10 Ways to Use Video for Your Social Media Marketing

Written by: Conor Finnegan

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If you aren’t using video in your social media marketing yet, you should be. 

A third of all online activity is spent watching videos. And with 90% of users saying that they found product videos helpful when making buying decisions, your business needs to be in the social video space.

Here are 10 tips that can help increase engagement, conversion rates, and brand promotion improving both social video and social media marketing success.

Do you want to add video to your social media marketing or are you looking for ways to increase views and engagement!

10 Tips to Help increase Engagement, Conversion Rates and Brand Promotion

1: The Ideal Video Length

When you are the length of your video a lot depends on what you want to share with your audience. Testing different lengths and measuring performance will give you the best idea of what works for your business.

However, before you start keep in mind the maximum video lengths per social media platform.

Facebook: 120 minutes

Twitter (now X): recommends keeping videos under 30 seconds

Instagram: 60 seconds

Snapchat: 10 seconds

Vine: 6 seconds

2. Optimise for Autoplay

Autoplay is offered as a feature on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This encourages user to watch your video. What important is to feature movement within the initial frames to grab attention quickly.

Keep in mind that Autoplay can be disabled by users who don’t want data charges!

3. Add Subtitles

Social media offers business a way to connect with potential customers who may not interact with us otherwise. When you add subtitles to your video it lets users watch them even if they are somewhere that can’t play the accompanying sound. It will make your brand more inclusive as it will allow those with hearing impairments to get your message.

4. Grab Attention Early

The first few seconds of your video is where you capture viewers interest. You need to grab the audience’s attention or they will stop watching. This means you must be concise and get right to your point.

Think about placing hooks with the first few seconds, before they scroll away!

5. Create How-To-Videos

Whether you’re teaching viewers how to apply bronzer or doing an oil change demo, how-to videos are extremely popular across all platforms. Remember how-to videos should teach users something or provide a quickly and simple lesson. These videos are a great opportunity to promote your product without being over-forceful.

6: Optimise for Search

If you’re not optimising for search you need to be! Everything your business posts on social media should be search engine optimised. Think about keywords or phrases that will help user find your content on any social media platform. Hashtags work for Twitter and Instagram users and YouTube allow you to tag your videos.

Laptop with Video Marketing on it

7: Feature Calls to Action

Have you a clearly stated call to action (CTA)? Do you want user to share your video, purchase your product? CTAs are most effective when placed at the end of your video, even just a line telling views that they can find out more at [insert URL] or sign up to your newsletters”

8: Answer Questions

Has your business got frequently asked questions (FAQ). A great way to add value is to use video to answer viewer’s questions. This allows you to provide content they want to know and it helps establish your business as knowledgeable and credible. The end of these videos is another great way to add a CTA and drive clicks to your site.

9: Attract Attention Without Sound

Did you know 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound! Think about how you can make your videos visually interesting and don’t rely wholly on words or music.

10: Add Your Logo

You aim to promote your brand at every opportunity and videos are no exception. You want to add your logos as videos can be shared and viewers may not realise it is from you! You want to make it easy for viewers to associate the video with you.

Think about logo placement – relatively small and unobtrusive in a corner can be best.

And Finally – Measure It All!!!

Engagement, Views, and Clicks – measure it all.

Tracking how your video performs across platforms is essential, whether they are paid or organic campaigns.

  • Facebook’s Insights provides video analytics which shows tha number of views your video had. It also measures reach and average view completion rate for each video.
  • Twitter Analytics shows your video views for the past 28 days along with information on views and completion rates for each video. YouTube Analytics offer information on number of views, average view duraction and engagement such as comments or likes/dislikes.
  • Instagram doesn’t currently have an analytics platform, but it’s coming soon. When measuring focus on the number of shares, engagement, and the number of clicks to your site.

Remember clicks can be measured on video ad campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.


By Monaghan Local Enterprise