9 Social Video Best Practices from Real Influencers

Social media, in a lot of ways, is about being benevolent, helpful, and genuine. This is how some accounts attract thousands of loyal followers—these influencers embody these “golden rules” of social media.

So what do you do if you’re an influencer and you’re asked about how to best utilize social media and social video as a marketer? Share the wealth, of course. Read below to learn more of our Video Marketing Mentors’ advice.

1. Don't Be Everywhere, Be Where Your Audience Is

Chris Moody, Content Marketing Leader at GE Digital: "I think the most important thing with social today, and going forward, is to be at one place at one time. So many times we're trying to be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn. We can't be everywhere. Our audience is not everywhere. And when you're stretching yourself so thin, it's going to water down what you're actually doing on social. So find the place where your people are, your prospects, your customers, your advocates. Be there, and do a great job of producing content there and engaging with folks."

2. Create a Communication Strategy for Each Social Site

Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute: "Every channel that you leverage should have its own 'why.' So strategically, why are we communicating on that channel? What is the audience that we're communicating to? And what is the ultimate behavior we'd like to see? So you should do a 'why' exercise with every channel you use. Right now the average enterprise engages in per audience between 13 and 16 different channels. That's too many."

3. Start with the Buyer and Tailor Social Content to Them

Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of VisumCx: "I have connected with a firm in Europe, who is actually using social specifically, and that's all they do. But they're working with brands like Fujitsu, and IBM, and Vodafone to really say social media—if you wanna demand gen, we can really help spur that on from a social media perspective. And they're having great success with it, because they start with the buyer. What does the buyer like on social media? What social media properties are they on? What kind of content do they wanna consume?"

4. Add Visual Interest to Your Standard Tweet

Chris Moody: "Social media posts with animated GIFs or video are nine times more effective than those that do not have animated GIFs or video."

5. Keep Social Video Short and Action-Driven

Stacy Adams, Head of Marketing at GoAnimate: "Social video should be short. Social video should encapsulate very quick, concise points, and should point to something else. Video for video's sake I think doesn't do anything to enhance your brand, and what's your call to action for that video."

6. Use a Video Platform You Can Control

Joe Pulizzi: "So what is the platform that you're going to have for the video so that you're not playing by somebody else's rules? So I would like to see the video at least the ultimate home for it be on something that you can control. Because YouTube changes our rules, Facebook changes our rules, and they will continue to because they don't care about what you're doing, they only care about what they’re doing."

7. Make an Owned Content Hub

Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group: "I think it's a real mistake for brands to focus on creating satellites of content in social platforms because as we've seen Facebook can change the algorithm and you see organic reach on Facebook go from 100 percent of the people that follow your brand, seeing your content, to now it's less than 1 percent. So I think the real focus is really focusing on creating a core owned piece of digital property or content marketing program and then looking at social platforms as mechanisms of distribution."

8. Tailor Content to Where Consumption is Taking Place

Stacy Adams: "A lot of success can be had by taking a video and putting different components of it in different places using a longer-form video on your website where people are there, they're visiting, they have a little bit of time."

9. And Whatever You Do, Don’t Use Social Media as a Modern-Day Billboard

Jeff Julian, Co-Founder of Enterprise Marketer: "I still go back to, 'What is at home? What are your customers seeing when they get to your homepage? What kind of platforms are you immersing into the experience of mobile devices on your website?' Start there, and then look at the social networks as ways to amplify and be a part of the conversation, not just the broadcast message where we all walk outside and throw our billboard up there. Instead, say, 'Okay, how can we have a platform that’s integrated?' That’s easy for us to reuse and use in our platform, and it’s seamless, and gives the customers an amazing experience."