Why You Should Incorporate Videos In Your Social Media

There was a time when generating videos was a privilege reserved for big companies with the budget to plan, create and distribute... until now. The countless number of video making tools and better, cutting edge cameras available in smartphones have broken down that barrier to entry. Video content is now a commodity that is still under-utilized for the most part.This shift is important because the way your audience is consuming content is changing, and so should your content strategy! Here are 5 reasons why you should start incorporating video content in your social media marketing plan:

1. Everyone watches videos... 38 billion a year.

Videos are engaging. If a picture says a thousand words, imagine how much a video has to say? With 38.2 billion video views from U.S. alone in 2014, it's safe to say that almost everyone with Internet access consumes video content in some form. This indicates an increased consumer appetite for video content. When surveyed, 72% of the marketers indicated that they plan to incorporate or increase video content in their social media marketing strategy. This shift towards video content is an unbelievable opportunity for marketers to try new avenues to distribute their message!

72% of the marketers indicated that they plan to incorporate or increase video content in their social media marketing strategy.

2. Videos rank better.

Engineers behind platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are optimizing their algorithms in a way that favours video content over images or text. In 2014, Facebook made changes to its algorithm to display more videos in users' news feeds. Google's search engine optimization (SEO) algorithms rank blog posts accompanying videos higher than text and image supported content. Yes, embedding videos into your blogs will help you with your SEO climb.

3. The gift of auto-play.

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter auto-play your videos as users scroll through the feed. This means the first few seconds of your video will be seen by your audience without them taking any action. Prior to this, the success of video content was heavily based on the thumbnail and title to incentivize plays, rather than the video content itself.Now, sharing videos on these social media platforms essentially guarantees you a few seconds to prove to your audience that this is a video worth watching. With an engaging video, those viewers will continue to consume the complete video, leading them to your ultimate marketing goal - for example clicking on a call to action (Facebook lets you create call to action buttons on your videos read more).

4. Video is mobile friendly.

Text heavy content may not be ideal for smaller screens such as smartphones, but that is not the case for video content. Mobile devices account for 40% of all video views in YouTube; and that is going to grow faster than you think!

Fun fact: Internet browsing from mobile devices increased at a mind-blowing rate of 83% in the last year alone.

If these stats are anything to go by, you should have mobile viewers in mind when creating video content for social media.

5. Videos make you authentic.

Videos have the uncanny ability of allowing you to be authentic with your viewers. No better example than Gary Vaynerchuk's ability to use videos to interact and engage with his audience. It is naturally a better medium to get to know something or someone compared to text or images. When done right, videos bring out your personality and character, leading to a more personal relationship with your audience (don't be this brand).At the end of the day it's you telling your story. What is your story and how will you use videos to tell it?[formidable id="12" title="1"]