Best practice: use video marketing to boost your brand engagement

First and foremost, let’s dive into the reason at why video is such a strong social engagement tool by understanding what’s behind it. For almost all social media algorithms (let’s leave out LinkedIn, for now) there is a way of sorting posts in a users’ feed based on the relevancy instead of the published time.

For example, the Facebook algorithm will reward you based on what type of media you use, the recency, the popularity and the engagement there is with the post. The experience of most online marketeers will tell us that video & photos will work best. As engagement will be higher and thus more rewarding for Facebook (& indirectly your business or product).

When keeping user engagement in the back of our heads, the next question arises.

How can we boost user engagement with video if everyone else is already doing it?

Well, there are a few tools to the trick (or rather skip) the Facebook and LinkedIn algorithm. The important aspect of Facebook and LinkedIn stories is that they are not part of the newsfeed. They float above the news feed (literally and figuratively) and they do not interact with the news feed algorithm. According to Facebook’s own insights they are very effective in driving traffic.

• 73% of the users in the US use them on a daily basis to explore new content
• 65% of the users feel more connected to their friends and family using stories
• 57% of the users feel part of a bigger community interacting with stories.

In other words, how should you use Facebook stories?

According to the same study people would like to see stories that are easy to understand (52%). They want to see new products (50%). And they want tips or advice (46%). Looking at what works best content wise for stories, we see video being to best way to create interaction.

With the recent evolution of the pandemic and people being stuck at home for most of 2020 and 2021, Facebook saw their Live video feature jump by 50%.

Live video manages to receive 6x more user engagement than regular video.

For brands there will be opportunities to grow, given that virtual events are a thing of the present now and they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. With the live feature you can present and promote your brand or business in very creative ways. So start experimenting if you haven’t already!

Aside from stories and live feed, another crucial aspect for improving video reach is to look at your video analytics.

• How long did your audience watch the video?
• How good is the completion rate?

Videos watched past the 1-minute time mark and videos longer than 3 minutes will get prioritized by the algorithm. It is wise to invest effort and time in building a good video marketing ground plan. That added value for your brand or business can boost awareness and sales in the long-term!

To conclude, as you might have noticed it comes down to feeding the right algorithm to create and improve user engagement.

• Using stories & live video are simple tools to avoid the general news feed algorithm.
  Make sure to experiment and try out these new features.
• See if they fit in your marketing/social plan!
• Last but not least: should you need any helping hands of a marketing consultant, do not hesitate to reach out! At 4P square we are looking forward to boost your brands & business with top notch advise and implementation!

This article was written by Alexander Adams, a marketing consultant at 4P Square. He has a particular interest in (digital) branding, and he brings expertise to the overall product marketing strategy. He’s been active in various industries, ranging from tech to automotive, where he connected dots between digital marketing & sales. You can find him on LinkedIn or reach out to him directly via the 4P Square contact form.