and is projected to only grow as a share of content posted online. Posting more video will likely reward your business, brand or organization, and posting regular high quality videos should go a long way to bringing in new business and brand awareness. What will your first video be?
