Probably the number one thing I would recommend most businesses do is DO MORE VIDEO on social. Whatever that form takes, businesses should take a deep dive into their content possibilities, whether it’s tutorials, highlighting products or services, or interesting interviews, there’s always room for more video.
And with the various editing software out there that are pretty easy to use, even apps and iMovie, which comes standard on iPhones, it’s also pretty easy to quickly edit something together.
So after you have your grand video ideas and you shoot them (yes, you can use an iPhone, I shoot with my phone all the time and I did put together viral social videos for a top television station using my phone as well), and you’re ready to put together your final product, these two things will help them go even further.
- As I mentioned in a previous blog post, USE YOUR BEST SHOT FIRST. Why? Because you have five seconds TOPS to rope a viewer into staying and if you’re showing them three seconds of a static graphic with your company name on it, they chances shrink exponentially that they’re going to stick around for more. As a former social media producer for a large television station, the one thing that launched our videos into stardom was using the best possible shot (or a variety of amazing shots first in a quick-moving sequence) to hook viewers into staying. The video autoplays in Facebook’s newsfeed, so why not use that to your advantage?
- The #2 thing you should add to your videos is captioning. Why? Because very often, people watch videos in places where they need to volume to be off. So, if you’re putting together a video of your talking head, there is a larger chance that people will pass on it if they are watching with the audio off – UNLESS you have captioning on. Then, you just roped them into staying a little longer, hopefully.
You can add captioning by putting words on your video in your editing software during the editing process, whether you use iMovie, or editing apps like Canva (which can be used on both desktop and in an app) or Square Edit. Canva even offers free stock video options if you need to supplement your content. I use Adobe Premiere, which is a subscription cloud-based service offered by Adobe Creative Cloud, and it offers not only Photoshop for still photos but Lightroom, an app on your phone to do quick photo edits, and Adobe Spark, which is a great desktop or phone application that helps you create awesome social graphics and even easy social videos with music that’s cleared to use.
The other way you can add captioning is without the use of any outside apps at all, but with Facebook’s built-in captioning, which can be found in Publishing Tools, and on the lefthand side, Creator Studio.
- Here’s the tutorial on using Facebook captioning: https://www.facebook.com/help/509746615868430
When you go to upload your video, there’s an “enable captioning” option that you can check. Just make sure that you READ THROUGH THE CAPTIONS BEFORE POSTING. Often, there are misspellings (voice to text probs!) and you can fix the spellings and also make sure the words match up to what you’re saying.
Yes, it does take a little extra time to put the finishing touches on your social videos this way, but it’s way worth it. If you’re putting in the time to create videos, you may as well make your videos the absolute best they can be.
Get creative! Stand out. Get shares. Get noticed.
You are solving problems for people and there is no doubt you have valuable visuals to go along with it. Tell people all about it on your social pages.
Watch my social video example below (for subscribers who can’t see it, click here.)