The days of sharing a photo to Instagram and slapping the Valencia filter on it to call it a day are gone. Especially when trying to build a community for your blog or business.
Sadly enough, Instagram isn’t even a photo-sharing app anymore. In this announcement from Instagram, they indicated that the app is prioritizing video over photos.
This is the direction many social media platforms are currently headed. They are pivoting away from static photo sharing and towards video sharing in an attempt to mimic the success that TikTok has seen over the past couple of years. Many social media experts online deemed this phenomenon ‘the tiktokification of social media’.
What does this mean for you as a content creator?
If you want to use social media to create content and promote either your blog or business, you will have to prioritize video content over static images.
How to Create Video Content for Social Media
What do you do if you’ve never created video content online before and have no idea where to start?
You start the same way you did with your blog content. I bet you didn’t know what you were doing then either but you figured it out.
None of us know what we’re doing when we first start anything.
Most of the time, we jump in and figure it out. We try out different things to get better and to see ultimately what works best for our brand.
Start With Your Content Pillars
When you’re trying to think of ideas for what kind of videos to start creating, start with your content pillars.
Your content pillars are the main subjects you talk about in your content.
Open a Google Docs file or get out a piece of paper and draw out different columns with your content pillars in each one.
Then dive into a good ole’ fashioned brain dump. Brain dump 3-5 video content ideas in each content pillar column.
Look at Past Content
While you’re brain dumping content ideas in your content pillar columns, think of your past top-performing content. Think about what did well and think about how you can repackage it in video format.
An easier way to do this is if you have your content on a platform like Instagram, navigate to the Insights area and click on “Content You Share”. Filter on a certain date range like the last 30 days.
This will show you your top-performing posts within a certain date range. You can look at your past posts by which had the most engagement, likes, comments, etc. Switch around the different filters to see which were the top posts in each category.
Then, write down what your top 5 performing posts were from that time range under your content pillar columns.
Think about how you can repackage those same posts in video format.
Another way to use this strategy is to look at your blog post traffic. Which blog posts got the most traffic during the last 30 days? Create videos using the outline from those blog posts or using the best quotes from the posts, and then lead the viewer to go to the link in your bio to read the full blog post.
Get Creative
As you’re testing out video content for your social media, try out different video formats and creative ways to get your messaging across.
Use video editing tools to try different creative styles.
Is there a style that you really like? Think about how you can repackage it for your brand. You can even have it be a style in each of your videos so your followers know instantly it’s one of your videos.
Hook The Viewer
The top performing videos on social media hooks in the viewer in the first 1 – 3 seconds.
There are several ways you can do this with your own video content. Some strategies are telling your audience what your video is about, using upbeat music, or depicting some emotion.
A great rule of thumb I use is making sure my videos either educate, entertain, or inspire, with an emotional twist. Emotion grabs the viewer’s attention quicker than anything else.
Look at Video Leaders in Your Niche
If you’re lacking inspiration when creating video content, look to some of the leaders within your niche.
This isn’t so you can steal from them. Do not steal an entire video idea and try to pass it off as your own. Even with a twist.
Use their content to see what they did to hook the reader. What emotional triggers did they use? What is special about them that their audience can’t get enough of?
Being able to see it in action like that can help you get those “light bulb” moments for what can work for you and your own audience.
Repurpose Your Video Across Platforms
One of the most important things you should know about creating video content for social media is to start with one platform and when you master that platform, move on to the next.
When you are ready to move on to the next, you can repurpose your video content using tools like Canva and Snaptik.
Create your videos with the TikTok template in Canva for your video format, and repost them across platforms like Reels, Pinterest Idea Pins, and YouTube Shorts.
One of my favorite ways I repurpose video is first creating it within the TikTok creation tool, publishing it, then copying the URL. I then paste the URL into Snaptik to download the video without the watermark.
Then I post that same video to Reels with some extra editing within the Reels creation tool to optimize it for Instagram.
Finally, I post it to Pinterest Idea Pins and YouTube Shorts.
Test & Experiment
The trick to finding your groove with video creation is constant testing and experimenting.
Don’t get discouraged if a certain video doesn’t do well. This tells you that something in the video was missing.
Was there a weak hook or a better way you could’ve started the video to help it perform better? Was the quality of the video low, bad lighting, or were there typos in the video?
Use this data to tweak and republish.
Then, look at your high-performing videos from your experiment. What about them worked and how can you create more videos like that?
Most importantly, have fun with it. When you aren’t having fun creating your videos, your followers will be able to detect and feel that.
It’s in your best interest to have fun with creating any content online. Isn’t this why we’re doing any of this anyway?
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