When it comes to producing great videos for social media that drive engagement and audience growth, there is no perfect formula. But there are some components that can work your way up to success.
In this guide, we take you through Moyens I/O’s own 10-step video creation process and describe how we made one of our most successful videos to date (below).
1. Reuse top performing content
Creating high-quality social videos isn’t cheap. That’s why we use our top-performing blog content as a starting point for our videos. An efficient way to reuse content rather than investing resources in something untested.
We share similar audiences on our blog and social channels, so we know that if a blog post is performing really well, it has a good chance of becoming a popular video. That was the case with our TED Talks blog post, which performed best in its first week.
If you don’t have a blog post to reuse, you can choose another piece of content, but it should have good visual potential. oun.
Any piece of content that becomes a social video must meet these criteria:
- Content is easily digestible (usually in ‘listicle’ format)
- Information can be summarized in a one-minute format
- Opportunity for graphics and/or images
It was a natural fit for a video format, as the TED Talks blog post included the videos themselves. And it was easy for the team to source the images and audio clips to accompany the text.
2. Write a short script
After deciding which blog to use, we take a small, effective portion of the writing as the basis for the script. With the TED Talks video, we chose to feature three of the seven talks listed in the original article. We thought they would do the best translation on social media and entice the viewer to click on the blog post for the full list.
Our social video scripts are never more than half a page for a one minute video. When it comes to TED Talks and other shortlist videos, scripts are usually around 100 words. If there is a lot of text on a frame, it is difficult for the viewer to follow.
3. Choose the right platforms for your video
Each social channel offers unique opportunities for video. Depending on the topic and target audience, we decide which channels will work best. In this way, we can optimize the viewing experience specifically for each network.
We decided to share the TED Talks social video on Facebook and Instagram. We chose Facebook and Instagram because they have a strong base of social media practitioners interested in advancing their careers.
4. Choose the appropriate video direction
When it’s time to shoot or compose your video, there are several options to choose from: portrait, landscape, square and full screen. Each orientation has its own advantages, depending on the type of video you’re creating and where it’s posted and shared. For example, if we know that our audience is segmented on desktop and mobile, we’ll use square as it looks good on both.
We chose the portrait format for the TED Talks video because we wanted it to be a mobile-first experience. We knew from past videos like this that most of our viewers were watching it on a mobile device.
5. Implement your brand’s unique visual aesthetic
If we’re running a video series or a video from a campaign, we’ll have our designers choose specific color palettes and iconography for a seamless look and feel. We also ensure that all videos in a series are the same length.
TED Talks was a standalone video, so it didn’t have to fit into a specific campaign aesthetic. However, it matches the aesthetic of our listicle video genre, which uses the same strings and sprites.
When we create a “look” for a particular video type, we use it as our template. This saves a lot of time and resources when it comes time to make more videos in the future.
6. Create motion graphics
Our video team uses Adobe Creative Cloud to create our social videos, especially After Effects and Audition. After Effects is for motion graphics animation and Audition is for voice acting and music. These tools are the industry standard for motion graphics and sound design, but there are other options such as Premiere and Final Cut Pro X.
After Effects and Audition require learning and expertise, so it’s something we wouldn’t recommend unless you have some experience in production. If you don’t have an in-house team, it may be worth outsourcing your video production at this stage.
It took our video team about two days to create our TED Talks video. Based on the scenario, we found images and screenshots corresponding to the talking points and created the visuals accordingly.
7. Add a soundtrack
If viewers are watching your video with the sound turned up, it’s important to engage them with background music. We get our music from music licensing sites like Premium Beat and License Lab. Parts cost $25 to $100. There are also many royalty-free music sites if you’re on a tight budget. If we’re buying music from a paid service, we’ll download a preview with an audio ID so we can test it with our video.
Especially if you are making a video to share on Facebook, you can provide free audio tracks and sound effects from Facebook Sound.
As a general rule, we choose music without lyrics. We don’t want any distractions. That’s why we prefer electronic, acoustic, minimal or techno. The music we chose for the TED Talks video was lively and fun, in keeping with the educational theme.
While it’s important to find a soundtrack that fits our video, we make sure we optimize it for silent viewing, as 85 percent of people use video content on Facebook with the sound muted.
For more on that, check out our previous post 8 Free Sources for Your Social Video’s Music.
8. Optimize your video for a specific platform
Our TED Talks video performed really well on Facebook and Instagram as it was optimized for these platforms. Facebook’s recommended video sizes depend on the type of video you’re creating, so it’s important to follow them for the best user experience.
We created our video first for Facebook as it is our longest version. It was just under a minute, portrait format and under 1GB.
We then repurposed this video and split it into three 15-second clips for Instagram, again in portrait format and less than 50MB. We’ve added “swipe up” to our edits of Instagram videos because it has a different user experience that requires people to swipe up to view the link.
9. Target the right audience
Even the best videos need to be shared with the right audience to resonate. For our TED Talks video, we targeted:
- Interested in TED Talks
- Had job titles related to social media
- You’ve already watched one of our previous videos
Based on these categories, we had a focused target group on Facebook and Instagram. Knowing your audience is key to achieving a high engagement rate.
10. Measure video performance to improve future content
Our TED Talks social video builds on what we’ve learned from our past videos. Based on user data and performance statistics for similar videos, we knew what to fine-tune to make TED Talks even more successful.
If we didn’t test and iterate every social video, we wouldn’t know how to improve our strategy. That’s why we closely monitor the performance of all our videos and carefully monitor demographics, audience and interests. We also group our videos by different genres to understand why some videos are successful.
Create your own best performing social video
Like everything on social media, quality and consistency are a big part of making video tactics successful. A top performer will likely not be overnight and will instead be the product of a lot of hard work and testing.
Once you’ve created your winning social video, you can use Moyens I/O to easily upload, schedule and promote across multiple social networks.
To start
