How to Promote Your Business on Social Media with Videos

Videos are now the most shared content on the internet. In fact, 45% of people watch more than an hour of video content every week on Facebook and YouTube. If your business is not using videos in your social media strategy, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with potential customers. The good news: it’s not too late to start!

In this article, I will explain how to begin creating video content to promote your business on social media.

Step 1: Create a Content Plan

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a content plan. Think about what you want to communicate to your current and future customers. What questions of theirs can you answer? How can you bring value to them while encouraging them to buy from you?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• FAQs: Create 1-2 minute videos that each answer one common customer question. This demonstrates your industry knowledge and helps build trust between you and your audience.
• Meet the Team: Create 1-2 minute videos where you interview one member of your team. If you are a one-person team, you can still make a couple of these videos talking about your professional experience and a few personal interests. This makes it easier for potential customers to reach out to you, because they know who they’re going to be talking to and what to expect.
• Tutorials: Create 2-5 minute tutorial videos showing how to use your product or service. If it’s a physical product (or set of products), that’s easy. If you offer services, you might create a video where you tell potential customers why they might want to hire you.

Create your content plan by strategically deciding what you want your audience to get out of your videos, and then just creating a list of videos you’re going to make. Consistently refresh your list of future videos. Set aside a little bit of time every week to come up with new ideas, and execute the ones that you’re most excited about.

Videos where someone is speaking directly to the camera (even selfie videos) are easy to film, quick to edit, and effective at catching your audience’s interest.

Step 2: Create a Distribution Plan

Once you know what kind of content you’re going to create, it’s time to think about where you’re going to share your videos. If your business already has social media accounts, most of the work has been done already! YouTube is the primary outlet for sharing video content, but you can create videos and share them across many other social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) by simply resizing them. Here’s what you need to decide about distribution:

• Which videos will you share across all platforms, and which will just be for specific platforms?
• What audience are you reaching with each distribution channel? How does this serve you strategically?
• What are your competitors doing, and is it working?

Step 3: Record and Edit Your Videos

Now that you have a content and distribution plan, it’s time to start recording! Remember that your videos are not exactly ads--they’re a way for your customers to get to know your business and the people behind it. The videos themselves don’t need to look like they’ve been recorded and edited by a Hollywood studio. There are two easy ways to record these videos: on your phone (selfie style or just handheld if you’re taping someone else), or on your laptop/tablet. The only reason to use a special camera is if you already own one and know how to use it.

Once you’ve recorded your video, you can make a few basic edits to appeal to your audience:

• Trim your video so that there’s no extra empty space at the beginning or end of it.
• Add background music or voiceover if you need (this is good for videos that showcase using a product).
• Add subtitles!! Several studies estimate that 85% of social media videos are viewed without sound. You can subtitle your videos for free and it will drastically increase the number of people you reach.

When your video is fully edited, you can resize it to optimize for the different social media platforms. This way your video looks great no matter what platform it’s being viewed on!

Conclusion

Creating videos to promote your business allows you to meet your potential customers where they’re at. By spreading useful, interesting content across different social media platforms, you will be able to reach new audiences and demonstrate your value. Hopefully this guide gives you the tips you need to get started. Now go forth and record!