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6 Types of Video Content to Supercharge Your Social Media Marketing – ZoomSphere

It’s simple: they use video marketing collateral, and lots of it.

According to one recent study, about one-third of the time the average person spends online is spent watching videos. Another study confirmed that about 60% of people say that they watch branded videos on various social media sites on a daily basis. But most importantly, companies that market using high-quality video collateral on social media tend to have than those who don’t bother.

All of this is possible because of the natural power that you can ONLY unlock with the right kinds of videos. Even with limited organic reach, using videos is still an ideal way to not only stand out from the crowd online but to take your marketing message directly to the people – sharing your story with your target audience far and wide. It can help not only with the conversion from social media ads, but it can build brand loyalty – and yes – increase engagement along the way.

But one of the most essential things to understand is that there isn’t one right type of video content you can use to do all of this and more on social media. In fact, there are six that you’re definitely going to want to pay close attention to moving forward.

Live Videos

If you’re truly looking for a sure-fire way to supercharge your social media marketing and grow your online community, live videos need to become a major part of how you do it. If you want someone to fully buy into your marketing message, you need them to be exposed to it for as long as possible. That’s why it’s so important to know that the average person will watch about 42.8 minutes of live video content before their attention starts to wander – far, far longer than nearly every other type of format you can think of!

Now, that’s not to say that you should suddenly drop what you’re doing and have live video become the ONLY part of your social media marketing efforts. As always, everything has its place and creating even a live video a day will be overwhelming for both you AND your audience.

Instead, consider holding one live session a week where you solicit questions from your audience members and respond in real-time, or have a deep dive interview with a thought influencer in your industry. So long as you’re making an effort to actively utilize live video on a regular basis, you’ll start to see gains generated from this content before you know it.

Here’s a great example of a live Facebook video from :

Customer Testimonials

Everyone knows that if you really want to make a killer YouTube video, emotion is how you do it. Great content rises above being just a series of still images flashing by on-screen at 24 frames per second. Great content is that which stays in your head long after it’s finished and without emotion, you’ll never be able to get to that point.

This is also what makes customer testimonial videos so naturally effective – you’re giving someone a chance to tell their story in their own words. Instead of reading the same information, viewers can hear the inflection in someone’s voice and see the look in their eyes – both of which make the difference and make it far, far easier to connect. Video testimonials also have an 89% effectiveness rating because of that emotional response, so definitely create as many of these as you can use your existing, satisfied customers. Here’s an example of customer video testimonials from , a leading video monetization platform:

Q&A Videos

Q&A videos are another great way to supercharge your social media marketing because they’re naturally engaging by default. It’s the type of content that you can’t create on your own – without real questions from your real, existing audience members, you don’t have what you need to make the video in the first place.

But Q&A videos are more than just another educational tool, too. They’re a way to show your audience members that you really care. They have concerns, and you’re willing to stop what you’re doing to address them. By talking about what OTHER people want to talk about (as opposed to forcing them to listen to whatever you were already trying to say), you’re also establishing yourself as a true authority in the subject matter. When people start to trust your opinion on things, they start to trust your brand – and that’s the type of cachet on social media that you simply cannot buy.

Here’s an example of Q&A videos in action, from New York’s famous Museum of Modern Art:

Behind the Scenes Videos

Behind the scenes videos are the perfect opportunity to show people how much hard work really goes into the products and services that they’ve spent time enjoying. Via an OTT service like YouTube, you can devote time to creating behind the scenes videos for just about anything.

Maybe you’ve got a big company event coming up where you’ll spend a Saturday afternoon helping your community in some way. Bring a camera along and show your employees setting up for the event. Or give a “fly on the wall” perspective and film your next meeting where you’re talking about some important new feature that you’re thinking of implementing. Show people the types of problems you and your team members are facing on a regular basis, and the ingenuity and creativity that goes into solving them.

Behind the scenes videos are a great way to separate yourself from your competitors on social media because a lot of those other organizations probably aren’t willing to show off their vulnerable side. They don’t want to admit that they run into problems and they WANT people to think that their products just appear out of thin air. By going in the complete opposite direction, you’re again showing people something that they can relate to – and that will benefit the rest of your campaign (and your revenue), too. Here’s a great example of a brand using behind the scenes videos. an email marketing company, created a behind-the-scenes video of its company retreat in Oceanside, California:

Meet the Team Videos

Typically, we tend to take our relationships with brands for granted as consumers. Brands aren’t a living, breathing thing – they’re a cold, calculated corporate entity that only exists to serve us. It’s easy to forget that there are hardworking men and women who bring these products and services that we enjoy to life – and by creating meet the team videos, you can help break free from this impression and give your audience members yet another emotional source to latch onto.

People love personalities. There’s a reason why the accounts with the most followers on social media tend to belong to celebrities – they’re willing to put a big part of their personality on display for the benefit of people on sites like Facebook and Twitter. With meet the team videos, you can do the exact same thing by featuring one video introducing your entire staff, or shorter videos devoted to each person. Let your employees talk about who they are when they’re not in the office – give people something to relate to, little by little.

The key thing here is that you’re breaking free of the myth that “companies aren’t people, they’re things.” Once people start to see your brand as one populated by real people with real personalities on social media, they’ll have an easier time connecting with that brand on an emotional level – and that will absolutely bleed into their willingness to purchase the products and services you offer, too.

Here’s a great example of Meet the team videos from Eventbrite:

Explainer Videos

Finally, we arrive at explainer videos – yet another opportunity to not only educate your audience on a topic that is important to you, but to also establish yourself as an authority along the way. Once again, you have a lot of freedom, here. You could make one five minute explainer video with an overview of how to get more out of the purchase someone has just made. Or you could take ten minutes and give your thoughts on some recent piece of legislation that impacts your industry, or on a breaking news topic that intersects with the audience, you’re trying to serve. In this explainer video, Wix introduces you to their mobile editor:

According to another recent study, about 97% of businesses who are actively using explainer videos say that it definitely helps users understand their business to a greater degree than ever before.

Indeed, formats like these are why about one out of every four people say they view videos related to a product they’re thinking of buying, and are more likely to buy a product AFTER they’ve watched a video than before – especially on social media.

Your competitors are just marketing to people on social media. With video content, on the other hand, you’re doing something more than that. You’re having a genuine, two-way conversation with them – and rest assured that additional effort will be rewarded by way of a supercharged social media marketing campaign and via higher revenues beyond it.
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PJ is the founder and president of Uscreen, an all-in-one video monetization platform that allows creators and businesses to distibute and monetize their content via the web and OTT platforms.

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