With video content being ever more popular on social media, is it perhaps time you embraced this medium in your social content?
If you have a product to launch or service to explain video is a great way of getting your points across and explaining a great amount of detail in about 60 seconds or so. Think of your video content as a mini tv commercial – in fact watching some of the ad breaks on tv is very good for inspiration. What’s more you don’t necessarily need a full tv studio and post production edit suite to create your masterpiece, a smartphone or tablet will often suffice!
You’ll also find that in the fast paced world of social media channels video will often appeal more than standard text or even a static image simply because of curiosity. With this in mind the opening of your video really does need to stand out either in a bold statement or a subtle intriguing lead in to encourage the person watching to fully engage. Knowing your brand will help you to know what engages your particular audience but personally I’d suggest that a simple approach is rather effective to capture attention.
Consider too the channel you’re posting on, if for example it’s Twitter the feed is very fast paced and your video could easily be scrolled passed or just disappear in the constant feed notification so make a point of pinning it to the top of your profile for any visitor to easily see. You can do the same with Facebook with ‘pin to top of page’ but Facebook is rather good at alerting your followers / those who have liked your page to new content. For me I’d probably select Instagram as a great starting point as the person viewing controls the speed of the feed and people are more likely to visit your profile page then perhaps they would do on Twitter or Facebook. Don’t forget you can also use Instagram Stories as a bit of a teaser campaign to let people know you’re creating something rather special, then once you have you can promote the fact that it’s there and direct them to your page or to search a particular hashtag if you’ve chosen one specific to your video.
Instagram Stories in themselves are a great way for that higher brand awareness and very much used these days for ‘of the moment’ content such as snippets from an event ‘happening right now’ as well as live streaming. All features that remind people you are out there and that you have something new and exciting to showcase.
And that is exactly what we needed to do with our brand new video for our Manchester build to rent development, Pomona Wharf. With the show apartments open we wanted to create a lifestyle experience video that almost gave you a mini tour and could show you around even before you viewed. To do this we shot a series of motion photography clips and then edited them together with some still images to create a mini movie that captured lifestyle elements as well as the apartment and its facilities and furnishings. To this we added some descriptive text and suggestions along with a few other hashtags appropriate to the image on the screen. Oh and there may be a small celebrity feature too…
Overlay that with a great backing track and you’re there! I gave the video a hashtag title of #StepInside as a call to action which also acted as a welcoming instruction for viewing. The video ends with ‘So come and take a look…’ and then the contact details so people know what to do and how to get in touch. There’s also a thank you for watching message because I think that’s just a nice way to close.
In the build-up before the video was released (and yes it was given a time to air for the first viewing and we had a number of people waiting to see it which was amazing!) there were a series of Instagram Stories which are actually saved as highlights on the PomonaWharf Instagram profile so you can see exactly what we did. Please do go and take a look – right here and let me have your feedback! It’s just one example of a number of video content pieces I have planned on a few projects in the coming months.
Equally if you’re a budding Director and have already posted some video content tag @FlatLivingLoves and we will go check it out and give you a comment!
Until next time – smartphone camera – action!
James is now Marketing and PR Manager for Countrywide’s Estate and Asset Management and Property Auction divisions.
The #BeMoreSocial column was created for Flat Living and its goal is to drive more effective communication within the property management industry.
If you have a customer service experience using any form of marketing or social media that you’d like to share then tweet and @FlatLivingLoves using the #BeMoreSocial.
We’d love to feature your examples in a future edition.
