If you want to get more engagement out of your social media marketing efforts, you should be creating more videos as there are several studies that show that videos drive more engagement. Here’s one that found that videos generate more engagement on Instagram and here’s one that shows that they generate more engagement on Twitter.

There are also visual social networks like YouTube and IGTV where you can only publish videos.

Therefore, if you create more quality videos it will give you an edge over your competition. But creating videos can seem like a complicated process. So, to simplify this for you I have created a list of my top tips for creating social videos that generate more engagement…

Brainstorm ideas:

Before you begin creating videos, you need to brainstorm several ideas. I recommend that you follow a meticulous process here as you need to create videos on content that your audience wants to watch. Quite often people end up creating videos on any topic they ‘feel’ their audience ‘might’ like watching and they end up with some videos that do well and many videos that don’t. Instead, if you do the research you will only create videos on topics that your audience wants.

So, start with a well planned out research process.

First, go through Google Analytics data to see which of your blog posts are getting the most views. If your visitors are reading these posts it shows that they are interested in these topics. They would be interested in watching videos on the same topics too.

Next, look up the posts URLs on Buzzsumo to see how well they do on social media. Buzzsumo will show you the number of shares the posts got.

Insert image: use buzzsumo for topic research

If they are getting a lot of shares it means that video content on these topics would perform well on social media too.

If you want to get even more data you can search similar keywords (to the ones you want to target) on Buzzsumo. It will show you the top performing content on these topics. You can also add URLs of videos from networks like YouTube to see how much they got shared.

After you perform all this research you will be able to accurately predict what type of content would do well on social media. So, you can brainstorm your topics. I recommend that you come up with at least 20 topics that ‘could work’ and filter them down to 5 that definitely will.

Create the videos:

Once you have a list of ideas that will work, you can begin creating the videos. For this, you will need to record the video first with a good camera and then set it up with a video maker or editing tool. A good affordable tool you can try is Screencast-O-Matic’s video editor. You can mix and match videos from your mobile phone or add a webcam recording.  Just add your videos to the video editor and edit them so that they fit in well together.

Insert image: Screencast O Matic for editing videos

It also lets you add overlays such as text, arrows, and icons. You can even use it to record your screen.

The type of videos you create should depend on the social networks you are creating them for. For example, if you are creating them for Instagram’s feed, you should be creating more square-shaped videos. While for Instagram stories you should create taller/portrait videos. You should also create portrait videos for Facebook feed as people find them more engaging on Facebook. And for YouTube, you should be creating more landscape shaped videos.

So, instead of creating the same video for all the networks, create a unique one for each. Also, make sure that you optimize the videos for mobile viewing as a large percentage of people will be watching them on mobile. For example, if you are using subtitles and other types of overlays, you need to make sure that they are big enough to view on mobile.

Take great care while publishing the videos:

After you create videos you can publish them, but you need to take great care here too. Some important things you need to do are to publish them at the right time, accompany them with a good description/caption and include relevant hashtags.

The other elements of a social media post like the hashtags can seem trivial, but they can be as important as the video itself in helping you generate more engagement and views. So, give plenty of attention to these aspects while publishing the videos.

Promote the videos:

Social media has become very competitive. People publish billions of posts every day. On Instagram alone, people share over 4.75 billion items on an average day. This is why you won’t automatically drive engagement as soon as you publish your videos. In order to get the best results, you need to promote them.

So, draw up a promotion plan and spend as much time as you can to promote them. Some top content creators actually spend more time promoting their videos than creating them.

A few effective techniques you can try are ads, partnerships and outreach. These will help you get your videos in front of more people.

If you are on a tight budget, you can start off with free methods like partnerships and outreach. A tool like Email Hunter can help you find influencers.

Insert image: use a good email outreach tool

Once your budget increases you can try out more expensive methods like ads.

Analyze your data:

After you publish and promote your videos, you need to analyze your results. This will give you insights on which videos did well and which ones failed. All of this information will help you create better videos in the future.

So, use your social network’s built-in analytics or get a good social media analytics tool to analyze your videos. And keep a record of all this data and use it to not just create better videos, but a better social media strategy as well.

Conclusion

These are the top tips for creating social videos that generate more engagement. Implement them today to reach your social media marketing goals. They require a bit of effort, but you will be very satisfied with the results you generate.

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