Five Types of Videos for Social Media by Wistia and Mention
Recently, I attended a webinar organised by Wistia and Mention on the types of videos to boost one’s social media efforts. As a junior marketer myself, I was looking out for something new to learn and draw inspiration from. Not only were my expectations fulfilled but I was also tempted to share what I learnt from the webinar with others.
Now let’s move on to the five types of videos you should create and publish on social media to drive engagement and conversions.
Tips and Tricks
Tips and Tricks are videos in which you get an opportunity to share your knowledge in a specific subject with your audience. According to Laika network, ‘How-to’ videos are second on the list of most popular types of videos on YouTube. Be it food, fashion, technology or lifestyle; how-to videos are always trending and they’re a kind of tips and tricks video.
Recommended for : Businesses with an average / above average follower base because the content will be trusted better.
Ideas: How to videos, Hacks to Follow, Listing videos
What’s important: Good lighting, an organized display of equipments / props if any used. Having an explainer could be good choice.
This video by HubSpot could help you understand tips and tricks videos better:
Company Culture
Did you say fun shooting? Well, this is the one. As the name suggests, these videos expose the company culture to the audiences. Company culture videos are generally created to encourage people to join one’s team. They can be further categorized to:
- Cultural crowdsource - Get snippets from multiple employees talking about their experience in the company and put them together. Have a look at how GoDaddy created their company culture video
- Big Interview - Get one or two members of your company to speak about the idea behind your brand or their journey. It is recommended to have founders of the company or team leaders as part of the Big Interview video. This video by HubSpot is a great example of a Big Interview video.
- B-roll Montage and Slice of Life - Here, the visual appeal is what matters the most. Digiday has stated that on Facebook, 85% of videos are watched on mute. For such platforms, these kind of videos can be the most helpful. You should check out this Slice of Life video by Carlos Costa, an employee at GoPro.
One tip for Company Culture videos would be to add some bloopers :-).
Recommended for: Businesses that are looking forward to expanding their team
Ideas: Interview of the founders, activities/challenges with the team
What’s Important: Special attention given to backgrounds.
Check out this video from Google for some more clarity on Company Culture videos:
Account-based
How would you feel if someone dedicates a post to you at the most unexpected time? With Account-based videos, a brand/company communicates with other brand/company’s accounts. This will help reach the targeted account’s audience as well. This can include conveying a particular message or just highlighting one of the opposite brand’s features that inspires you the most. It is important to choose an account that is related to your brand/company.
Recommended for: Mostly small and medium-size businesses.
Ideas: Convey a thank you message like Wistia, Reach out to one of your renowned clients.
What’s Important: An understanding of the other brand/company’s follower base, original and innovative content.
Influencer
Influencer videos are considered the best for new businesses. Your business might be new but with the help of an influencer, the audience will develop trust and credibility for your brand. Influencer videos also help save a lot of time in promotions. In case the duration of your video is too long, you can opt to create teasers for certain social media platforms and give the original link to the video in the description.
Recommended for: Small businesses.
Ideas: Send across free samples of your products, get in touch with them over email or twitter and ask them to share their feedback with their audiences. Get some referral code or special discounts ready for customers that come through a particular influencer. Have a panel of influencers to talk about your product/brand similar to what Mention did.
What’s Important: To find the right influencer.
Product Explainer
Reach out to the audiences with new products or new features of existing products with Product Explainer videos. It is always recommended to display how the product/service will benefit and solve a problem of the audience rather than just listing the features.
Recommended for: Small and medium-size businesses
Ideas: Show how easy can your product/service make their life. Testimonies are great product explainer videos just like how we did at Typito.
What’s Important: Keep the videos short and to the point.
This is a summary of the incredible webinar I attended. Along with the above-mentioned details, I would also suggest that you pay attention to the duration of the video you plan to produce. Videos up to 2 minutes long do relatively better than their counterparts who are longer than 2 minutes says Wistia. They also mention that there is a significant drop-off between 2 and 3 minutes.
Having a Call-to-Action (CTA) in your video can be another smart move. You can read some more about how CTAs help boosts your revenue and increase business here.
We believe these are the types of videos that could help you transform your online video marketing game. But, there is no hard and fast rule on which type you can produce. Content marketing is also about experimenting. And who knows, you might just end up setting a trend for several others to get inspired.
Stay tuned for more tips, listings, and updates on video marketing.
