In common with any other means of marketing, social video production isn’t pursued merely for its own sake, but with the aim of attaining certain goals. If, then, the viewers of your brand’s social media videos aren’t taking the courses of action you would hope them to take, it’s important to consider whether your videos have been suitably optimised with such actions in mind.

Here are a few ways to maximise the likelihood of those watching your videos responding as intended.

Build up to your ‘call to action’

Incorporating clear ‘calls to action’, or CTAs, into your social videos is one of the most powerful things your brand can do for directing viewers to respond in a particular way. A CTA may take the form of an instruction to ‘shop from our latest range here’, for example, or to ‘click through to find out more’.

But do the CTAs in your current social videos feel natural, not least by explaining why the viewer should care about carrying out that action? The benefit or impact on them needs to be clearly communicated.

So, when the time comes for you to devise a social video script, consider what CTA you’ll be using first, and then ‘work backwards’, coming up with the content that will precede it for viewers. This way, you can help to ensure a natural build-up to the CTA in the final video, instead of the CTA seeming irrelevant and ‘tacked on’ at the end.

Keep the video to two minutes or less

There are many schools of thought as to how long a given marketing video should be. But if you are specifically looking to convert with your latest video, instead of merely build awareness of your brand or product, editing it to be two minutes or less in duration could especially maximise its impact.

After all, it’s typical for a CTA to be placed at the end of a video, and you will want your target audience to actually make it to the end of your video to see this CTA. But don’t just make your video short; also make the most of that brief running time, by clearly communicating your central points.

Incorporate a clickable link into the video post

While some social platforms make the placement of links in video posts easier than others do, there will almost certainly be a way for you to do so, or at least to insert a similarly powerful CTA.

The social network in question may enable you to add a clickable link directly to the video, for instance, or you may have the option of inserting a link in text accompanying the video.

Even if whatever social media site you’re using doesn’t allow clickable links in its posts, you could still use textual cues in the post’s text and the video itself – for example, an instruction to “visit our blog to discover our latest how-to guide”.

Whether it is signups to your brand’s email newsletter, applications for job vacancies or purchases of products, services or subscriptions that you are eager to achieve with your social videos, you will need to take specific actions to optimise your videos to bring you such results.

Here at TMC, we’re always available to speak to you about your concerns, intentions and aspirations in relation to social video production. So, why not give us a call now on 020 3819 6187 or 01563 509005, so that we can talk about working together on an impactful social video marketing campaign?