Attention is the new online currency, and no other format captures more attention. This is what we’re craving for on social media channels. Anywhere we distribute content, we need to get attention. We know that reach is going down on Facebook, it’s harder to reach people on Twitter, it’s harder to get traffic to your blog and shares.

Attention is the new online currency.

That’s why we all have to be doing video. But don’t get it wrong: not only video on its own. More “traditional” forms of content like blog posts should be part of your content strategy.

However, consider using video to promote something. If you want to promote your content effectively, you need to create a video. In this webinar, Ian Cleary talks about recording, editing and producing video in less than an hour.

Why video is so important

Did you know that 500 million people watch video every day on Facebook?

In order to be successful with video on social, you need to create your core content and your social content.

For example, your video on YouTube, podcast, or blog post could be your core content. This is the piece of content that takes a good bit of work to deliver. You then take this core content and create smaller pieces of content for social media. 

When creating your core content, you need to think how you are going to split that out into smaller pieces. You want to create a few good videos for every core piece of content. To do that, you need to find a way to rapidly create those videos. You definitely don’t want to spend a lot of time doing this.

Let’s see how you can create two types of video: a product/service video and a social promotion video.

How to create product or service video rapidly

Mark Schaefer recently released a new book – “Marketing Rebellion”. In order to help his friend and promote the book, Ian decided to create a short video that would capture attention and get a lot of shares.

Step 1. Create a storyboard

When you create a video, the first thing you want to do is create a storyboard. The more you know about what you are going to do and say, what type of equipment you need to use, the easier it will be for you to make the video.

You storyboard might be something simple. For instance, for the video Ian created for Mark, he came up with a simple table. Notice how he maps out what he is going to be filming and how exactly.

Step 2. Record the video

There are different approaches you can take to recording. For this particular video, Ian just used the phone. For some scenes, you can record voice. For others, you can just use some stock music or even upload your own tracks. This will help you avoid recording and editing too much.

For fancier videos, you can use a DSLR camera with a mic on top. Ian recommends using a directional Rode mic. You need to be very close to the person you are interviewing, and the mic won’t pick up other noise.

You can also use a lavalier mic for recording sound. They are not too expensive: around $30-40.

So, you don’t have to invest a lot in the expensive equipment. You can start off with just your phone.

When to use a DSLR camera

If you want your video to look a little fancier and have a blurry background, for instance, you might want to go with a DSLR camera.

Step 3. Upload and edit

Once you’ve recorded the video, you can upload it to Wave.video. Here are some of the editing features you can go with:

• crop/trim video very easily
• speed up your video clip
• add music
• add transitions going between different scenes
• add captions/images/gifs to your video
• produce

You can try using other tools like Camtasia or Screenflow. They are also helpful tools when it comes to editing your video. However, there are a few problems with them:

1. They are expensive
2. They are missing some features like the audio library, captions, or GIFs

Step 4. Promote your video

The promotion is key once you have that video. If your video turns out to be less than 2 minutes, you can promote it directly on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin. If it’s longer, create social content out of it. A good idea is to create teasers to get people to watch the video.

Here’s a short plan of what you want to do to promote your video:

• reach out to people mentioned in the video
• share on social and email
• run ads to promote.

If you see that your video is doing particularly well on a specific social platform, go ahead and start running ads. However, you want to wait and see if there’s a lot of engagement on the video. There is no point of promoting something that hasn’t proven to be interesting for the audience on these channels.

How to edit your video in Wave.video

To start editing your videos in Wave.video, head over to https://wave.video/ca/ and click the button “Create project”.

You can then either choose a template from the template library (and there are new templates added on a regular basis) or choose to create a project from scratch. Templates are great for creating videos for social.

Here, Ian explains how to create a video from scratch. To do that, open the Wave.video editor and head over to the Uploads section.

Once you upload your videos, add them to the timeline. The timeline is where all the video editing actually happens.

Ian recommends adding video clips in sequence, one after the other, as you create the story. It will make it easier to edit the video.

Edit your video

Then, start editing your video. Depending on your video needs, you can simply start by adding text to your video. You can also style it up in Wave.video pretty easily.

You can change the text font and color, rotate it if needed, and add text effects. Read this article to find out more about adding text to your videos.

With video content, you need a bit of interest. You can’t just be talking for 30 seconds without any movement. You need to have some interaction going on the video all the time. That’s why it makes sense to accompany your video with some kind of animated text.

You can also add transitions between your video clips. Wave.video comes with 8 different transitions that will help you “glue” your videos together.

Add graphics and stickers

To make your video more engaging, make it more visually catchy by adding graphics and stickers. To add stickers and emojis to your video in Wave.video, simply drag and drop them to the video. Search the GIF library that comes with the video editor. You can also upload your own stickers to add to your videos.

Add music to your video

To add music, head over to the audio library and choose an inspiring piece of music. It will be added to your video. You can also trim it and add a fade in/fade out effect.

When you are happy with your video, you can also adjust it to other formats, like square, vertical, and 30 others. This way, you can share the same video on different social platforms in the format that fits these platforms best.

With the video, Ian managed to get 1,766 views on the post within one hour. A normal post would not be able to get this many views. Video is a great way to get attention.

Video idea: in addition to creating video for your own product or service, consider making a video for someone you want to get attention of. Instead of sending them a message on Twitter, make a video promoting something that’s really important for them.

How to create social promotion videos

For social videos, you typically want to make them shorter. For a video that’s 2-min long (like the one in Ian’s example), it could actually work better on YouTube.

Social videos are:

• short
• enticing. You want to create videos that entice people to your bigger piece of content.
• humorous if possible. Controversy is good as well.
• clear CTA
• the correct dimensions

For instance, you created an amazing blog post and want to drive traffic from social media. You can create a collection of short snappy videos to promote it.

Say, you have five different sections in your blog post. You could create five different variations of the video focusing on the different areas of the blog post. Then schedule them to be shared across social channels using tools like Agorapulse. This will ensure that you keep sharing content to get attention.

When creating your social videos, you can start with a template.

Of course, you can also just start from scratch. Since you are familiar with the process of editing product/service video, creating social videos is going to be a breeze. Basically, you just follow the same pattern.

When making social videos, your goal is to stop people as they go down their newsfeed. But if your video isn’t interesting, they will just play a smudge and move on. You need to catch their attention from the very beginning.

Conclusion

Creating videos for your social media channels or product shouldn’t be too difficult. Once you create one video and get the idea of how easily you can do it using tools like Wave.video, you can create a thousand videos.

What will get you more attention is not the high-end video. It’s the things like engaging text and stickers, humour, and the overall idea behind the video.