We’ve all been there.
Maybe you’re lying awake at night playing on your phone. Maybe you’re at work with a secret browser window open on your computer or your phone buried under your desktop when the boss walks by. Maybe you’re just waiting at the dentist’s office or just killing time.
No matter where it happens, we’ve all gotten caught up in watching videos online.
You know what we’re talking about. One minute you’re checking the weather, your bank balance, or the results of your company’s latest social media blitz…
…and before you know it, you’ve watched probably 20 videos.
What kinds of videos? Oh, virtually everything. Music videos, makeup tutorials, political parodies, your friend’s son’s history project, highlights from past seasons of America’s Got Talent, videos of cats dressed as the characters from Stranger Things, insert your favorite internet videos here.
Online videos are quite literally a black hole. One leads to another, and another, and another after that, and suddenly, three hours of your life are gone.
This hypnotic effect is a huge part of why, as we discussed in our last blog, videos have grown into the most valuable tool your business has to market your products and services to online consumers.
It’s been 14 years since a little site called YouTube started gaining traction, and since its founding in 2005, it’s grown into one of the most successful online video platforms in existence. YouTube gets approximately 30 million visitors per day, who view almost 5 billion videos daily and upload 300 hours of video every minute.
And it’s not just YouTube. While YouTube may be the best-known video sharing application, Facebook has overtaken it as the preferred platform for interacting with them.
What this tells us is that videos have also become increasingly shareable. In fact, posts on Facebook are significantly more likely to be shared if they include a video as opposed to just an image or text.
Here’s the truth about all this: video is the future and the future is here. In case you aren’t convinced yet, check this out:
- By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all online consumer traffic
- 90% of customers rely on video to help them make decisions on what products to buy—and 64% of them say video is the decisive factor in choosing to make a purchase
- A page with a video on it keeps people on the site 7 times longer than pages that do not have videos
So, if you’re not thinking about your video content strategy, you need to start now. The good news is that doing this is easier than you think.
And the even better news is that we’re about to simplify it even more.
If you already have a video strategy that works for you, great—hopefully we can give you even more ideas.
But if you don’t…what’s standing in your way?
It could be that you don’t know how to do it. Maybe you aren’t sure how to operate state of the art video equipment…but you can run the video feature on a smartphone, can’t you?
A video doesn’t need to be professionally produced to gain an audience online, and depending on your business, an informal video may even be a better fit to promote your product or service.
Maybe you don’t do videos because you’re camera-shy. Obviously, the easy way to fix that is to find someone in your office who isn’t—but even if you can’t, not all videos have to have a person front and center. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.
Or maybe…you feel like you just don’t have any good ideas.
If that’s your problem…then this post is for you. And these ideas just might help you solve those other two problems, too.
#1 – Animated Videos
We all loved watching cartoons growing up…but have you ever thought about why? It’s because humans are primarily visual creatures.
It’s why the majority of people would rather watch a video about a product than read about how it works—and why watching the video makes them more likely to buy that product.
Obviously, though, not all videos will have equal success with persuading consumers. The truth is, people don’t like to be sold to.
Therefore, when a company puts out a video for a product that pushes all the reasons people should buy it, it’s not going to be successful. In fact, it’s going to be a huge turnoff.
The best way to make a video about your product isn’t to focus on the sale—it’s to focus on the story.
And that’s where animated videos come in.
Animated videos are one of the most valuable social media video ideas you can consider. They trigger that same sense of curiosity and wonder you experienced watching cartoons as a kid. They take you into a different world with a unique setting and characters that are emotional and relatable.
They’re so entertaining that they make for an ideal way for your audience to bond with your brand—even without them realizing it.
Probably the best thing about animated videos is that they make big topics easy to understand by illustrating and dramatizing them. The explainer video, a video genre where companies explain their products and services using animated scenarios and characters accompanied by a voiceover, has been shown to be particularly effective.
Instead of having someone talking to the camera about your company like a stuffy college professor, animated videos bring things down to earth and give a fun explanation of what exactly your company does.
The best part about animated videos? They’re easy to make and inexpensive to produce. With video production platforms like Moovly, you can put together a quick, easy explainer video that doesn’t sacrifice quality for speed.
#2 – Behind the Scenes
Behind the scenes videos present a great deal of value to consumers. For one thing, they provide a glimpse of the practices and processes that go into making your product or service a reality, which lends credibility to what you do.
For another, they’re great for emotional appeal and building a relationship with customers—people get to see the actual faces behind what the company does. It humanizes you, which goes a long way to building trust with prospects.
Not only that…but it gives an up close and personal look at your company culture and how employees feel about what you do.
Behind the scenes videos can take a number of different forms. First, it can be a literal behind the scenes tour of your office or facility. Introduce your staff, show your product being put together, or give a walkthrough of the spaces where you hang out.
This can be especially fun if your company has a cool event—a picnic, a company trip, an in-office video game tournament. Documenting these events through a Facebook video can draw customers and prospects into the world of your company in a unique way.
You can also share humorous posts about life at your company and your employees. One caution, though—be careful of what social network you share it on. Funny content performs best on Instagram and Facebook, while LinkedIn is a more business-oriented community of professionals looking to further their careers.
Therefore, your video of the staff playing Twister during Friday afternoon office antics probably won’t go over too well with the LinkedIn crowd.
It doesn’t have to be all fun and games, though. Use your behind the scenes video to show how a big project is coming, or demonstrate and share your company’s core values. Regardless, it’s an opportunity to show your audience what life at your business really looks like.
