Editorial
The Gist
- Video strategy essentials. A powerful video content strategy is crucial for social media success. Focus on creating engaging, platform-optimized videos.
- Mobile optimization is key. Optimize videos for mobile viewing to enhance user experience and engagement on social media platforms.
- Effective branding tips. Incorporate branding and overlays in videos to reinforce brand identity and protect content across social media channels.
Mastering the art of social media videos involves more than just creating compelling visuals. It requires a deep understanding of the technical and strategic aspects of video delivery.
To generate maximum return on your video and social media investments, you need to consider how your approach to numerous factors — including video length and orientation, file format, post-production enhancements, delivery methods and more — influences both internal efficiency and the user experience.
This article explores the key considerations you’ll want to address in your video content strategy to ensure that you bring content to market quickly, easily and reliably — at scale.
Short-Form Videos Should Be Central to Your Video Content Strategy
Short-form videos are the lifeblood of social media. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have popularized bite-sized content that caters to the fast-paced consumption habits of users. Even LinkedIn is getting in on the action.
These videos, typically ranging from a few seconds to a couple of minutes, are designed to capture attention quickly and are easily shareable across platforms. For marketing teams, this trend underscores the importance of creating concise, engaging content that delivers a clear message in a limited timeframe.
From a development perspective, short-form videos present unique challenges since videos must be optimized for each platform, which often have different technical requirements. The vertical video format (9:16) has become the norm due to the prevalence of mobile viewing, but make sure you have a reliable system in place to ensure you’re always delivering content in the best format for each channel.
Related Article: Social Media Content Strategies: Leveraging TikTok and Instagram ReelsOptimize Your Video Content for Mobile Viewing
The majority of social media users today log on via their smartphones, which means that optimizing video for mobile viewing is crucial. The vertical video format is particularly important in your video content strategy, as it provides a more immersive experience tailored to the way users hold their devices. However, this also requires careful consideration of video composition, ensuring that critical visual elements are not lost when cropping videos for different aspect ratios.
Remember too that videos on social media often play automatically as users scroll through their feeds, a feature known as autoplay. To capitalize on this, marketers should ensure that the first few seconds of a video are highly engaging, as this is when viewers are most likely to decide whether to continue watching.
Developers, on the other hand, need to focus on optimizing video load times and ensuring smooth playback, especially when videos are delivered via an infinite feed — a common feature on many platforms.
Enhance Your Video Content Strategy with Subtitles and Captions
Since many users consume video content with the sound muted, subtitles and captions are essential. Not only do they make content accessible to a broader audience, including those with hearing impairments, but they also ensure that the message is conveyed even when audio cannot be heard. For marketers, incorporating subtitles into video content is a must, as it significantly increases the likelihood of user engagement.
From a technical standpoint, developers must implement efficient processes for generating and displaying subtitles. This can involve automated captioning tools that use AI to transcribe speech in real time. Organizations should also make sure that subtitles are properly synchronized with video playback. Additionally, it’s important to ensure that subtitles aren’t just reflective of what’s being said in the video; they should also appear in the font, color and size that is most consistent with the brand as a whole.
Include Strategic Branding and Overlays in Videos
Captions aren’t the only worthy post-production addition to a social media video, though. Applying overlays, such as logos, watermarks or other graphical elements helps reinforce brand identity and protect content from unauthorized use. This is particularly important on social media, where content is easily shared and can quickly go viral.
For developers, the challenge lies in automating the process of adding these overlays to videos at scale. This process involves not only positioning and sizing overlays correctly but also ensuring that they look professional across different devices and screen resolutions. By automating this process in full or in part, teams can save time and ensure that every piece of video content works together to provide a cohesive and polished user experience.
Related Article: 7 Video Optimization Tips for MarketersOptimize Social Video Delivery for Multiple Platforms
Remember that social-ready video can be published or repurposed for use across many other marketing channels beyond traditional social channels, and there are a few key considerations to keep in mind when doing so.
For example, when preparing videos for distribution to social media platforms, your focus should largely be on optimizing videos to meet platform requirements and ensuring high-quality playback. On the other hand, when delivering social media-style videos directly on your own website or application, it gets a little more complicated.
Choosing the Right Delivery Method
The method of delivering video content is a subtle but important consideration, particularly when dealing with large volumes of video across multiple platforms. Two common delivery approaches are progressive streaming and adaptive bitrate streaming, each with its own advantages and disadvantages within your video content strategy.
Progressive Streaming
Progressive streaming allows videos to start playing almost immediately by progressively downloading the file. This is ideal for social media platforms, where quick load times are essential to maintaining user engagement.
However, it delivers a single bitrate, which may not be optimal for all users, especially those with varying network conditions.
Adaptive Bitrate Streaming
Adaptive bitrate streaming, on the other hand, adjusts video quality in real time based on the viewer’s internet speed. This ensures a smoother playback experience, even for users with slower connections. While adaptive streaming is more complex to implement, it provides a more consistent experience across different devices and network conditions.
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Choosing the Best Method for Your Platform
Ultimately, the choice between these two methods depends on the specific use case and the technical capabilities of the team. Progressive streaming is simpler and faster, making it suitable for most social media applications, while adaptive streaming offers a more flexible and robust solution for platforms that prioritize user experience.
Robust Solutions for Scalable Video Delivery
As video continues to dominate social media (and the entire internet), marketing and development teams must work together to build efficient and repeatable processes that accommodate its unique demands.
By focusing on developing these processes around key considerations such as video format, mobile optimization, subtitles, branding and delivery methods, companies can make sure that they bring video content to market effectively and keep their audiences engaged across every platform.
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