5 Types of Social Media Videos to Boost Your Engagement

 

I have mixed feelings about social media. 

On the surface, it’s a marketer’s dream come true. Social media gives you access to millions of potential customers. It makes it easy to identify them and reach them with your message… 

But as a trade-off, it makes it so much harder to get noticed and stand out!

An average social media feed is a minefield of distractions. Your content has to compete for attention with countless other messages: memes, videos, updates from family and friends, news, other branded content — you name it. 

How are you supposed to cut through all this noise and get your ideal customers to pay attention to you and not “cats being scared of cucumbers compilation no. 16”?

That’s what I’m going to talk about in today’s article.

This week, I’ll share with you 5 types of social videos designed to generate the attention and engagement your brand deserves. Well, it’s actually closer to 11 types — I just grouped the similar ones into 5 categories.

The videos will help you stand out in a crowded feed, and get your message in front of potential customers. Let’s break each of them down, one by one…

 

1. “Credibility boosters”: testimonials, demos, and milestones

There’s one category of videos that I like to call “credibility boosters.” Essentially, they exist to deliver tangible proof that your business is making an impact, and your offers get results.

These videos come in 3 main flavors:

  • Testimonials and case studies featuring your customers’ stories. If your product or service has improved someone’s business or life, you should absolutely brag about it on socials! So it’s a great idea to share these results on video regularly. You can even make a “highlight reel” showcasing a bunch of raving testimonials at once.
  • Demos of your product or service. And by “demos” I don’t mean long how-to videos where you walk the viewers through everything — keep those for your website. No, I’m talking about short clips that show off one aspect of your offer in action. Like this one from Tesla, demonstrating the strength of its Solar Roof (with a hammer).
  • Milestone videos. Any milestone — company anniversary, hitting a certain number of customers, breaking into a new market — is an amazing opportunity to share some metrics that prove how well your business is doing. The more impressive, the better!

If you want to impress your ideal customers without coming across as salesy, “credibility boosters” are exactly the kind of content you should be posting!

 

2. “Traffic drivers”: snippets and outtakes of long-form content

Longer content — videos, podcasts etc. — is tough to promote on social media. You wouldn’t interrupt your scrolling just to watch or listen to something long-form… so why would your customers?

Most brands get around it by posting an enticing description plus a call to action with a link, and maybe an image if they’re really trying. But that doesn’t really stand out as much, because everyone is already doing it!

Here’s a better way to drive traffic to that content you’ve worked so hard to create…

Give your audience a little taste! Just a snippet, 30 seconds to 1 minute long, posted as a video. (If you’re promoting a podcast episode, you can just do an image overlay with sound.)

This could be an uninterrupted fragment, or a few outtakes from different segments. You could even do bloopers! Either way, this will give your followers a much bigger incentive to click on that link and check out the full piece of content. If they watch / listen to the snippet and like it, they’re much more likely to go check out the whole thing.

Pro tip: this strategy doesn’t just work with video! If you have an article or a big infographic to promote, you can post screenshots with choice fragments/quotes, or share a summary of the juicies details.

 

3. “Greatest hits”: highlights and recaps of your recent content

If you produce a lot of content on a regular basis, there’s a good chance your audience can’t keep up with all of it — even if they wanted to!

So why not give your customers a way to get up to speed on your recent content quickly, and help them decide what (if anything) they want to consume?

This is where highlights and recaps come in. These are basically short video roundups that describe:

  • What kind of content you’ve created lately, and…
  • How exactly it can benefit the person watching.

The only difference between them is that highlights usually include some of the original content (e.g. one short outtake from each video), whereas recaps simply talk about each piece at a high level.

You can publish these on your socials and include a simple call to action asking people to click through to your website and explore the content for themselves. Easy!

Pro tip: to help your audience find the content in question easily, create a companion “roundup” blog post with links to each piece, and use that in your CTA. This is especially useful if you have different content types to offer: videos, articles, infographics, podcasts etc.

 

4. “Attention grabbers”: animation, motion graphics, and more

Your followers don’t consume your social videos in isolation. Half the time, your lovingly crafted content has to compete with viral memes, news sounbites, cute animals, and who knows what else!

So if you want to get noticed, your social videos need to stand out. Especially visually — because remember: most social media websites autoplay videos with sound off!

This is where animation shines, in all of its different styles: whiteboard, cartoons, 3D, motion graphics, and so on. Here’s why:

  • From the get-go, animated social videos look totally different from everything else in your followers’ feed. They naturally draw eyes and attract attention.
  • Animation can pack a lot of information into itty-bitty length. Your videos can communicate what you need in 30-60 seconds, look awesome, and be entertaining while you’re at it!
  • This style is super-flexible and maps neatly onto many different content formats: announcements, FAQ videos, video tutorials, informative videos, goofy/funny videos, and so many more.
  • And finally, thanks to unusual visuals and supernatural ability to convey complex ideas in a simple way, animated social videos are also memorable.

Take all of these qualities together, and you end up with the perfect tool to attract the attention of your followers, engage them, and make sure your brand stays top of mind!

 

5. “Fan favorites”: live broadcasts and Stories

Your social media audience can be divided in two different groups:

  1. The silent majority: people who consume your content occasionally, but engage very rarely…
  2. …and dedicated “core” followers: those who consume almost everything you put out and interact with your brand often.

This second group is the most likely to become paying customers, take action on what you share, and spread the word about your brand. You want to dedicate a substantial share of your video content — at least 10-20% — to nurturing and engaging with these dedicated followers.

The easiest way to do this is by creating videos that require and reward high engagement, like livestreams and Stories. For example, you could:

  • Do Q&A streams with your team, live interviews with guests on your video show etc.
  • Announce a new product or a new feature through Stories, or a live broadcast
  • Run surprise promotions, contests, or giveaways for your most dedicated followers

And more.

Yes, both of these formats have a limited “shelf life,” even compared to other types of social video — but this is a strength, not a weakness.

Live broadcasts and Story-type content are engaging because they have an expiration date. They naturally attract people who feel most invested in your brand… and because of that, they can drive a lot more engagement than your “normal” content.

Use this to your advantage!

 

Let’s create your next top-performing video together

Over the years, we’ve created hundreds of high-converting videos for brands across dozens of industries. Education, biotech, manufacturing, finance, coaching, real estate, petroleum, pest control – you name it, we’ve done it!

And our results speak for themselves.

We invite you to take advantage of our genius marketers, silver-tongued copywriters, and absurdly talented artists and videographers to create a marketing video you’d be proud of.

We used to do only whiteboard animation – not anymore! Now you can work with us to create awesome marketing videos in a variety of styles:

  • Live action
  • Motion graphics and cartoon animations
  • Virtual Reality Animation
  • Digital stop motion animation
  • 2D character animation

And more.

Interested? Then click here to get a risk-free quote and tell us about your dream explainer video — and one of our marketing experts will get back to you post-haste!

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