If you’re running a business, there’s no better way to grow your revenue than using video content on your social media pages.
More than 3.96 billion users across all social media combined – that’s around 50.6% of the world’s population. Those social media users spend nearly two and a half hours every day scrolling through their timelines.
Tapping into this field of opportunity will allow your small business to:
- Get more brand awareness
- Reach new potential customers
- Develop a strong relationship with your existing customers
- And most importantly, make more sales
If you know how to garner the power of video content on social media – which you would understand once you’ve done reading this article. Here are the four critical steps to growing your small business using social media videos.
Set Your Goal
The first step to growing your small business through is defining a clear and achievable goal. Your approach, type of video, and overall strategy will vastly differ depending on what you want to achieve.
There are generally three types of metrics that you can measure depending on which goal you want to achieve with social media videos:
- Reach: Reach can be interpreted as a signifier for brand awareness. It is a metric that measures how many people have encountered your videos, regardless of their actions upon seeing them. Your videos will always show up with your brand’s name as the one who posted them, which means people who haven’t heard of it will be aware of its existence.To maximize the reach of your content, you can use broader topics that would appeal to a wider audience. You can also use hashtags, locations, music, and other features that allow your content to get discovered by more people. It’s also worth noting that viewers claim to retain 95% of the information they get from a video – including a brand’s name.
- Engagement: Engagement is how many actions are taken by the people who have seen your videos. Likes, comments, and shares are the most common forms of engagement across social media platforms. While there are deeper levels, social media engagement is the beginning of a strong relationship that could lead to repeat orders and loyal customers.An engaging video often serves one or more of these purposes: entertainment, information, and emotion. Creating a video with these elements built into it can increase your engagement rate.
- Conversion: Conversion is a tricky metric to measure because there are many ways to interpret it. Depending on your goal, a conversion could mean a viewer who followed your account or a follower who buys a product after watching your video.A highly converting video content on social media often contains a well-written value proposition that makes the viewers think they need the product for specific and realistic scenarios. In fact, 84% of people say that they have purchased a product after watching a brand’s video about it.
While there are other more intricate metrics that you can find on various social media platforms, the three metrics above are the important numbers that a business would need to grow. Now that you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to decide your customer profile.
Understand Your Audience
Like any other marketing channel, social media also requires you to incorporate your audience profile’s preference into the video content. A Starbucks customer would have a somewhat different preference to a homebrewed coffee enthusiast – and if you haven’t decided on your customer profile yet, you should get to it immediately.
Knowing your audience will help you narrow down various elements of your video content, including:
- Tone of voice
- Visual style
- Duration
- Genre
One of the reasons why social media is very effective is the analytics tool that can allow you to understand what kind of people your videos have reached. The more specific you can be with your audience profile, the easier it is to tailor a highly enticing video that would provide a massive impact on your business’ growth.
Prioritize Quality over Quantity
If there’s ever a dilemma between publishing more video content or fewer but higher quality, always opt for the latter. There are plenty of ways to market your business on social media. But when it comes to video marketing, creating a video that stands out is better than producing low-impact videos.
Besides the graphics quality, it’s also crucial that you offer value with every video you upload. If your videos only focus on product pitches and sales offers, there’s little to no incentive for people to watch them.
Producing tutorials, insights, hot takes, and sneak peek not only entice viewers to find out more about your business (which is good for brand awareness) – but also increases your brand’s authority in the niche.
Tailor Video for Specific Platform
One of the most common mistakes from small businesses is treating all social media equally. Each social media platform has its audience profile and, therefore, content preference. Instagram, for example, is a platform to share photos and vertical videos (Stories & Reels). On the other hand, YouTube is more suitable for traditional 16:9 horizontal videos with more intricate content.
Using the same video for every social media platform is counter-productive. Chances are, only one or two platforms will generate a positive return on investment. Instead of throwing your net and praying for the best, tailor your videos to be outstanding in each social media platform you want to use.
As a small business, it’s understandable that you’ll be overwhelmed by all the different strategies you’ll need to build for every social media platform. While planning your strategy are essential, it’s also necessary that you get hands-on about other aspects of your business.
Well, that’s why we’ve attached an infographic covering all the crucial stats, technical specifications, and actionable tips that you can apply to make your videos stand out on every platform. Read through it to understand each critical aspect to make your videos stand out on different social media platforms – or you can save it and take a look when you’re not busy handling clients.
