Video: The Missing Ingredient in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Neal Schaffer: 0:02

Welcome to another edition of social business unplugged, practical advice on how to best leverage social media for your business. Now, the host of social business unplugged, author of the forthcoming book, maximize your social published by Wiley and founder of maximize social business. Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, Neal Schaffer, welcome to a another edition of social business unplug. today I'm coming at you again from Orange County, California. Next week, I will be at social shakeup in Atlanta, Georgia, in addition to teaching my class at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, so I hope between the two of those locations, I'll have a chance to either see you, or virtually tweet with you, especially when I'm doing my panel on big social data and community at the social shake up in Atlanta there next week, that is September 16, and 17th. But onto today's episode, which is going to be all about video. You know, it's funny, in social media, we always look at the shiny new thing, you know, Facebook, or Pinterest, or Instagram, these are all actually very old by now. But it's funny that we look at those platforms. And we always will, we tend to forget about blogs, but not that much. But we often forget about video. And today's podcast is really to remind you all and your businesses the importance of video and to just give you a little bit of advice if video has been missing or hasn't been maybe as important of a part of your social media strategy as it could be. Now I'm talking about video because recently I decided as part of my own campaign for the launch of my book, maximize your social at publishers, September 30. What can I do to generate buzz around the book, so sort of a traditional marketing campaign, but it doesn't have to be a campaign, it could be an ongoing thing. What are the different tools that I have at my disposal. And obviously, there's a lot of different ways of creating content, some are more amplified. While some are more entertaining, some are more informational. And I've decided to obviously invest in a few different mediums. But I decided to go for video as one of those mediums and I've never really used video strategically. And it's probably like a lot of other small business owners out there. And even some larger businesses, that video requires a lot of resource if you really want to do it right. And you should do it right. And believe me, I've recorded myself speaking on a flip camera using iMovie. And, and throwing up some videos which are okay, but I think you get to a point where, as an example of just how important I believe it is to have somewhat of a good looking video, I was over at my dad's house the other day helping him get set up with Apple TV. And one of the reasons he wants Apple TV is that there's so much video content available for free on YouTube. He wants to watch it on his TV. Some of you may already have like a Samsung Smart TV or a Roku box, we were able to do that. I mean, yes, Facebook may be available for TV, I don't know how many people are browsing Facebook, on TV, or Pinterest or Instagram photos. But video really is about that TV that entertainment experience. And therefore, the average consumer, the average person's expectation when they see a video is going to be a little bit higher than you may think. Not to say that low quality videos can't be done. Well they can, especially if it's like Vine or Instagram video where you only need six to 15 seconds, it's totally fine. But I wanted to do something that was you know, up with my brand, which hopefully is a little bit more polished. Even though this podcast obviously is very unplugged, the exact opposite of what I want to do with the video, I want something that's very, very polished. That is also videos embeddable, right, you can't embed a blog post. Now, there's other types of embeddable content out there SlideShare is a great example of embeddable content presentations, right? You can embed Pinterest boards, infographics is something else where it's not completely embeddable, but enough people offer their code to and if you know anything about web programming, even if you don't know that much like me, it's pretty easy to embed something like that into a into a blog post, or somewhere in your website. But video is extremely easy. Even a WordPress you know, there's a one line shortcode that allows you to easily embed a YouTube video in your blog post. And, you know, one thing I talk about, well, you know, why is video so important. And of all the mediums out there, and all the channels, we know that YouTube is huge as a social media channel. And that YouTube is a search engine is number two, only to Google. So hopefully, that's reason enough to remember the importance of video, but there is no other medium that allows you to connect with your potential audience and video. I mean, it's you It's love. It's as close to seeing you or something in person. It has this effect and we've all grown up watching movies and TV and maybe that's part of it. And maybe younger generation sees it differently. Although I would tend to think many of the Gen Y are also watching TV and movies. It really goes across different generations but It is the most powerful medium, you can create a very, very deep bond. It's embeddable, and when done, right, we know that there have been viral YouTube videos out there. In fact, viral seems to go hand in hand with YouTube videos. Whenever we think of something viral. It's a YouTube video, people are accustomed to sharing videos, hey, check out this video that I just saw. Sure you see people talking about check out this blog post, but it just not the same as a video because there's that entertainment factor, right? You know, if you're a business to consumer brand, the entertainment factor is easy. If you've been doing TV commercials, et cetera. A YouTube video, although it's going to be different is is almost an extension of that if you're a b2b brand small business owner, and you've never had the budget, or the sexy type of product, or what have you to do that. It's going to be a little bit different. But I think it comes down to your social media strategy, your objective, and as part