How Branding Videos Shape Social Media Engagement
February 28, 2024
We live in a world driven by social media. For that reason alone every company should have a robust social media strategy, especially given the fact that most businesses stand to improve their presence on social media channels.
Now, we could talk all day about the various ways to succeed on social media in today’s competitive market, but it would all be for nothing if we didn’t talk about the most powerful content type–video.
Video marketing has exploded in the last 10 years with the rise of video-based social media platforms.
In the age of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube short-form videos, a growth-oriented business must focus on video marketing in 2024 and beyond.
Video is, without a doubt, the most engaging form of content on all platforms, but winning at video marketing goes beyond simply posting short clips from time to time.
Let’s take a more meticulous approach here, and talk in-depth about how branding videos can shape your social media engagement.
Here’s what you need to know.
Why Invest in Branded Videos on Socials?
Before we talk about the concrete steps you need to take to build your video strategy for social media, we need to talk about the benefits of investing in video content.
What can we take away from these above facts?
For starters, video marketing, especially posting videos on social media, is great for lead generation and customer acquisition. It’s also important to note that posting fresh video content on your social profiles continuously is a great way to keep your followers engaged and interested in your brand.
Therefore, video marketing is essential for customer retention over the long term. Having the ability to retain customers and stay top of mind will be one of the key selling points for potential buyers, as well, should you decide to sell your business.
Remember that video content goes hand in hand with other content types, allowing you to combine content formats and maximize their value.
1. Implementing Brand Elements in Your Videos
If you want to be successful on social media as a business, it’s important to first build a brand style guide that you and your team members can follow at all times.
This will be essential for all your branding and marketing projects and campaigns, and it will be crucial for branding your videos properly, as well as ensuring brand consistency across all your social media accounts.
Make sure that your brand book, or style guide, covers the following:
- Brand identity and personality
- Brand tone of voice
- Mission and vision
- Values and culture
- Brand colors and visual style
- Tagline and other brand messaging
You want to have all these elements present in your videos to some extent, to ensure consistency over time and improve brand stickiness.
When you have speaking parts in your videos, make sure to boost oral communication with your audience by speaking in a tone of voice that resonates.
This means that, instead of using typical corporate jargon, you should align your tone of voice and oral communication in videos with the values and behaviors of your demographic.
Making your videos more relatable this way will attract followers instead of pushing people away with corporate lingo.
2. Topic Clusters and Professional Videography
Topic clusters are important for all content marketing, and that includes video creation as well as social media management in general.
A topic cluster encompasses various topics and subtopics that are connected, and complement each other to talk about a broad or complex subject.
Essentially, topic clusters give order and priority to your content strategy, allowing you to approach topics granularly in more detail. Because video is a form of content, you can use this approach to get very granular and organized with your video production, posting, and marketing.
Having such an organized approach will also give clear direction to all your teams, from your editors to your social media managers, and allow them to collaborate efficiently.
Speaking of video editors and videographers, it’s important to invest in a more professional approach to video creation.
You need to have someone on your team who is able to do basic video editing. It also wouldn’t hurt if they can also produce more content if need be. For professional videos like promos and trailers, you might also need to hire photographers for photoshoots.
But when it comes to day-to-day posting on social media, what you need is a video editor and people in your team who can come up with engaging content ideas.
3. Scheduling Videos and Managing Your Communities
When it comes to the social media management part, good scheduling and community involvement are the keys to making your videos more impactful.
Managing your social media accounts requires much more than just posting videos every day. A serious social media agency will take a meticulous approach to audience research as well as social listening to figure out the best types of video content for your company.
It’s worth noting that, because social media nowadays is driven by video content, this should be one of the top priorities when you’re talking to a social media agency. In fact, when you’re talking to a social media agency about their services, they will have a cost breakdown in their quote that details everything that goes into their video work.
This includes:
- Researching your audience
- Gathering market data to uncover emerging opportunities
- Devising a posting strategy
- Defining the posting times
- Managing your community
All of these foundational pillars will have their subcategories, tactics, and tasks.
