Every time you open a social media app on your phone, a video starts playing. Video has become such a dominant form of communication on social media that it is almost impossible to increase the leads you generate from these platforms without using video. That’s why the world’s biggest digital social community, Facebook has launched Facebook Watch on its core platform and IGTV on Instagram. Videos on IGTV are vertical, meaning that they’re optimised for mobile viewing. Given that 75% of worldwide video viewing which now happens via mobile, this gives you an excellent opportunity to widen your customer base. Here’s how to use these new video curation services to boost your social media strategy and secure that broader appeal for your brand.
Focus Your Message
Facebook Watch allows you to upload both short and long videos. IGTV lets you upload videos that exceed Instagram’s previous maximum limit of one minute in length. If you’re launching a new product or service, you can post a short video explaining what’s new to Instagram. Then you can direct followers to Facebook Watch to view a longer ‘behind the scenes’ clip, showing the care you put into designing your new product/service, and then deciding how you were going to tell the world about it. By focusing videos on individual products, you can achieve levels of saturation and penetration into targeted demographics that were previously exclusively accessible to household names on television. These social video channels have three huge advantages over regular television. Firstly, they cost nothing to broadcast on. Secondly, according to Zenith people will spend 170.6 minutes online every day compared to 170.3 minutes a day watching television this year. This will be the first time that internet usage has overtaken TV watching, so your audience online has never been bigger. Thirdly, you can insert swipe up calls to action on IGTV. These videos then act as helpful reminders for them to buy from you whenever they need more of your great products. The same goes for services.
Build Support For Your Brand
Facebook Watch and IGTV are not just useful for advertising specific products and services. The differing video lengths give you a fantastic opportunity to show people what it took for you to reach the position you’re in today. This shows all of your followers the human side of your business and presents them with a genuinely relatable story that they’ll easily be able to get behind. Everyone sells either a product or a service. Your company’s values, ideas and the characters in your team distinguish your business from your competitors. Facebook’s latest video streaming platforms are built for displaying all of these things in a way that makes customers want to help you to succeed by giving you their business.
Interact With Your Customers More Effectively
A fantastic feature of IGTV allows you to invite your followers to submit videos they’ve made while using your products to your channel. You can then feature the best ones, showing followers that you genuinely care about how much they appreciate and your support your business. Better still, you can then also feature these videos on Facebook Watch. This is a fantastic way to boost engagement in your page while making sure that social media interactions are converting into sales.
These new video platforms will help you reach new audiences you didn’t even know existed with videos explaining your products through imaginative stories that your competitors aren’t creating. Say hello to massively increased market share.
