Easily Create Videos for Social Media

In 2016 a lot of the chatter surrounding social media trends is about the importance of visual content, and more specifically the integration of video content to your social media content strategy. But what if you don’t have a budget to hire a videographer or video editor? I’ll show you a few quick ways to easily create great video content for your social media channels!

Budgets and resources can be a little scarce to non-existent for smaller businesses or brands – leaving some marketers insecure or nervous about trying new forms of content. Creating video content doesn’t have to be super complicated. Of course, it would be lovely if we could all hire someone to create drone videos, edit and place awesome music in the background – but sometimes you’ve got to work with what you got – and that’s not a bad thing.

In this day and age we have so many tools right on our smartphones to help us create quality content of any kind with little to no budget. But before we get to that let’s discuss video content and why it’s so important. Here are some video statistics from a Hubspot post:

• 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI.

• Shoppers who view video are 1.81X more likely to purchase than non-viewers.

• Using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26%.

So what kind of video content can you create?

• Product and how to videos: Show customers how to use your products, highlight clever ways to use your product, describe your service. The more educated the consumer is about a product the easier the purchase decision is to make.
• Behind the scenes: Let your followers get an inside look at your office, get to know the people that work there, or take them behind the scenes of an event or conference. Make them feel like they are getting special access to content they otherwise wouldn’t have seen.
• Teasers: Use videos to tease bigger content pieces or campaigns
• Announcements: Get your higher ups involved and film short company announcements to share with your audience. You can always link these back to a more comprehensive article, blog post or press release (if applicable).
• Interviews: Short or long, use video interviews to drive traffic and engagement on your social media networks. If you have a long video chop it into smaller snippets suitable for publishing.
• Just for fun! – Use videos to show a little brand personality and get creative. Your followers will enjoy learning more about your brand and the change of pace in content.

Tools for Easy Video Creation:

Many social media networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have native video recording options. You can also use video-based social media networks like Snapchat and Vine.

• Instagram just updated and supports 60-second videos and allows for minimal editing (cropping and a filter).
• Facebook videos should be edited before being uploaded. You’ll be able to add a call to action (with a link) at the end and add targeting.
• Twitter accepts both video uploads and the creation of videos using the app itself. You’re allowed 30-second clips on this network.

Here are some more specific apps and tools to easily create video content

• Your phone’s camera: Your best tool is your phone’s camera. Shoot short clips at events, shoot longer clips for cutting later.
• Boomerang: My latest obsession, Boomerang (from Instagram) creates fun .GIFs for you right from your phone and saves them as video. You can then edit these with extra apps, or upload right to any social media networks that accept video. You’ll have to get your tapping timing right but the results are fun!
• Gifstory: I recently discovered this tool (sorry if I’m late to the party), but Gifstory makes it easy to create longer .GIFs. You can snap up to 60 short video clips or images which the app seams all together for you.
• Hyperlapse: Hyperlapse is yet another app from Instagram. The app lets you record video and speed it up.
• Magisto: Magisto is an iOS and Android app that helps you crop, add music and other effects to your videos.
• Facebook Slideshow: Here’s a feature that’s somewhat new to Facebook. You can now create a slideshow video using pictures.
  • Start by clicking in your post box to create a new post. You’ll notice the last option in the drop-down menu is “Create a Slideshow”.
  • Upload 3-7 photos (you may want to include some slides with words or messaging). Sizing should be 1280 x 720 pixels or photos with image ratio of 16:9 or 4:3. If yo used different sized images your video will be a square.
  • Lastly add a caption and hit publish! Although you won’t be able to download this video for other uses, you can easily drive traffic back to Facebook. If the post does well, it makes it all the simpler to put a budget behind the post and create an ad or boost.
• Facebook’s Your Business Story: Facebook launched a tool for businesses to create simple videos letting customers know what they’re all about. The videos are kind of cool and have a little customization to them. If you don’t want this template route- it’s still a great example of how simple your videos can be.
  • Visit https://yourbusinessstory.fb.com/en/
  • Choose your 8 photos and click and drag to organize them.
  • Fill in the next section with what you’re in the business of – you’ve got 90 characters…
  • Choose your music.
    
  • Facebook will show you a preview of your video with a publish button – you can edit or publish your new video.
• Use your Snapchat or Vine content: If you use video-based networks like Vine or Snapchat, you can use these clips elsewhere. You can even embed your Vine clips to a web page.

A few video content creation tips:

• Write your story out: Just like any draft for an article or paper you’ve written – make you you are clear about the story you are trying to tell, and your object for the video. This should give you a bit of guidance as to what moments to capture or film.
• Create a storyboard: This ties into the above. If you have a more scripted piece of video content storyboards will help keep everyone on track.
• Mind the sounds: Pay attention to any noise going on around you. Play back clips to ensure other sounds aren’t getting in the way.
• Make sure your videos aren’t blurry (unless it’s a stylistic preference)

As with any form of content practice makes perfect. Shoot, shoot, shoot, until you become comfortable with gathering, editing and compiling footage. I’m always looking for new apps to help me create content – what are some of your favorite easy to use video creation tools? Let me know in a comment below!

This article was originally posted here.