20th January 2018

Learning to Manage Social Video with Andrew McCauley

Social_Media

Marketers should by now be well-versed in the use of video for social media.

Social video boosts your brand’s appeal to consumers, by building your brand as a leader in your marketplace. Implementing social video well conveys authority, know-how, and reliability – all things clients look for when choosing a company for any B2B service. The catch is that due to all the different video formats available (live-stream, recorded, internal communications, etc.), not to mention all the social media platforms with native video, it’s easy to miss the mark and not fully utilize social video to its full potential.

Given that, we interviewed one of social media’s leading experts to walk us through how a marketer should maneuver through this visual medium. Social Media Bloke CEO, Andrew McCauley, explains how he uses social video to his company’s advantage by maximizing social video’s potential on different social media platforms and how he repurposes the content in every way he can.  Marketers – take note – this is how to really utilize social video.

1) What role does online video play in your marketing efforts?

It is now claimed that there are billions of hours of video watched per day across the internet. When thinking about marketing and your business, you want to get in front of where the audience will be, so it makes sense that video is the very place you want to be when looking for a hungry audience. If you are not meeting your market where they are at, then your competitor surely will. So, video is a very large part of our business. Whether it is a recorded video, a live stream or a hangout type video, we are using it as much as we can. One other important reason that we use it is because search engines LOVE video, often rocketing a video that has been enriched with keywords and titles correctly to the top of the results.

2) How do you utilize online video in a way that separates yourself from other marketing influencers?

We have a number of ways that we are using video. When it comes to creating content, video is our #1 choice because it can be easily repurposed. What I mean by this is, when we create some brand new, original and unique content, we film it and make it as engaging and interactive as possible. Once we have done this, we extract the audio so we can make it into an audio file that can be used on platforms like Soundcloud, iTunes and Spreaker. We also get this video file transcribed so we can make it a readable document. This way, we are able to send this article to our blog post and use it on our social media platforms in a number of different formats. To round it off, we can also grab some still shots from the video and use it on the image based platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, as well as Twitter and Facebook. So, for us, video becomes a very versatile option when creating a lot of content very quickly.

3) In your experience, how important is online video in the overall online marketing space?

Video has always been popular but with the advent of live-streaming video apps, it has really exploded on the marketplace. Periscope just reported after their first birthday that people watch 110 years of video a day!!! That’s an extraordinary amount of video for just one platform, so the space is growing at a rapid pace, watch out for Facebook live too. I expect to see a lot more companies taking up video as it grows rapidly.

 

4) In your opinion, how does the effectiveness of a video compare to that of a visual graphic online? (social media, websites, emails, etc.)

The real beauty about video is that it is the perfect medium to tell your story without the audience having to work too hard to get it. So, a well-scripted and engaging video is a pleasure to watch and does not rely on the viewer having to ‘think’ too much about what you are saying…you lead them to where you want them to go. Visual graphics are fine for a quick share, a quote or a happy snap, but even the traditional image platforms (think Pinterest and Instagram) now have video functionality. Instagram just raised their 15 second limit of video to a full 60 seconds, because they could see where the video trend is headed. With the onset of some detailed analytics for video across a number of social platforms, marketers can instantly see if their efforts are working or not.

 

5) In terms of lead generation, which medium of your services do you feel are the most effective and why?

At Autopilotyourbusiness.com, we have tried many different lead generation mediums. Gone are the days that the e-book is a lead generator..people have moved on so much from that….just think how many e-books you have in your folder on your desktop, I am willing to bet that there are ones that you have never read. So, we are finding that something that is quickly and instantly consumable gets the best options. Whether it is a one page report or case study, or a 3­5 minute video on a secret tip or revelation that you can’t find anywhere else is best. By leading with your best piece, you will find people want more of what you gave them.

 

6) If you were to provide your clients a top tip for integrating video into their online marketing strategy what would be your recommendation?

My tip would be to do video first and foremost …. even if they think they have a head for radio…. because from there, we can repurpose the great content that they provide..this gives us so much’ ammunition’ for their social platforms that it could keep them going for several days, if not weeks. It is so much harder to go in the opposite direction…so if you spent a few hours writing a great blog post, then it would take so much extra time creating an audio file and then to film it, would add another several years to the project…so video first.

 

7) On which social media platform do you find that videos promote the most engagement?

We will often go on live-stream and film ourselves on Periscope or Blab and we get a lot of engagement from those platforms, due to them being live, but the awesome thing that these platforms have is the ability to record the live version. So once we have finished with our live broadcast, then we can upload them to Youtube and also Facebook. We never link from Facebook to Youtube, Facebook doesn’t like that, so we always upload a native video to Facebook. The engagement is good on Facebook if you spend $5 and find the right audience to for the video and Youtube can be very engaging if it’s a hot topic that people are searching for.

 

8) What is the biggest mistake brands are making when it comes to using video?

I think simply not doing it. There are thousands of videos out there that will be worse than yours. Too much time is taken to ‘think’ about what they should say and what the message is and once they finally do a video it’s all about them. No one cares about them to be honest. They care about what YOU can do for THEM.

 

9) How do you think online video has already affected the marketing industry and what future changes do you anticipate in the next 5-­10 years?

Wow, 5­-10 years is an eternity in this space. I really think that augmented reality, Google glass or even our smartphones, will be playing a big part. I think we will see highly targeted content to users in a way that has never been seen before. Think driving down a freeway and seeing a billboard, but the message is for you personally and every car seeing that billboard will have their own content. As the cameras and apps get more advanced, we are going to see a lot more clever and innovative ways to watch new content. I also think that every event that happens will have multiple camera angles and vantage points…big brother is coming, but it will be the netizens that are carrying the cameras.

 

Andrew McCauley is an author, speaker, podcaster, marketer, and CEO of The Social Media Bloke. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

 

 

 

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About the Author

Anish hails from London and holds a degree in software engineering from the University of Manchester. Following his education, he worked for several years in the financial industry as a platform administrator before founding Revolution Productions in 2008. In addition to over seven years of video production, Anish is seen as an industry professional, adding his insight in publications such as VentureBeat, ReelSEO and Wistia.

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