Facebook and Facebook Live are changing the way brands use videos, allowing them to build more personal and engaging relationships with their audience.

As with all communications, the best way to make video work as a marketing tool is to begin with the right message for your target audience; then test the message, just to check that you’re right and that nothing significant has changed in audience metrics, then take full advantage of SEO friendly optimisation techniques.

Here are a few tips to help you get your video campaign off to a grand start:

1. Peoples’ attention span is quite short, and depending on the audience and the message, you may want to look at trying a couple of different durations for your video. If you start with a 90 second version, then a week later put out a 60 second version, and then another week later put out a 30 seconds version – after the last video has had time to settled you can look into the analytics and see which got the best result. You may be surprised at how short or long your audiences’ attention span is! On social media, it’s usually better to go for short 30-60 videos, however on occasion a longer version can be better.

2. You need to grab viewing attention very quickly on social media and one way of doing this is to overlay text onto the front of video content. This can also help boost SEO results as Google logs the words, so if they’re keywords it’s an added bonus.

3. Timing of distribution is key; if you want to raise the profile of a particular event, say a charity event that your business is involved with, then plan a video strategy that allows you to build up your campaign on line. As a rule of thumb you should aim to release your first video announcing the event and getting people to ‘save the day’ at least one month before you want them to attend. The next stage point is usually two weeks, then one week and then three days before, and of course on the day itself you need a final video followed by an outcome piece after the event thanking people for attending, and communicating the results. If you’ve never used video in this way before, do a trial run with a small event to test your strategy.

4. Try out different video formats that are product centered, or non-product centered. Many viewers now prefer not to be sold too directly, but there is interest in ‘How too….’ videos which showcase the way a product operates, in fact it’s one of the biggest search strings on YouTube! However, interestingly, looking how people view websites, they often don’t specifically look at product or service information but they do look at the ‘About Us’ information, and like to click on videos that share the culture and ethos of a business – which of course means people videos, the old people buy from people adage still prevails, and video is as close as you can get to a face to face meeting and is certainly enough to influence the buying cycle of viewers.

If you’d like help with your on line video content do give us as call on 01494 898919 and we’ll be happy to share with your our knowledge on how to sell more and raise your business profile with video.