Social video has the power to make or break a brand. Video’s multisensory impact, combined with the addressability and measurement of social media platforms, creates a huge opportunity to engage target audiences.
The potential reach of social video is immense. Video is expected to account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017 and more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube every month. Facebook and Twitter – which have both recently introduced video advertising – have 1.35 billion and 284 million monthly active users respectively. For consumers, social video fulfils a growing need for information and entertainment, while for marketers, it presents an attentive audience waiting to be targeted with engaging multisensory video content.
Achieving marketing goals in this highly competitive advertising landscape requires an understanding of the art of social video, including audience targeting, video ad formats, budget allocation, and campaign measurement.
So how can marketers crack the code to social media video success?
Make it personal
A one-size-fits-all approach to social video may be convenient, but all too often it will end up not fitting anyone. As more prominence is given to audience engagement, marketers and advertisers must move away from convenience and towards highly relevant, personalised content. Rather than distributing one social video to a broad audience, brands should experiment with customised messaging for individual audience segments based on interests, preferences, and behaviour. They can apply the lessons they learn to future social video campaigns, increasing relevance and performance.
Embrace native
Native, video, and social are three of the biggest trends in digital advertising, so when combined the results are phenomenal. Native is the future of social video, and Facebook and Twitter’s recently launched video solutions provide engaging premium video experiences in a native setting. Brands can use native video to give audiences what they want – quality content that blends into the user experience – and can benefit from further engagement via social endorsement and sharing. Advertisers who use native social video formats have seen campaign performance increase fivefold when compared with leading video on demand channels.
Build brand narrative
Social video is a powerful tool for brand building, and enables marketers to tell a captivating brand story through highly engaging content and sequential messaging. Through social video, the limits to a brand’s narrative are eradicated, allowing for a more meaningful ongoing dialogue with the consumer and memorable customer experience. Social video allows a brand to capture the audience’s imagination and attention in a familiar environment and encourages them to become involved in the brand story.
Plan traditionally
Social video campaigns should be planned using the traditional reach and frequency metrics that are applied to other channels, combined with industry-standard audience insight. The sheer enormity of social media means it can deliver as much scale as traditional reach channels, and opens up a unique opportunity for brands to engage new customers and serve targeted video content with greater cost efficiency than traditional video channels.
Facebook, Twitter, and other leading social networks are powerful platforms for brand building, and when these are united with the immersive and emotive qualities of video, the results are impressive. By personalising video content, embracing native, telling a brand story, and planning to traditional metrics, the journey to brand success can begin with social video.
