You’ve probably noticed while scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed the amount of social videos popping up by your favorite brands and publications. Some are short and promotional, while the really good ones are as engaging and entertaining as watching a show on TV. These videos are not part of a flash-in-the-pan trend, they are the new way of content marketing on social media.
Social media platforms, especially Facebook, are becoming the main medium our society communicates and shares ideas across all generations. In fact, 69% of all American adults use at least one social media platform, according to the Pew Research Center. For businesses, social media has become a marketing channel they cannot, and should not, ignore.
Social Videos: Keeping the Social in Social Media
But approaching social media as purely a marketing tactic is removing the social element from it. Many marketing experts and analysts have found traditional marketing messages aren’t resonating with the Millennial generation. Consumers want experiences over mere material things, they want to feel good about supporting a brand. And here’s where the real fun and creative part of social media marketing comes in.
Hopefully, you’ve been following Marketing In Color’s social media accounts over the past few months (if not, let me just leave these here for you), and have noticed some surprises popping up on our newsfeed. We’ve been celebrating some frivolous holidays that seem to have come to fruition because of social media. For Dare Day, we got Herb to eat a heaping spoonful of ketchup, Nanette to do a chicken dance on the corner of Marion St. and Estelle St., I was even dared to eat a sheet of toilet paper! (I couldn’t finish it though, it was too dry!).
For Chocolate Day, I invented the first ever MIC Chocolate Day Challenge! The rules were simple: whoever could stuff the most Dove chocolates in their mouth was the winner! What did they win exactly? A mouthful of chocolate of course! Even our CEO Cheryl got in on the action.
Next, and what I consider to be my pièce de résistance, was Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. You may be thinking, aren’t chocolate chip cookies a little meh? That’s what I thought too, until I remembered, we’re Marketing In Color! We don’t see things in black and white. I put the MIC twist on the day by creating our first-ever Chocolate Chip Cookie Day Cook-Off! It was a company-wide bake-off with prizes awarded to contestants who were voted to have the best overall flavor and those who were voted to have the most creative recipe. My MIC teammates rose to the challenge. Master baker and Associate Creative Director, Nan, wowed us all with her delicious salted caramel and toffee chip cookies, and Account Coordinator, Jessica, got really creative with her banana pudding macadamia white chocolate chip cookies.
None of these videos would have been possible without the stellar work of our Video Editor, Chris.
Keeping your social media content varied helps your followers stay engaged. If you’re looking to increase engagement on your business’ social media pages, sharing images, social videos, and stories about your employees is a fun and easy way to bring a human element to your brand. No matter what industry you occupy, when people go on social media they are looking for real, emotional stories to relate to. And speaking of engagement, I’ve noticed how happy and excited my coworkers are when I present them with the next month’s ideas for social videos. They know that they will always get a treat, whether in food or in humor, when we film!
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