Should Video be part of your Social Media Marketing Campaign?

There are many elements to a Social Media Marketing plan and one of the most engaging is video.  A video allows your prospective clients to get a glimpse of what you offer, including your approach to solving their problem, your level of knowledge in the area of interest, and your business's personality.   Basically, video offers an opportunity to show and tell your message on a very personal level.

To consider how video might impact your customer base, think about how some television commercials have influenced you over the years.  I'm sure there are a few that have stuck with you for years.  Now think about the growth in the Infomercial space.  You can't turn on the TV after midnight without finding one on some channel.  What do each of these offer?

Commercials define your product's image and how it will impact someone's lifestyle.   The infomercials, on the other hand, convey details on why one should buy a product and typically provide case studies that support the greatness of the product.  Commercials are used to quickly define a brand and use repetition to drill this into their audience so that they will identify the brand when shopping.  Infomercials are used to create an impulse purchase through an elaborately convincing presentation of benefits and results.  Commercials and Infomercials both reach broad audiences, but at a high cost for the broadcast time.

An online video can provide all the benefits of traditional televised advertisements but there's more!  For example, online video is available 24 hours a day, every day;  coupled with an online marketing strategy, it can be directed to those most interested in what you are offering; and it cost nothing to post online on video sharing sites like Youtube or social media sites like Facebook.  The greatest benefit of this last item is that users can then easily forward your video on to others, which extends your reach to even more potential customers. 

Keep in mind that there can be some drawbacks to online video when not used appropriately.  A website will become annoying if each time a visitor arrives they have to watch the same video.  To alleviate this problem, just be sure to design your site so that the user can quickly bypass the video, or, better yet, use cookies to check for returning users.  And make sure that there is an easy to find stop, pause or mute button.  Nothing is worse than arriving at a site only to be unexpectantly blasted by audio.  This is especially frustrating for people at work.

To create a video, I recommend hiring a professional production company like Magnus Media, that is experienced in staging, scripting, and editing videos.  Your video can be live action or utilize images with an audio overlay.  Whichever method works best for you, make sure that the message is engaging, clear, concise and memorable.  And don't forget to use a Social Media campaign to reach the most likely purchasers of your product or service.

Here is a short example clip for Event Planning services.

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