7 Simple Ways to Grow a Following Using Social Videos

Sometimes growing a following using social videos can seem like a fruitless effort. You publish videos upon videos but get little to no engagement. This can be frustrating.

If you are in such conundrum then you don’t have to worry much. With the right strategies at your fingertips, you can use your social videos to grow an engaged audience.

Table of Contents

In recent years, there has been a massive surge in the use of video on social media. Just between 2016 and 2017, the views of branded video content increased by 258% on Facebook and 99% on YouTube.

Compared to a photo tweet, a video tweet is six times more likely to be retweeted. If you still do not know the powerful relationship that exists between social media and video, and you are yet to take full advantage, then you are missing out on a lot.

Facebook, which is the largest social media platform in the world with more than 2 billion monthly active users records more than 100 million hours of watched videos every day. YouTube, on the other hand, boasts of more consumed videos than any other social network. More than 1 billion hours of videos are watched every day on YouTube in 76 languages and in 88 countries.

According to Instagram, there are more than 250 million daily active Stories. The platform is also well received by marketers, out of the 51 percent of marketers who used Instagram video, 88 percent of them found it to be highly effective. It is one of the easy ways to get more Instagram followers.

The Importance of Video Marketing

1. According to HubSpot, 54% of consumers reveal that they want to see more video content from the brand or business they support.

2. In a 2019 report made available by Wyzowl, 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool.

3. When it comes to Return on investment, Animoto, 2018, report that 88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI on their video marketing effort on social media.

4. According to Google, 6 out of every 10 people prefer to watch online videos than television.

5. Cisco predicts that online video will make up more than 82% of all consumer traffic by 2022.

6. YouTube is the second most popular website and search engine in the world.

7. According to YouTube, users watch more than 1 billion hours of video every day.

8. HubSpot reveals that 72% of customers would prefer to learn about a product or service via video than other means.

9. Social media posts that contain videos have 48% more views.

1. Marketing

Marketing is one of the major ways brands use social videos. This has made video marketing one of the most powerful avenues for businesses to reach both prospective and existing clients.

There are tremendous advantages to using video for marketing, some of which include humanizing a brand, starting a conversation, and winning the attention of Google crawlers.

Some of the brands that have achieved success with this include Google, with “Friends Furever” video and Coca Cola with “The Last Customer.”

2. Charity

Videos have also been used by different charity groups and non-governmental organizations around the world to communicate and inspire people to take positive actions.

A good example is the short two-minute video by First Descent which teaches viewers the organization’s purpose and allows them to have a feel of the organization’s ethos and programs.

3. CSR

Video is a great way for brands and companies to communicate the goals and accomplishment of their CSR initiative to internal and external audiences.

Coca Cola 5by20-Candy’s Cakes is a good example, which showcases Coca Cola’s initiative to economically empower 5 million women by 2020.

4. To Inspire

Videos have also been used on countless occasions to inspire people. Most of TedTalks videos are made to inspire, some of which include that by Dan Pink and Shawn.

Because videos are highly visual, it heightens the feelings of sympathy, empathy and enables mental participation as audiences watch.

1. Set Goals

In order to grow a following and be massively successful in social video marketing, the first place to start is to set SMART goals.

To know your goal you need to ask yourself a simple question; why am I on social media in the first place? The answer to this query is your goal. It is important that your goal(s) is/are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

A good example of a smart goal will be to increase twitter response rate by 25% by the end of the first quarter which can be achieved with the help of social media automation tools and applying social media best practices as highlighted below.

2. Understand your Audience

After you have your goals identified next is to outline your target audience. It is important you know that not everyone is your audience.

By delineating your audience you will be able to figure out which social media sites you should be most active on, your posting schedule, the type of content to publish, and your brand’s voice.

After identifying your audience, their demographics, and peculiar preferences, next thing is to seek a better understanding of how social videos work per platform.

Platforms vary from each other. While video length limit for Instagram videos is 60 seconds, and 10 minutes and up to an hour or more for IGTV; YouTube allows for longer videos but the most suitable length is about three to four minutes.

4. Create Relatable and Sharable Content

In order to stand out from the crowd, you can’t go ahead publishing content that everyone else is posting. You need to be able to create original content that can stop your audience in their tracks.

This could be original blog posts, infographics, or research. An audience can smell unoriginal content. Strive to stand apart from the fray by being creative.

5. Ask for Feedback

It is not uncommon for businesses to shy away from asking for feedback from customers for fear of criticism. But feedback is highly important.

It helps businesses figure out what they’re doing wrong and to make adjustments. Therefore, any opportunity you have, ask your viewers for feedback. This could be on the end screen or during the video itself. Do not fear criticism, it can only make you better.

6. Implement Audience Feedback

You’ve got what you asked for now what? When your audience gives you their feedback, the worst thing to do is to ignore them. This is a brand killer.

Ignoring audience feedback will make them feel unwanted or irrelevant, and this causes them to find another brand that will value them and their opinion more.

Of course, not all feedback or customer wishes are implementable, but try to implement good ones.

7. Measure Results

It is important to treat social media video marketing as a science and not a guessing game. This can only be achieved through the use of analytics tools.

These tools will help you to identify your top-performing content and those performing poorly. This way, you can improve your return on investment by implementing the results from proper analytics.

Conclusion

Growing a following using social video will not happen overnight. The tips outlined above will help you get not just more followers, but also an active following.

Author Bio

Amos Onwukwe is an AWAI trained Business and Ecommerce Copywriter featured in Huffington Post, Dumb Little Man, Self Growth, Ecommerce Nation, eCommerce Insights, Understanding Ecommerce, Result First, Floship, Successful Startup 101, Small Biz Club, Small Business Bonfire, among others.

You can find him on Twitter @amos_onwukwe.

The Use of Videos in Social Marketing