Video killed the radio star. Content is king.

Content is king. That’s a well-established fact in the social media marketing world. You create interesting and engaging content and consumers come running. But not all content is created equal. Video content is taking the digital world by storm and it’s never been more prominent on social media than it is right now.

Video for President

International forecasters Cisco predicts that by 2017, video content will account for 69 per cent of all internet traffic. It also predicts that video-on-demand traffic will have trebled. Earlier this year, Socialbakers.com conducted a study that showed a 135 per cent increase in organic reach, on average, when you post a video instead of a photo. Facebook surpassed YouTube in number of video views on desktop in the US and ever since it’s been working on its right hook with its improved Video Tab, a Featured Video module for pages, as well as the ability to embed Facebook videos across the web.

Start doing the things…

So how exactly do you create kick-ass video content for your social platforms? People assume producing video is expensive. But it doesn’t need to be; social videos are best kept short (social platforms implement length limitations to facilitate dwindling attention spans). The optimal length for Facebook video is two minutes. Instagram videos have a 15-second limit. Vines, on Twitter’s uber-successful video platform, are just six seconds long.

Rather than thinking about these length limitations as barriers, embrace the challenge; how can you engage your target audience in just two minutes, 30 seconds, or even just six seconds? Some of the most effective video campaigns are low-budget, strategic and creative. Production costs have plummeted in the past few years and you don’t need to be a technical whizz to be able to work out how to edit video.

Various New Zealand brands are doing it themselves and doing it well (take The Caker and Coco’s Cantina, for example) and others are leveraging the power of social influencers (Kiwibank recently collaborated with teenage Instagram sensation Jamie Curry for a marketing campaign dubbed the KB Series).

You also need to consider how your video content effectively contributes to your marketing strategy. Think outside the box, like American insurance company Allstate did in creating its fictional, mischievous character dubbed Mayhem.

The company has taken a dry subject matter and turned it on its head. The company created a social profile for the mischievous, distructive Mayhem character. It then posted regular videos about Mayhem’s antics. These were shared on Mayhem’s Facebook and Twitter platforms, but tactically hosted on Allstate’s YouTube platform. So at the end of the day, Allstate was the winner because the uptake was phenomenal.

So start thinking forward, marketers. Video is taking over the internet. Consider how you can include social media video content in your marketing strategy and to tell your story in a creative, cost-efficient and strategic way.