of your social media strategy, you're gonna have the little content piece, what's going to be the content, right? content in a social media strategy is always resourceful and shareable. So yes, it needs to be entertaining, because it's YouTube. But I also think it should be resourceful and shareable. So here's my advice for you. If you're really thinking of using video, if you're already using video, and you're nodding your head, great, but if not, and you're like me, this is what I want you to do. And I've given you this advice, I believe on earlier podcasts when I talked about Google Plus, and I talked about it and maximize your social this notion of a role model. I don't care what niche industry you're in, do a search on YouTube, for someone in your industry that has done something similar. Look for videos that I've gotten a lot of views, thumbs up comments, look for videos that come up top 10 in the search results for videos, under keywords that are important to your company, and you're gonna get an idea as to what are the videos what, what what types of content other people have not only done, but what has been successful. Now, for me, publishing a social media book, there was one extremely successful social media book video out there. And if you live and breed social media like I do, you've probably seen it multiple times. And you've probably seen the updated versions. I have seen the Japanese subtitle version of this video, which is social media revolution by Eric Coleman, the author of Social nomics. And undoubtedly that video helped really propel him his book and his brand and his business to an entirely new level, I'm not even guessing that I'm gonna get even close to that with my video. But I have a role model, right? You can't do it, others have done, but that video and the number of views it's gotten. And the fact that it's been, you know, refreshed year in year out, gives me the idea that there's a market for that. And that video is all about steps, right? It's all about sharing, resourceful content that others want to share. That video is so successful that I mean, I've been a social media conferences, where, instead of me talking for five minutes trying to introduce you to social media. I've seen people just show that video, right? I've seen social media agencies show that video on their homepage, to try to get people to buy into the concept that they need to invest more on social media. That's how powerful and how successful that video was. Now, I'm not saying like I said, My video is going to be even nearly as successful, but in the same tone, this notion of being resourceful providing education, it's the entertainment aspect. It's also the education aspect, there is an entertainment aspect to that video as well. And entertainment, you know, you can be providing if you're in a, like I said, a really, really niche b2b industry, you may sort of scoff at the idea of entertainment. But I think that there are entertaining ways of showing educational content. And for me go you know, the process of working with a professional video company of actually going through the story, you know, the storyboard, what type of animation are we going to have? What's going to be sort of the entertaining part? How do we get a few laughs in here and there. It's been an amazing experience so far, it's actually being created on accelerated schedule. So I can only imagine for longer videos that are 510 minutes, the amount of resources and energy that you need to invest to get it right I think is a great deal more, even for a 92nd video, I'll tell you, when you work with experts, you realize things that you did not know, were possible. So I guess if you have never done a video before for your business, contact a professional video company may be locally if you wanted to know who I'm working with. I'm fortunate that maximize social business. My social media for business blog has a social media and video contributor named Jason Duncan, who has his own video company, Miller farm media here in Orange County, California. So I'm working with him and his team. It's been a great experience, video is an art. If you think you can do it yourself, you're really missing out on a lot of potential. And if you're gonna invest the money and do it, as I was telling Jason, my book trailer video, it's Go big or go home. If you're only going to do a few videos a year versus doing a blog post once a month, or once a week. Make a count, make those videos count. You don't need to video blog as much as you normally blog or do as many videos as blog posts. But like I said when you do them I really think you want to do them right and I think that you have the ability to get a lot more amplification of your content than a blog post for a wide variety of reasons. So that's my advice for today. Think video experiment. My creating a video from my book shows my own experiment, right? I haven't really been leveraging video, what's it going to do for my book for my brand awareness? We'll find out. In fact, you'll be able to tell me, Neal, thumbs up or Neil, you failed, and I very much look forward to that day. Hopefully in the next two or three weeks or so it's going to be published and I look forward to getting your feedback. So Well, that's it for another episode of social business unplugged. As you know, this is unplugged. There's no set script that I am writing on. So if there's any ideas that you want to throw at me, topics that you want me to discuss off the cuff as I always do on this podcast, please let me know reach out to me on maximize social business.com or an email at Neal at maximize social business.com I wish you all a great rest of your day and rest of your week, wherever you are in the world. And best of luck in maximizing your social Bye Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to another edition of social business unplugged. We appreciate your subscribing to our podcast, and adding your rating and comments in iTunes. If you would like to appear on this podcast or have content that you would like covered, please contact Neal Schaffer Neal at maximize social business.com for additional social media for business advice. Please make sure to check out your new social media for business resource at maximize social business.com Thanks again and make it a great day.