But remember, your video strategy is just a part of your overarching marketing strategy. This means that it’s not just about posting amazing videos–it’s also about connecting and linking those videos to the strategic pages on your website to achieve a specific goal.
For example, use your videos to call your viewers to visit a specific page on your site that’s optimized for conversion. Alternatively, invite them to go to your site to grab a high-value product for free–like an ebook, or a template, or a package filled with digital goodies.
These are just some of the things that need to be done in order to maximize the potential of every video you post on your channels.
What’s more, keep in mind that the best time to post your videos matters as much as posting consistently as well as engaging with your followers every day.
4. Exploring All Types of Videos
You might be wondering by now what types of videos you could be posting online.
When it comes to social media, everything can work if it’s done right and if the format and tone of voice resonate with your target demographic.
Here are some video types you can consider for your strategy:
- Behind-the-scenes videos
- Product demos and trailers
- Q&A sessions
- Explainer videos
- Educational clips
- Customer testimonials
- Product announcements
- Product or service showcase
- User-generated videos
- Live videos
- Meme videos
This last one is an important point to cover. Meme-based videos have exploded in recent years, and have helped many brands skyrocket their following. How? Simply by shifting the focus from the corporate to the relatable and the comical.
If humor fits into your industry, and your brand’s personality tone of voice, it’s worth exploring as a way to drive engagement and get people to share your videos. Relatable memes, customized to fit your industry and what you do are great for making your content more relevant to a new generation of consumers.
5. Professional and Non-Professional Networks
TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are what you might call non-professional networks, as they predominantly carry entertainment value, as well as educational value to an extent.
On the other hand, you have LinkedIn and Twitter (now X). The former is a professional network and the latter is semi-professional, but you can use both to post interesting and engaging video content. But it’s important to know what to post where.
It’s also crucial to think of videos as an investment into long-term content marketing, as well as building trust and credibility in the online and offline worlds. Videos can play a pivotal role in direct prospect outreach on social media, particularly on the professional networks where you’re looking to reach out to business owners and decision-makers.
When you create videos specifically for your outreach strategy, for example, you’ll have a powerful opener for potential clients and partners. You can then combine compelling videos with LinkedIn automation to automate outreach and direct messages in general, but make them more substantial and give prospects something of true value right off the bat.
This is how you leverage videos not just for posting, but for direct client acquisition on professional networks.
On the other hand, it’s important to get your video content formats right. Posting relatable TikTok videos on LinkedIn might not be such a good idea, and professional-grade videos on LinkedIn might not do as well on entertainment platforms.
It’s all about balance and content curation, so make sure to schedule your posts according to the platform and what its audience wants.
6. Boosting Marketing Potential with UGC
Lastly, always think of how you can involve your followers and customers in your video creation process.
User-generated content is a powerful tool that you can use to build social proof for your brand across your social media accounts as well as your website and beyond.
Be sure to incentivize your customers to create video testimonials that you can post to your social channels, or they can post them and then tag you.
This will open numerous opportunities to engage with your community in the comments, expand your reach, and gain new followers quickly. You can use this opportunity to spy on your competition a bit and take a look at what they’re doing right with their UGC strategy.
You can even view Instagram stories anonymously so that the competitors don’t know you’re looking at their content, but you still get the insights you need to shape your own UGC approach.
Keep in mind that influencer videos are also user-generated content, so this is an opportunity to engage with influencers to create videos that will get your brand in front of new audiences.
Over to You
Focusing on video marketing can yield significant results for your brand in 2024 and the years to come. It can even help you elevate the value of your company in the online world and the eyes of your target demographic so that you can sell your business for a higher price.
The possibilities with video marketing are endless, so make sure to use these tips to develop your 2024 video marketing strategy, and take your company to the next level.
Once you’re ready to sell, you will be able to add the value of your social media accounts and online popularity to the value of your brand.
In the meantime, use our free valuation tool to see how much your online business is worth.
