Social media is proving one of the most effective marketing tools for businesses during the pandemic. With stay-at-home and social distancing requirements, social media use and online searches in certain segments are soaring. Interactive forms of content like business videos and podcasts are trending on social media. Complemented by digital transcription services, marketing on social media networks is reaching a new high during these challenging times.
Content with a visual element attracts 94% more views than content without, according to social media marketing expert Jeff Bullas. Views will increase by over 45% in a press release that has both a photo and a video. Using visuals like videos and podcasts in your social media marketing campaign allows you to communicate with your audience and build your brand. Here are 5 tips to make the most of social video:
- Create attractive, relevant videos: Look around on social media to understand the topics trending in your niche. When it comes to social media marketing, you need to invest resources to create attractive, relevant content to capture the interest of your target audience. Consider creating different types of short videos such as:
- A Frequently Asked Question video
- Interviews with influencers from your niche or other individuals your audience would value.
- Informative and educative how-to-videos about your products or services
- Humorous videos with your marketing message
Posting creative videos on social media to reach your target audience can attract millions of views, depending on how large your target market is.
- Use a combination of visuals: Video is considered the type of content with the best return on investment according to 51% of marketing professionals worldwide, and social video generates 12 times more shares than text and images combined, notes a Nasdaq article. To please social media algorithms and diversify your feed, the article recommends using a combination of videos and infographics. Using personal photos of yourself and your business will help your customers and followers relate to you.
- Leverage the power of podcasts: Podcasting offers a way to build positive connections with prospective customers. One of the greatest advantages of a podcast is that people can actively listen to it while they’re engaged in other activities such as driving, commuting, exercising, etc. Audience-specific social media marketing podcasts that are educational, describe best practices and provide relevant news are a powerful marketing medium for brands and businesses.
- Optimize your video content for search engines: To capture attention, and produce conversions, video content needs to be optimized generally and for the specific features of each social media platform. Here are some tips to help you accomplish this:
- Keep videos short but informative as viewers have a short attention span
- Optimize videos for mobile. With more and more people engaging on social media using mobile devices, ensure that your video and accompanying text can be viewed successfully on mobile.
- Create and upload a custom thumbnail or choose the right still image to represent your video on social media platforms.
- Add buttons to your visual content: Videos and other visual content can be easily shared on social media. Add call-to-action buttons in your videos will encourage viewers to share them, driving better audience engagement and higher click-through rates.
So, where do digital transcription services come in? According to one report, 85% of video viewing takes place with the sound off! So, you have to design your video in the way that the content is conveyed without sound. To help your audience to understand your video, post a transcripts and captions with it. The transcription can be done using speech recognition software, but have it edited by a digital transcription service provider to ensure that the text matches the audio in the video and is accurately interpreted.
As we have seen, posting business videos on social media offers many advantages. But videos can become outdated after they are watched repeatedly. One good thing about business videos is that you can repurpose the content using video transcription services and other strategies. Posting the transcript along with the video will promote visibility in search and ensure that the awesome content that you created is shared across various marketing channels. The best videos for transcription are those that target your customers/prospects and explain industry concepts and provide information about your products and services. Transcribing interviews with experts will allow your audience to return to it and refer to the key points whenever they want.
Providing a complete transcript of your podcasts will make them accessible to a wider audience. You can also pull quotes from the text to highlight key moments from the show if you don’t want to publish full transcripts.
The main advantage of including transcripts of your social media business videos and podcasts is that it will allow your audience to find your content easily on the web. Optimizing the content with the right keywords is a proven method to boost search engine optimization.
