67% of users are already watching it from brands like yours.

According to The Next Web, social video is emerging as one of the best marketing tools in the world. Mobile has made it accessible to virtually anyone in the world to enjoy.  From a content creator’s point of view, making social video can bring huge rewards. If you are a business, it is time to start exploring the possibilities of video marketing.

The opportunities of social video

Animoto’s recent survey about the state of social video marketing listed two important insights: people are watching a lot of video online, particularly on mobile phones.

Moreover Tubular Insights listed an astounding 500 million people are watching videos on Facebook everyday. So clearly, people love video and consume huge amounts of it. Why? From a scientific point of view, 20% of our whole brain is there purely for vision and if you think about it, we are watching since the day we’re born but we do not actually learn to read until much later.

Every story told can capture people’s interest as long as it is pitched with the right frame and tone of voice, with the purpose to connect. It does not matter where it comes from. In fact, 67% of people are comfortable watching a video from businesses or brands they are familiar with.

Don’t let your lack of time or money stop you 

So why aren’t you doing it? If you are getting anxious just by thinking of creating your first video, you’re not alone. Will anyone watch it? Would it be worth the investment and effort I put into it? These may be some of the thoughts running through your head. Don’t let fear hold you back. Right now, people prefer to watch more videos online rather than reading long articles. So why not start by turning one of your articles into an engaging video?

In addition, you might have some concerns about resources you need to create a video. Talent, budget or time. However, including video into your content strategy does not necessarily have to be expensive. There are affordable, or almost free and easy-to-use alternatives to making video content which can prove useful for first-timers. To start, there are a couple of tools that can help you in the process:

Tool 1: Magisto

It’s an online video editor powered by AI (artificial intelligence). They make most of the editing decisions for you. Clever.

It is good for small and medium size businesses who want to give video a go. They are compatible for both iPhone and Android users. It is a free app, although their premium account starts at $4.99 per month.

Tool 2: Animoto

Another way to create videos is through Animoto. It is an easy to use platform for creating professional videos. You can take photos and videos and turn them into video slideshows.  They offer various templates for videos. It starts off with a free trial for seven days then goes to £8 per month. It works both on iPhone and Android.

These are some of the tools you might need to make budget videos. However, the most important piece of the puzzle is knowing what to do and how to do it. In our free social video guide we explain how to plan your video content strategy and our brilliant minds will be sharing some of their best practices with us in a series of articles.

To get you to start exploring how others do it, here’s some advice from a member of our community, experts in their field they offer the most practical advice to reach your audiences.

Master tip: “Keep it short and straight to the point”

“Playground is a publisher which is creating videos – than later many others have copied – that definitely work well on social media. They’re short, quick and easy to watch, the story is very appealing, and sometimes they are even told like a fairytale. They also use images or videos that support and complement  the story well. The music works perfectly with the visual elements. Check out some of their videos on Facebook.

Then, there are other videos that were created with the only purpose of being promoted through social media, like this one on YouTube.  They contain similar elements to Playground’s examples. They’re short, straight to the point, easy to spot and be shared.

One of the latest trends that is working very well on social media is how-to recipes. Many brands have decided to help their communities be creative when  cooking, even when the  brand has nothing to do with food. Here’s a couple of examples from Sainsbury’s and Tasty

At last, here’s a video I did myself as an expert at Proyecto Cactus, as an example.”

Hopefully, having read this post you will be thinking more about social video. To help you get started we have developed a free guide that will further show you how-to create and fit social video into your marketing plan, how to ensure that the content you publish is impactful, and plenty more.