Seven social video skills you’ll need to succeed

By Raflin Sarkisyan on February 28, 2019

 

With the right combination of social video skills, your business will have the potential to boost engagement and inspire audiences. Read about the seven most important social video skills you need

It’s official: research shows that video marketing is now the most in-demand skill that marketers and SMB business owners are looking for in their teams. Once your organisation has an employee who has the key social video skills, your business can design a social video strategy which is truly effective, engages audiences and marks you out from the competition.american-casual-cellphone-1289898

Whether you’re looking to step up your career by specialising in social video or are in charge of distribution at a video publisher that wants to engage in the creation of social video, these are the skills you’ll need.

7 essential social video skills

Here’s our list of seven social video skills which will make your organisation’s social video strategy a success.

1. Writing skills

You can have the most compelling and inspiring videos, but if the headlines and captions that accompany them don’t catch people’s attention, few people will watch the video. Writing eye-catching headlines to draw attention to your social video is a mix of art and science, but there are a number of tricks of the trade:

  • Include lists
    Lists catch people’s attention because they know that by watching the video, they’ll learn a certain number of things. This reduces uncertainty about whether it’s worth spending time watching.
    Example: “3 incredible catches at this year’s Superbowl”
  • Imperatives
    Give readers an order to watch your video! If you seem passionate about how much they should watch it, they are more likely to do so.
    Example: “You NEED to see this incredible stunt”
  • Create curiosity
    Our brains are wired to be curious – a strong social video caption or headline will tickle that curiosity bone.
    Example: “Djokovic returns the serve…but you’ll never guess what happens next”

2. Rapid video editing

Unsurprisingly, success with social video depends on fast, effective editing and publishing of videos – often in real time. The good news is you don’t need a degree in production management. With the right social video editing tools you can clip and share content and distribute it automatically to your social media channels in seconds.

3. Knowing how to use the social web

While most professionals in the media industry today are reasonably comfortable with sharing links and adding hashtags on social media, you’re going to need more than that to make social video a success. Social video skills you will need include:

  • In-depth knowledge of all social media platforms and their specific sharing features
  • An understanding of what kind of content engages on different platforms
  • Knowing when to distribute content
  • Ability to engage with and manage a community, responding to their needs and interests, especially as these change over time
  • SEO

4. Knowledge of the video requirements of different platforms

Different social platforms have very different requirements for video – everything from the size and shape of content to length and file types. We’ve written in depth about the different social platforms and their video requirements here. Essentially, you’re going to need the skills to promote and customise videos to each platform – although by using clipping tools like Wildmoka, all that formatting is done for you.

5. Research skills

A successful social video strategy hinges on a deep knowledge of your audience as well as how the wider market is working.

To start with, your social video manager needs to investigate what your followers actually want from content – what kind of videos they’ll watch, how long and in what context. There’s always going to be some trial and error here, but it’s valuable to conduct surveys and even focus groups to learn what sort of content truly engages your audience.

Besides knowing your viewers, it’s also important to conduct wider research into what your competitors are doing. Make sure you follow them and find out what their social video strategy is (assuming they have one). You don’t want to be seen as imitating their style.

Last of all, it’s worth keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s being shared more generally. Buzzsumo is a one widely-used tool for discovering what content is being shared on social media and includes a filter to look specifically at video shared online.

6. Analytical skills

You can only truly assess whether your social video strategy is a success by measuring its impact – and this is where analytical skills come in. While most social platforms provide some basic analytics features, you’re going to need to combine data from different platforms to get an overall insight into engagement, so you’re going to need to know how to use a spreadsheet at the very least.

It will be essential to set benchmarks to measure success and then make tweaks to your strategy to see how you can further boost audience interest. What’s more, if you’re charging advertisers to add their branding to your social video, they will also want clear reports on engagement, shares and ‘likes’ to justify their spend.

7. Strategic planning skills

Last but not least, your will need planning skills to make a success of your social video strategy. This is about working out what your social video content will and won’t focus on, what your tone of voice will be, when you will publish and more. It’s also about long term thinking - a sports publisher’s social video strategy will of course need to be aware of any upcoming sports events on the horizon and think about how this will be integrated into your wider content.

You will need to:

  • Define your goals and set KPI’s
  • Create a social video content outline (covering the kinds of video you will and won’t share)
  • Build a flexible social media calendar
  • Decide on how you will measure and analyse your success
  • Test different kinds of videos to find out what does and doesn’t work

Armed with the skills for social video success

Social video success is about more than just pumping out videos in the hope that one of them will go viral. Instead, it requires a mix of soft skills and technical know-how which all combine to capture your audience’s attention and make sure they stay engaged with your videos and brand.

Connect your video with viewers, everywhere.