Video is the undoubtedly the most engaging type of content across all social media platforms. Below, we’ve listed seven ways you can maximise the potential of video content for your social media campaigns…
1. Use Captions
With over half of all video content consumed on mobile devices often in public spaces with the sound off, captions are essential if you want your message to cut through and to boost SEO. In fact, 80% of social videos are watched without sound, with a 40% increase in views if videos are captioned. When it comes to social media viewing, your donors will be mainly interested in keeping up to date on issues that they are interested in and to learn something new.
With captions you have two options:
- Closed Captions: Unbranded, uploaded as a separate file and are able to be turned on or off.
- Open Captions: Automatically appear on the screen and can’t be turned off. Can be designed in accordance with organisation-specific branding.
2. Save you your best content for the start
Short attention spans coupled with sound restrictions mean careful planning is needed around how to hook your audience in the first 5-10 seconds. For example, using a hybrid approach combining attention grabbing text and imagery can increase impact and encourage viewer retention.
3. Mobile Phone Optimisation
With over half of video content viewed on a mobile device, correctly formatting your video content to suit the viewing platform will result in a greater likelihood that the video will not only be viewed to completion, but also shared. This was tested with the Jane Goodall Institute with results indicating that a square format on mobile directly impacted the number of views and shares received.
“85% of people are annoyed by videos where the orientation isn’t optimal” (https://breadnbeyond.com/VIDEO-MARKETING/)
4. Stream Live
80% of the population favour a live video over sifting through blog and social posts. NFPs can make use of this social media feature by scheduling times to go live in a variety of ways (listed below) and interact with their audience in real time. There is a growing need for people to feel intimately connected to the center of action as it happens.
Some of the ways you can engage with your viewers is through:
✔ Conduct a short interview
✔ Make an announcement
✔ Show behind the scenes
✔ Explain something
✔ Live Q and A
5. Engage with micro influencers
Micro-influencers are generally considered to be well trusted and genuine when it comes to their area of interest with a pool of followers of roughly 1,000 to 30,000. Despite a smaller following and a lower prole compared with macro-influencers, the level of engagement can often be higher and for NFPs, establishing a relationship can be easier and less costly. This also presents an opportunity to broaden your organisation’s audience provided that the inuencer and the niche they operate in are a suitable match.
6. Add videos to your email campaigns
Adding a video to the content of your email and in the subject header can help to boost your click-through rates and encourage your donors to forward the content on to others. Unfortunately, many email accounts can’t receive embedded video in email, so the safest way to do this is to host the video on Youtube and have an image link in the body of the email or newsletter.
Fact: A Facebook experiment reported that the average reach of a captioned video on the social platform was 16% higher than the same video without captions.
7. Add video GIFs to your email signature
This is a cost-effective and impactful way of promoting your latest content.