#3 – Company Origin Story
Once upon a time, your company was just a germ of an idea in the back of your founder’s mind. Make a video telling that story. Like behind the scenes videos, it builds transparency and emotional connections with your viewers.
Showing where you came from and how you got there does a lot to develop trust and teach people about your business.
From there, you can take numerous approaches. Do an animated video that tells the story, or do an oral history through interviews with the founder, CEO, and employees.
Telling the story of how you came to exist does a lot to communicate your own journey as a relatable video content idea for social media.
And since your task in general is to present your product or service as the solution to whatever problem your viewers deal with, it also goes a long way to show that you empathize with their stories.
#4 – Client and Customer Testimonies
Your story isn’t the only one that can build trust and relationships with potential customers. The social proof of seeing how others have experienced success because of your product or service can go miles to show that it really does provide the solution they need.
So, how do you get these testimonies? One method is to run a special email campaign asking people to share their stories of how your product or service has changed their lives. Give them the option of either recording their story on video or writing it out.
Then, you can find a way to creatively tell that story, either through a live action video or animating that customer’s story.
#5 – Whiteboard Videos
The whiteboard video has grown in popularity over the past couple of years as a video content idea for social media. It’s relatively self-explanatory: someone teaches viewers a concept related to their business by writing or drawing on a whiteboard.
Not only does this video type appeal to our visual preferences, but it also retains our focus and attention. The white surface presents the concept free of any distractions or unnecessary content, which makes it a great way to explain your product or service.
Here’s the catch, though: there are ways to use whiteboard videos and there are most certainly ways to misuse them. The best time for making one of these videos is when you have a somewhat complicated topic to teach your audience. Writing down and illustrating your ideas makes it easier to understand and engaging to watch.
It also works if you want a professional and corporate feel for your video, but also want to have some well-placed entertainment.
These videos can quickly go bad, though, if you leave out key elements. For one thing, part of the appeal of these videos is continuity—for instance, viewers must constantly see a hand writing or drawing and the images and ideas must naturally unfold without stopping.
Also—a whiteboard video is not someone standing in front of a whiteboard with concepts already written on it explaining those ideas to viewers. That’s called a lecture and it belongs in a college classroom, not your social media video.
#7 – Live Videos
The best video content ideas for social media are the ones that stay ahead of the curve, and that’s what live video does. While videos posted on Facebook have mostly been previously recorded, live video is quickly becoming the next big thing.
In fact, people actually spend more time watching live videos on social media than pre-recorded content.
Not only that, but live video is slowly stepping into territory currently occupied by blogs—80% of social media users would rather watch a livestream than read a blog post about the same topic.
That alone should be evidence that if your company isn’t using livestreaming, you can’t afford to ignore it any longer.
And it goes beyond just live video being a current trend. Live videos put you up close and personal with your audience and create trust and transparency as a result.
But doing a live video doesn’t mean you have to put together a big production. Really, some of the ideas we’ve talked about so far can be tailored to fit this format.
For example, you could interview a customer or client, give a live behind the scenes tour of your office, or show what employees are up to in their individual positions.
#8 – Pop Culture Posts
You might wonder what the Game of Thrones finale, the Super Bowl, Will Ferrell, or the newest viral meme have to do with your business…but the answer is quite a lot.
Any time you can capitalize off a viral trend or big media event, you show your viewers that you’re in touch with what’s going on in the world beyond your business.
The thing about pop culture is that everyone has an opinion about it—what character is going to get killed off next on a TV show, who’s going to win the big game, what the hottest show on Netflix is.
And by engaging people with those opinions in a Facebook video, you’ll not only gain awareness of your brand, but get more engagement in your posts. It’s one of the video content ideas for social media that’s guaranteed to get people involved.
So, take a poll in your office on these topics and share the results on video. Or better yet—do something related to pop culture topics involving your brand, like this Oreo Game of Thrones commercial.
#9 – Seasonal Videos
Did you know that most companies don’t interact with customers on holidays? Yours can be the one that breaks the mold.
Even if it’s just a short video wishing your followers a happy Fourth of July with a clip of your CEO grilling burgers while wearing an Uncle Sam hat, it’s an opportunity to connect with people and show the human side of your company.
#10 – How To or Demonstrations
To be clear—demos and explainer videos aren’t the same thing. Explainer videos give customers the low-down on what your product or service accomplishes and all the benefits that come with it. Demos show your customers how to accomplish something with your product or show it in action.
Nobody does demonstration videos better than the blender company Blendtec. In their viral line of “Will It Blend?” videos, CEO Tom Dickson attempts to show the power of his blenders by blending various unusual items, including iPhones and iPads, a crowbar, an Amazon Echo, and even an assemblage of Justin Bieber fan products.
The videos are witty, entertaining, and of course, carry a sense of intrigue about whether or not the objects actually will blend.
Your demo video doesn’t necessarily have to be that elaborate. If you sell some kind of kitchen appliance, teach people how to make a recipe with it or show some kind of neat feature of an electronic product.
The idea is that showing how to do something with your product is a preview of what customers can accomplish with it, which creates greater awareness and engagement.
As the fastest growing and most popular tool for interacting on social media, video offers untold creative promotional opportunities for your business.
Not sure where to get started with video content ideas for social media? Cirius Marketing can help you get your video strategy underway. Call us at 855-607-7766 or email hello@ciriusmarketing.com to explore opportunities for video marketing.