The future of social video is now and it’s growth doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. From social media stories and live videos to streaming movies or documentaries, brands and marketers have seen a huge success with adding video to their strategies and plans.
Social videos have grown at an increasingly rapid rate with most, if not all, social media sites now implementing it into their platforms. It can come in all different forms such as stories shared on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. or quick 60-second clips to full 60-minute videos or movies as seen on YouTube and Netflix. All these sites have found a way to add videos into their platform, but why? How has video grown so rapidly and why should marketers be including it in their plan to yield better business results?
To tackle the first question, take a look at YouTube. YouTube has always been focused on videos in both short- and long-form. YouTube has become the world’s second largest search engine and made its reputation as the king of social video. In recent years, YouTube has claimed over 2 billion logged in users, but this doesn’t even count those users that don’t log in to watch YouTube. According to Hootsuite, YouTube is the most-used digital service in the United States. It even has more users watching videos than Netflix with more than a billion hours of videos being streamed every day. This is just one example of how successful social video can be when added to a website which is no surprise why most social media websites have incorporated it into their platforms.
This brings up the next question of how video has grown so quickly. Video allows people to engage, feel emotion and it’s overall very entertaining. The world has such easy access to social media apps such as YouTube and Facebook that most people opt out of watching TV altogether since they have all the access they need right on their phones. According to Think With Google, 6 out of 10 people choose to watch online videos versus watching traditional TV. Everything in today’s world is now easily accessed through a cellphone or some kind of streaming device. It’s fast, easy and convenient which is what most people prefer in today’s digital world.
With so much data on how big social video is, we come to the last question of why and how marketers are using video to achieve better business results. It’s easy to understand why people enjoy video, but how exactly does it create good business results? Video marketing can draw more people to a website, social media page or campaign because it draws more attention. People are more likely to stop and watch a video versus a still photo. Videos hold people’s attention 5x more than static content.
Another benefit of investing in video marketing is it gives marketers a positive ROI. Eight of ten marketers have said that they felt video had a direct, positive impact on sales. As the use of social video has grown, so has the knowledge on how it works and how to track it. This allows marketers to keep up with metrics and really keep up with the results social videos are providing them.
With so many benefits to video marketing, it’s pretty obvious as to why social video has become so popular among marketers and social media platforms alike. With all the digital events in 2020, video grew so much and it’s only expected to get bigger in the coming months.