Social Media is one of the key tools you should use to find and engage prospects, and video content will boost your response. In fact, marketers and anyone in new business development like mortgage loan originators or real estate agents should keep in mind that video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. This is great for building awareness of yourself and your company.
Here are 7 tips for producing social media videos like a pro on the top social media platforms…
Video length: Videos that run between 15 seconds and 2 minutes have the highest completion rates across social media platforms.
However, don’t make video length your primary focus.
There are plenty of long-form videos, for example, targeting a B2B audience on LinkedIn well over 5:00 in length that do well. In fact, LinkedIn suggests that videos be at least 30 seconds and up to 5 minutes because users are aiming for deeper information that can be shared with a professional audience.
The length you select for your video will depend on the purpose as well. For example, if the purpose is simply building awareness of your mortgage company or real estate brokerage, keeping it to around 15 seconds, or as close to that as possible, will enable the best completion rates, especially if it’s an advertisement. That rule changes however if you’re providing educational content.
Here are some optimal video length guidelines for other social platforms:
Instagram:
- Stories: 1–7 slides
- Reels: 15-60 seconds
- In-feed video: 60 seconds or less
TikTok: 20 seconds or under
YouTube:
- Regular Video: 7-15 minutes
- Shorts: 15-60 seconds
Twitter: 15 seconds or less
Facebook: 15 seconds to 3+ minutes
Audio quality: Poor audio is always a deal breaker! But that doesn’t mean that the audio needs to be perfect at all times. It all depends on the video you are shooting and how you’re going to use it. If you’re shooting a :30 commercial, a webinar or a podcast, then you want to invest in a high-grade mic with a pop filter and record in a sound-proofed room. However, if you’re shooting a brief educational, real time or entertainment-oriented video, for the most part these can be done with the built-in mic on your phone.
Captions: Video watch time is a critical metric you should be paying attention to. Plus, it’s an important search engine ranking factor. If you add relevant and exciting captions to your video, studies say you can increase your viewership rate by 40% and increase the chances of completion by up to 80%.
Lighting: A lot of people hate shooting video of themselves. Why? They think they look old or tired (dark circles around their eyes). This is because they try to pull it off without proper lighting and with an outdated or cheap camera.
You can achieve a good-looking video with a key light positioned at 10:00 to light up your face and a fill light at 2:00 to get rid of the shadows. A backlight at 5:00 can be used to create some depth.
Once again, depending on the purpose of the video, you can even use natural light which can look great if you position yourself properly. It is not necessary to have professional lighting for all of your videos, especially if it keeps you from shooting more videos. Focus on getting the content out there. Providing great value to your audience doesn’t always require perfect lighting.
Use native video: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook let you upload video directly to their platforms. Doing this increases your organic and paid reach vs. just sharing from YouTube. However, YouTube lets you share and embed video anywhere and allows for much longer videos, so don’t discount this valuable platform.
Be interesting: Many people think that just because they put themselves out there on video that engagement and shares will happen like magic. The only problem is that now people expect to see video produced by your company, so the bar is higher.
Set an expectation with the title and video thumbprint and then make sure you fulfil it. If your video is slow, monotone or comes off as relatively boring, this leads to viewer abandonment. Once you lose viewers, it’s hard to get them back because you’re branding your videos as monotonous. So, practice being interesting and work on your post-production skills to bring it all home.
View analytics: Review the analytics available to you on the various platforms. For example, audience engagement graphs can let you know where you consistently lose viewership. By studying these points in time, perhaps you can conclude what is driving that and experiment with ways to fix it.
According to HubSpot, 87% of marketers now use video in their strategies. Chances are good that you’re part of that statistic and you came here looking for some tips. If you’re not, what are you waiting for? You know what they say…”the light doesn’t get any greener!”
