2015 will be all about learning how to effectively market your service online with the power of videos. As popular social platforms like Pinterest and Facebook now provide services for uploading and sharing of videos, there lies no doubt about the fact that video is now a powerful social media marketing tool that organizations must include in their marketing strategy for better audience engagement.

Why engage audience with a video when online marketing?

A content can turn more powerful and draw 100% engagement when turned into a video. Short videos are fun to watch and easy to digest, compared to a wordy content. So, how do you utilize this engaging tool to draw the attention of your target audience online?

The Answer – By understanding what kind of content has enough potential to draw the attention.

Understanding What Customers Love To Watch

According to an infographic study made to understand the power of videos in bio pharma industry, viewers reciprocate only with video contents that are relevant.

• 67% love to watch instructional videos
• 64% enjoy watching humorous videos
• 64% watch a video to learn about products and services

7 Ways To Make Videos Help Boost Your Social Media Marketing

#1 – Create a Video That Engages

This the first step to start your video marketing with and you need to be very careful with the type of content you decide to produce. Your goal is to make your video reach the satisfaction point of viewers, so that they will help to build a chain reaction by sharing your video with other people within their friend circle. Make sure that whatever you produce, it should not exceed more than 2 minutes. Promote your brand with a genuine introduction that will help to build a strong rapport with the target audience. Make a bold statement or ask a funny question or maybe begin with a good storytelling.

Another way to grab the attention of your target audience is by making premium offers. You may promote your premium offers by introducing a pitch. For example, make an elaborate display of the list of benefits that your service would bring to your customers.

Forget not to conclude with a converting Call-To-Action. This is important to instruct your viewers regarding the next step.

#2- Coordinate Your Video Using A Strategic Cross Channel Promotion

Coordinate your video promotion across various social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn) to generate the best results. Maintain a consistency in your tone and in your message, when following a cross channel promotion. For example, if you are promoting a video on Facebook, link that up with still images (of the video) that you can use to promote on Twitter. Unite all your promotion channels with the help of a single theme. This will make your market promotion more engaging among your target audience. At the same time, do maintain strategies that can be considered appropriate with the type of social platform where you are promoting. A video promotion on LinkedIn should not be full of hashtags that one may follow when promoting on Twitter.

Learning the proper use of social video marketing strategy the right way

As mentioned earlier, different social platforms come with different marketing strategies. Here are some tips that you can apply in order to improve video shareability the right way:

#3- Facebook Video Marketing

Users on Facebook can upload high definition videos with a maximum time duration of 20 minutes. A direct video post on Facebook is likely to engage more audience as compared to posts that link to other networks like YouTube. As pointed out by Socialbakers, you can achieve approximately 8.7% of organic reach if you post a video directly on Facebook. You can add a featured video by clicking on the ‘Add Featured Video’ from the Video tab, located below the cover photo. Choose the video that you want to feature among the list of videos that you have uploaded. When uploading a featured video, make sure it is a good representation of the business or service that you want to socially promote.

#4 – You Tube Video Promotion

The best way to promote your video on Facebook is with the help of channel trailers. Trailers are a great promotion medium that serves as an elevation pitch to viewers, who might turn out to be potential subscribers. Trailers can play automatically and draw the attention of visitors who are not yet subscribed to your channel. Just add a channel trailer by clicking on the Channel Trailer button. Once you have uploaded, click to save. However, you may not be able to avail this option if you haven’t uploaded any videos yet. In that case, first enable browse view of your channel. Click on option that has a pencil icon on the right side of your channel name. Next, enable the ‘Browse View’ from the dialog box by clicking on the ‘Edit Channel Navigation’.

If you plan to upload many videos, then start with creating a video that will serve as an introduction of the kind of videos that you are planning to publish.

If you are not into creating your own videos, the other way to build your social presence on YouTube is via curated content. Curated videos can bring in more viewers, since you are promoting videos that feature top industrialists and leaders.

# 5 – Video Promotion Using Vine

Another way to make fast conversion is by using the Vine videos in your social media marketing strategy. The six second looping videos however, would require you to be very creative and fast with your promotion. However, if you can crack it, this could turn out to be a good marketing medium on social platforms like Twitter where the newsfeed is always on the roll with new Tweets.

Already renowned brands like Puma, HTC and Xbox now use Vine to meet out strategic business goals. Some of the best ways to utilize a Vine video is to show off behind the scene work area or features of any upcoming product that you are planning to launch or maybe giving your audience a sneak peek into an upcoming event.

#6- Sharing Your Video Via Instagram

While short video promotion is now a hot strategy to influence your audience with and also to increase video shareability, you can also use Instagram that has recently launched a 15 second non-looping video service in its features. This serves as a better advantage over Vine since, Instagram comes with editing capabilities and other features that help you share your posts across different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, etc.

#7 – Tweet To Promote Your Video

Posting a video on Twitter helps people to watch your video and then click to tweet. You can embed a video in your Tweet by selecting the ‘Embed Tweet’ option from the drop down menu on your Twitter. Since Twitter is constantly flooded with new Tweets, you can post short videos via Vine or Instragram that can loop the attention of your audience faster than a general video. When you share a video using the Vine app or from YouTube, it remains displayed in the Photos and the Videos section of your profile page. Viewers can play your videos directly when viewing your profile.

Make use of these strategies when you are promoting a video for your business, and watch out for yourself the boost they give to your social media marketing strategy. What kind of video promotion strategy have you been using so far?

Written by: Thomas Miller
Read more at: http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/05/7-advanced-video-marketing-strategies-boost-social-media-presence/