The best way to utilize social media for business is to understand which platform applies to your audience, and what style of content are you great at creating. Both of those will be a juggling of balls, and throw in new platforms and changing algorithms to the mix. So what do you do?
Of course we’re biased, but, on websites almost 80% of the time someone will click a video before they read a word of text. Video works! We consume so much video, in fact, we view more than 1 billion hours of video daily on YouTube. (YouTube). In fact 65% of people use YouTube to help them solve a problem. Want to fix a leaky faucet or understand some insanely complex mortgage terms? Try YouTube! (Google)
And that is how you can use it for your business.
What problems are your product or service solving? What questions are your customers asking before they show up and add your product to their cart?
- If you can do some SEO analysis, you can understand some of the questions they’re asking pertaining to your field and you can then create content based on their needs. This helps build trust in you and your brand, and thus next time they have a problem, or, if in general just have no interest in swapping out that kitchen sink, they’ll call the plumber that helped them fix their leaky sink via YouTube video (if he’s local).
2. If you have a product, show it off with demo videos, but with personality. Hire actors and a video crew (cough) to do hands on tutorials and breakdown and open box and whatever kind of videos for your widget. Or utilize influencer marketing and reach out to someone with a big following and offer them your product in exchange for an unboxing video, or a paid video testimonial. Which brings us to…..
3. Testimonials.
Seeing real people respond to your product or service is the same reason why car companies continue to use ‘real people’ to get feedback about their cars. Because it’s from a friend and someone they trust. Of course I say my product or service is great, but hearing someone else speak about their success working with you helps solidify any doubts someone might have about trying your product or service.
4. Milestones
If you’re a company that’s been around longer than 10 years and or have had employees that long, a quick 90 – 5 min video about them and their time at the company can show how much they value their employees, and can work to build internal morale, as each employee would essentially become internally ‘famous’ for a few weeks once it’s released. That can help boost morale.. it can be a double edged sword…
5. Video Bios
This can be broken down into many different chunks, but similar to the milestone videos, after an employee has been with the firm for over 2 years make a video to add to the website, to add a more interactive feel to the company. This can be 90 seconds. This can also lead to figuring out who your lead ‘actor’ employee is, and then it’s possible to give them more free reign with the social media and jump over to TikTok, Instagram, etc.
6 The platforms.
If you’re involved with any type of b2b or higher end sales LinkedIn is THE place to connect and network. Heck, by now you should be years deep on the platform. Now, just start posting content there! You can create a company page and encourage employees to share their company blogs on their page, which helps brings awareness to your company and the rising talent you have!
YouTube is still a very popular platform, if used correctly. All of your videos and photos are assets, and just because you post them once doesn’t mean you can’t post them again and or all over the place in the first place. TikTok has a younger crowd but it’s the platform with the highest organic growth. That will eventually die down like it did with all of the other platforms, but they continue to be additional sources of interest for your product or service!
Instagram, Facebook, Twitch (for livestreaming), Snapchat (for personalized messaging and posting, Twitter (for short witty quips), Pinterest (infographics, pretty pictures inspirational words)
Just remember, don’t sell. you can talk about your business all day but if every post says hey we offer this buy this, people will lose interest. They’ll stay along for the journey if you guide them and walk them through it, but stop to continually sell in their face and they’ll reject you.
Good luck!
Thanks to Bitable for the stats https://biteable.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics/