Social media videos are a great way to get your message in front of your audience. But a good social media campaign takes careful planning. Join Laura and Gary as they discuss social media best practices/best practices when it comes to social.
Show Extras
LINK: Learn more about Gary
DOWNLOAD: Social Media Best Practices
Transcript
Laura: One of the places you should always consider putting your videos out on is on social media. It's a great way to get your message out there and to put yourself in front of your audience. But how you produce those videos, and the thought that goes into it, is something that could make or break your campaign.
First, Gary's going to be joining us, and he's gonna tell about what he does when he produces social media videos. And then after that, we'll go through some best practices for you to keep in mind the next time you produce your next social media video.
This is CloseUp: Decoding Video Production for Your Business. I'm Laura. Gary is joining me today. Gary Cline. He's a producer at Plum Media. Thanks for coming on with us today.
Gary: Hello
Laura: Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.
Gary: Okay. That's probably the toughest question of the day. I'm a producer/director here. I'm come from a background of doing both broadcast and high-end corporate media, so a little bit of two different worlds. But there's a lot of similarities between the two and a few differences. I guess, been doing it and seeing this business from two different angles for a long time.
Laura: You've done a lot of social media videos in your career. What is the purpose? Why should we, why should people be jumping on this?
Gary: Well, I think it's just the greatest opportunity right now. Back before if you wanted to get your product out there, boy you had to really do an expensive advertising campaign. Now, there's a lot of free platforms out there through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram are some of the big ones that a lot of my customers use. And, you know, you can get awareness of your service or product out there really quickly and easily and develop an audience through people that like your page.
You know, really your social media audience, I kind of think of it as very similar to a broadcast audience. Say for instance, you targeted a TV commercial and you put it during an NFL game, you knew pretty much from analytics who was watching that. Now even more targeted through social media, you know who your customers are because they're interested in you, and you can target your content to reach that specific group.
Laura: When you're talking about doing TV commercials and the similarities with social media, but there are some differences between the two that you need to take into consideration when you're making your video.
Gary: Yeah, I think the biggest difference that I would say when you're gonna do a social media video, you can't mess around. Just jump right in. Start right at the front end of your video. Make sure your customer sees you even on that very first thumbnail of the video.
Make sure when they look at that, they see it as something that they're interested in. If you sell shoes, make sure the first image on your social media video is an image of a shoe. And that'll get people to click through. Don't build up. People don't, aren't gonna sit there and have the patience to listen to a two-minute preamble. Just get right to it. You know, and what I tell people too is when you build your social media channel, don't put too much content out there. Keep it tight. Keep it concise. People appreciate the extra time that you take in taking their time into consideration and giving them things that you know are very important to them.
One post per day is really what I try to tell people. The easiest way to make sure that when people come to your social media site or their channel, that they're gonna be able to quickly see information that's about you and click through and do what you want them to do. And I, another thing I like to say too is like when you do your videos for social media, remember that you've got a combination of information that you're going to put in your post and the information that's going to be in your video.
Keep your videos timeless. Don't put things that are date-sensitive or time-sensitive in there because that makes, those are more difficult to change. If you're promoting an event that's coming up, as soon as it's over than your video kind of looks dated and people don't know whether they should even pay attention to it then or not. Put that kind of content in the post content. Because that's easily updated, changed. Make a new post, and then put your video out.
Repurpose it again. Restream it. Once you've got your audience hooked, you know, then you've got an opportunity to tell them where to go and where to click through for them to find more information about you: your website, YouTube channel, whatever it would be.
Laura: When you're putting these videos together, what are some things that you take into consideration when you're producing them, when you're in the production stage.
Gary: Yeah, I guess that's one the big things I would say is very similar between broadcast and corporate media and social media videos is that you can control the how you produce your pieces, and the how is basically how you shoot the piece, how your audio is recorded, how your script is written. Is it concise? How your host comes across when they’re presenting the information. Basically, you want your social media to be representation of all the other professional work that you do to put your business out there.
You're a professional person. You run a professional business. Your media should be a representation of that as well, too. And you can do that intangibly by making sure that your content is concise. That it is professionally shot. That it is recorded with a good professional microphone. Those are just a few things that you can do that when your customers see your media, they understand okay that's a high-end looking piece. This company must do really high-end work. I can trust them. So, I'm gonna go to them and find out more information about what they do and how to get a hold of them and take things to the next step.
Laura: Gary, thanks for joining us... Gary: Sure Laura: ...today. You can learn more about Gary too if you head on over to the website plummedia.com and see some of the social media works that he's done over the past. Some award winners on there too.
Gary: There's a few yeah. We have some fun with our videos that we do, too. It's a good opportunity to show people that you like to have a good time, too.
Laura: So, for social media videos, some best practices to keep in mind. Get to the point. You only have three seconds to get and keep your viewers’ attention, so make sure you start with that key content. That first frame, it's as important as the sixth or seventh frame.
Design for no sound. Because when you're scrolling through your phone, you probably don't have your sound on. So, make sure your content's easy to follow without the use of sound or tell people to turn the sound on. Caption and text are very important in this part.
Host natively. Number three. Don't link to the video. Yeah, you've uploaded it on YouTube, but you don't want to link to that YouTube page if you're posting on Facebook. You want to post the video directly to Facebook. You're going to get better views and more engagement that way.
Make sure to include a call to action. Tell the viewers exactly what you want them to do after watching. Use that clear simple language in the text accompanying the video. That's a key element in making sure that your campaign is successful.
And if you want a bigger audience, you gotta put some money behind it. Social networks are more and more becoming more of an ad platform, and the only way to make sure your audience is seeing your video is to put an ad budget behind it even if it's just a small one. You can target it to get it in front of your key audience.
Go to the show notes or head on over to our website plummedia.com/podcast, for a link on there with this episode that has the best practices in a nice easy to follow form that you can download.
If you like what you're hearing, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. You can find out more information about what we talked about with social media videos, about Gary, about what it is we do here by heading over to the show notes or going to plummedia.com/podcast. For Gary, I'm Laura. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day.E