When you create video content for social media you need three things to happen:
• You need it to be engaging so people will view it
• You need it to be liked, shared, and commented on in great enough numbers to be deemed successful based on your established benchmarks
• You need it to be fast and affordable to produce, especially if it's a series or campaign that will require a regular posting cadence
Here - in 5 steps - is a proven, real-world way to pull this off:
Nail your message. Know what you want to say and demonstrate it clearly. In the case of Cracker Jack'D, we wanted to show millennial men how the snack provides the energy and sustenance they need for their active lives.
Concept your Story. Take your message, your target audience profile, and your brand personality - and develop concept areas that bring these three elements together.
Find your footage. Once you have an approved concept, track down in-the-can footage. There's plenty of video out there available from stock houses. In our case - with the Cracker Jack'D "Fuel Stories" video series - we contacted Travis Pastrana's Nitro Circus and purchased extreme sports clips from their arena events at a fraction of the cost of shooting it ourselves.
Own it. The way to "own" your footage (and make it feel as if it was "shot" for your brand alone) is to "bookend" your video clip. This means creating an opening and closing with graphics (in this example, we illustrated a cartoon-like character) and type treatments that are strongly on message and highly branded (logo, design language, typography, brand voice).
Test and tweak. Deploy well-conceived video content and you'll see immediate results. In fact, when we deployed the "Fuel Stories" campaign on Facebook, each video post averaged about a 10% engagement rate. That was more than 3x the average engagement rate of Facebook posts across all Pepsico brands. After a few posts, we were able to improve on even these impressive numbers by tweaking the concepts, sharpening our messaging, and modifying our posting cadence.
Now it's your turn.
Go kill it.