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The Top Social Platforms to Leverage Video Marketing

Social Publishing Strategy

Before we dive into the top social platforms for video marketing, it is important to understand a little more about advanced video marketing content and the various hosting options that will ultimately promote better performance on the right platform. Marketers know the importance that video has in social publishing strategy and has had over the last few years. If fact, video has captured the full attention of marketers today and is the primary focus for many marketing teams and agencies moving into 2017. Whether you are trying to drive more traffic to your site through customer and audience engagement or promoting your company culture and love for your industry, video marketing is going to be vital to the success of you organization going forward. 

An Introduction to Video Marketing

As with your traditional social posting strategy, video will involve testing and experimenting with different types of video content to see what user engage with most. We can break down video types into two categories, short form and long form. Below is a breakdown of the two types of video content that you will be focusing on.

Short form isn't just anything that you can condense or cut into a 30 sec or less edit. It can be a a longer video that takes little to no editing effort. For example, videos such as giving a quick tour of your office or store, product launches or unboxing videos, backstage updates at a company event, short interviews at live events, quick teasers for new content, Q&A sessions, and creative short videos to display company culture are great short form options.

 

 

Long form is anything that you need to add production value to. They generally will take longer to edit and will need some expert post-production work and will be used as a content offering, similar to a blog. Some example of long form videos would be safety and culture training videos, interviews and testimonials, expert panel discussion, live events, day in the life videos, product or service reviews, virtual conference and webinars, live event streams, live event breakouts, and branding videos.

 

Once you've decided the type of piece you want to produce you need to remember to incorporate a CTA in your content and leverage your video to educate and inform your audience. Know what your CTA is and create your content around it. Your CTA can be as simple as “Click the link for more information” or “Follow us on (platform) for more”. Don’t over think it, because ultimately you are just trying to drive traffic to a certain offer, platform or page.

Hosting Your Videos

Now that you’ve created your video, it’s time to put it to use and leverage you amazing new content in your social strategy. In order to that, we need to identify what the best platform for each particular video would be. Native video performs better on some platforms while linking to your content from third party hosting sites can be more effective on others. This brings me to another part of the strategy which is, finding the best hosting platforms for your videos. In my opinion, there are three platforms that should be used regularly and those three alone. They are, Wistia, YouTube, and Vimeo. There is some argument around which platform is best for business and here are my thoughts on that matter.

YouTube

Everyone knows what YouTube is. If your friend tells you they saw a funny video the other day, most likely that video can be found on YouTube. Benefits such as unlimited tags and SEO juice from descriptions make YouTube a great tool for organic traffic.

The downfall of YouTube is the fact that it is so saturated with “viral” videos that your lead generation and offer based video content can get lost in the mix. With that in mind, YouTube is best used for short-from videos and long form company culture spotlight videos or more “fun” content. You want to leave training videos, webinars, and other offer based content to the other two hosting platforms.

Vimeo                                                                                          

If you ask any filmmaker what hosting site they like best, the majority of them will say Vimeo. They will say this simply because the video quality is second to no other hosting site on the internet and the video player UI is very attractive. Vimeo’s downfall is how good their streaming quality is under the right circumstances. If you’re in a remote location with spotty Wi-Fi, you may not even be able to get Vimeo to play.

Vimeo can be great for all content with how user-friendly their platform is, but be careful about uploading long hi-res videos, as some of your audience may not have the streaming capability to view your content.

Wistia

If you don’t work in sales and marketing, you probably have never heard of Wistia. For those that do work in the industry, you know that Wisita is the granddaddy of video hosting sites for business, with comparable streaming quality to YouTube and a UI the rivals Vimeo. Wisita also eliminates the issues of slow internet speeds and your content will be seen by anyone that has the means.

What truly separates Wisita from YouTube and Vimeo is the analytics, lead generation opportunity, CTA optimization, and video player customization. It is a one stop shop for all of your video marketing needs.

 

Now for the main course! Below you will see the benefits of each of, in my opinion, the top 4 platforms to leverage video marketing and how to utilize them properly for video content.

Facebook

To start off, there are more than 4 billion video views on Facebook every day. Facebook also offers LIVE which allows you to live stream from anywhere. Uploaded videos are videos that have a 20-minute limit, which is more than enough for any short from and most long form videos. Video that gets uploaded directly to Facebook will get better visibility in the news feed than when you link to videos on from 3rd party sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia and there is an option to add a CTA.

Outside of lengthy webinars and training videos, any type of video content that you develop will work well with Facebook. Facebook LIVE may be the most disruptive addition to the social media marketplace that we’ve seen in some time. Being able to live stream from seminars, your office, at home, on the road, while you’re traveling, LITERALLY ANYWHERE, is an amazing tool that needs to be a part of your social strategy.

Twitter

As one of the top 3 most used social platforms, there are plenty of engagement opportunities if you use Twitter correctly. Native uploads have a limit of 30 seconds which makes it difficult to utilize for anything long-form. Linked content is a great way to engage your audience but, Twitter users are much more likely to engage with natively uploaded videos.

Using twitter to promote your long-form content is the most effective use. Uploading teaser videos and announcements on Twitter will create more engagement and bring traffic to your YouTube, Vimeo, or Wisita hosted content.

Instagram

Instagram is an engagement machine and has such a simple interface to use. Video content has a 60-second limit and can easily be shared on your Facebook and Twitter pages with just a few touches. Again, content that teases the full short or long form video, as well as webinar and event announcements are the most effective way to utilize Instagram due to the shorter time limit.

One downfall to using Instagram is the inability to link to your content page and having to rely on someone following up by searching for the full video online unless you pay for a video ad.

Snapchat

Snapchat is quickly becoming a big player in the world of digital marketing. With big names like Gary Vaynerchuck leading the way with daily updates and announcements, Snapchat is blowing up fast. Although Snapchat stories are only available for 24hrs after recording, it is a great tool to create buzz for everything from Facebook LIVE streams to a big upcoming webinar or live event.

 

Video is going to continue to play a larger role in marketing strategy from year to year, so it is important to start mastering your video content and video content strategy now. If you would like to learn more about video marketing and how to leverage it with your social media strategy, drop us a line and set up a consultation with one of our marketing experts.

Virtual Conference Example