Using social video to help your business!
‘We run a business that does Social Videos’ is an answer me and my Brother (Directors of Eastkin) frequently say around the dinner table at family occasions. It’s usually met with an uninterested “ah…” or a “what the hell does that mean?” or our Mother who said “What? Video about seashells?”. It also seems to be a bit of a buzzword – but despite all this – we think it’s an incredibly important asset for your business to consider. So here is a small rundown of social video. Social Video is essentially video designed specifically for your social platforms. It’s as simple as that. Social media videos.
Video has always been an incredible tool to express information in a way that is interesting, engaging and if done well, fun. However, It is also a tool completely underused by SME’s. I personally think this is due to its rather grandiose reputation and how difficult it might be to track its ROI – but there has been a steep rise in use of video marketing through the larger agencies in the last decade. Digital and marketing agencies are starting to recognise that video is no longer a tool used by multi-million pound corporations to run TVC’s, but a tool used widespread by every type of business to increase brand trust, identity and inform their audiences of their ongoing journey. With the spectacular invention and increased use of paid targeted ads – marketing agencies are now able to directly target your dream demographic (and your already loyal, captured consumer). In the last few years, agencies have started identifying the way videos need to be designed in order to ‘stop the scroll’ and adhere to the modern day attention spans. It’s something that, as a video agency ourselves, has taken some time to adjust to. Instead of giving yourself 30 seconds to get the audiences attention, you now have 3. The most important seconds of all! (Top Tip: Don’t start with a logo!!!)
Video production has become incredibly nimble. Instead of spending thousands of pounds on a crew – digitalised cameras and skeleton productions has allowed for video to become affordable and accessible as a marketing tool. No longer are companies spending millions of pounds on 1 TVC that will run for 3 months – but they’re able to make loads of videos, all with different targeting specifics, for the cost of a 6 month print in a local magazine. We’ve even made videos for businesses that didn’t have footage – but rather product images and home iPhone footage. It worked tremendously on the paid social platform and just goes to show what you can do in one morning with your iPhone. You can see that here and here. We think it’s time for SME’s to embrace the uprise in digital video as a marketing tool. It, of course, needs to be handled delicately, so that creativity isn’t thrown aside – but we want to rid of the reputation of old school video production agencies and bring in a new lease of life.
Last year, Eastkin Creative delivered 3000 videos – which just goes to show the extent of how in demand video is. Video marketing and social video will dominate the way businesses communicate to their audience. In fact, a Facebook executive has predicted video will dominate their entire platform by 2021 (Quartz). Social Media posts have 48% more views than any other (HubSpot) and Social Video gets shared 1200% more than graphics and images combined (Wordstream).
So, stop printing flyers, or putting entire marketing budgets into print – and start bringing out the Spielberg in you!