Why Social Video Marketing is Better than Viral Video Marketing

At Dubb, we believe that social video marketing is better than viral video marketing. Through the power of this unique strategy, everyone from solo entrepreneurs to large blue-chip corporations can find new customers and build stronger relationships with their current customers. 

Because social video marketing is so powerful, I want to use this article to explain its power and how you can incorporate it into your business. The good news is that anyone can leverage its benefits—so long as they create compelling content that resonates with their chosen audiences. While it may take some practice, I’m confident that you will create awesome videos that help you grow your brand and expand your business.

Settling on a Definition

Social video marketing is essentially an interactive video marketing campaign that leverages real-time editing tools. Rather than focusing on a flash-in-the-pan viral marketing opportunity, it is about connecting with people on a one-to-one basis. You do this by inviting your audience members to have a real effect on the content that you create and distribute. From submitting different types of video responses to experimenting with different types of editing tools, your customers, fans, and prospects can join you in generating awesome videos.  

While viral videos are measured in things like shares and impressions, social video marketing is measured differently. Yes, it gets all of the benefits that come from the halo effect of influencers. That being said, there is more to it than that. You can think of it as being deep and narrow compared to broad and shallow. By this, I mean that you are building stronger relationships with a fewer number of people compared to weaker relationships with larger amounts of people. Those strong relationships that you are building are much more likely to end in sales compared to that flash-in-the-pan, viral moment that can seem so compelling. 

Ultimately, through social video marketing, participants can add their own voices to your content. It is a way to bring participants into the story, thereby helping your brand grow and helping you find new customers. 

Why It is So Powerful

Before we get into how you can leverage social video marketing, it’s helpful to explore why it is so powerful. While I could spend an entire post speaking about the many benefits of this effective marketing strategy, I want to focus on just a few here.

One of the most prominent benefits of social video marketing is the fact that you don’t need to have a large built-in audience. Of course, you need to have some sort of audience. Nonetheless, you don’t need to have a huge audience as you would need with viral marketing. The key to social video marketing is that you don’t need that large audience. If you just have 100 people in your audience and 10 people want to participate, you can still get a lot of value out of this strategy. Rather than relying on a piece of your content achieving virality, you can lower the stakes by trying to attract a smaller number of super passionate people. 

Next, social video marketing is powerful because you are interacting with your community. In fact, it is a key component of social video marketing. It doesn’t exist without a give and take between your company and your followers. Even if your social video marketing campaign “fails,” you are still creating value by developing your relationships with even just one member of your community. By contrast, viral video marketing takes a much more passive approach to community building. If virality is your goal, you don’t necessarily need to rely on fan contributions to make your content. But if your video doesn’t go viral (as most videos do not do), you aren’t getting this benefit of building closer relationships with your prospects, fans, and customers. 

Beyond this interaction with your community, social video marketing lets you leverage the power of the crowd. You can think of social video marketing as a way of crowdsourcing fun and insightful content. Rather than coming up with all of the ideas for your content, you can open it up to your passionate fans. Working together, you can come up with some really interesting videos. On the other hand, viral videos require you to develop content ideas. While you may be able to develop a viral video or two, it is going to come nearly entirely from your team’s brains. Ultimately, achieving virality is much easier said than done.

These are just some of the reasons why social video marketing can be an exciting opportunity for your organization. Even though the potential rewards of a viral video may seem too good to pass up, social video marketing campaigns offer their own unique rewards. Over the long-term, there’s a good argument that the rewards within this strategy drastically outweigh the rewards of viral videos. 

Creating Effective Social Video Marketing Content

So considering these benefits, you may be wondering how you can easily leverage social video marketing in your own business. Luckily, there are a few quick tips that you can implement right now to get started.

First, let’s talk about theming. It’s important to have some kind of theme that ties the entire campaign together. The overall goal is to have your community interacting with your theme and your company. By interacting, I mean you want your audience to send in videos as a form of participation. 

An example is helpful here. Let’s say that you are trying to spread some awareness about the underlying mission of your business. You run a sock business, and for every sale that you make, you donate a pair of socks to children in need. Your theme for your next social video marketing campaign can be dedicated to that underlying cause. In a social media post to your followers, you can say something like, “Send me a video of you saying one word related to helping needy children get socks all around the world.” From there, you can tell your audience that you are going to edit all of the responses together into a short story. 

Ultimately, you are asking your audience to get involved with you at the content creation level. Because of this, it’s really important to make your theme emotional. This gets people to respond to your request for content. Nostalgia also helps. For example, if your brand has survived for 100 years, you can make your theme about the feelings that your fans get when they think about your company. Whatever it is, keep the theme at the top of mind.

Next, feel free to use social networks to create your campaigns. In any type of social video marketing campaign, you’ll need to get your community involved. That much is critical. 

It’s clear that social networks are valuable in so many ways. We can post all types of content to fans located around the world. Along with this, social networks can be especially valuable in the social video marketing space.

Yes, you can create social video marketing campaigns by relying on email lists and other non-social network outlets. Email lists can be extremely powerful ways to connect with your customers and prospects. That being said, social networks provide a vast number of benefits. For example, you can piggyback off of your current social media work by incorporating social video marketing campaigns. In other words, if you have already built an audience through your normal video marketing work, you have a great resource as a jumping-off point.

And if you don’t already have a huge email list or social media following? Social media websites like Facebook or LinkedIn still give you the power to launch successful social video marketing campaigns. Whether you choose to invest in social media ads, hashtags, or something else, you can easily find participants through these marketing campaigns.

From social networks, you’ll next want to invite everyone to become a video editor. Successful campaigns let participants enter the creative process. You’ll want to encourage your participants and followers to add effects, text, or music to add production value. The more creative, the better.

If you aren’t yet a Dubb user or aren’t aware of our recent product updates, we offer real-time video editing tools. At Dubb, we have a mobile app that lets you (and your fans) make professional-looking edits—even if you are away from home or your desk. Now, everyone can be a video editor or participate in social video marketing campaigns. Whether you or your fans use Dubb or another video editing platform, the tools are there for the taking.

Next, it is important to adjust social video marketing based on your brand. Like implementing any type of marketing strategy, you may need to override recommendations based on your specific circumstances. 

For instance, you may discover that you want to launch a campaign for a specific segment of your audience. Or you may quickly realize that you want to limit (or expand) the types of editing options that you provide to your audience. Whatever the case may be, feel free to alter and experiment with your social video marketing campaign. In all likelihood, the alterations and experiments that you launch will help you get even more value from your social video marketing work.  

Finally, I encourage you to use some common sense. There are so many different types of social media strategies out there. From a heavy investment in social media ads to purely organic growth through live video, you can accomplish your marketing goals in any number of ways. Social video marketing campaigns are yet another way to connect with your audience, create more brand equity, and generate more sales. 

The bottom line? I think that at the end of the day, the best strategy is to use common sense. I don’t think that chasing views or fame is the best strategy. It certainly isn’t the most efficient. Truthfully, there is a lot of randomness and luck that comes with creating a viral video. There is no strict formula or blueprint, so this mentality of “winning the lottery” seems less appealing to me. 

It’s important to stay away from shiny objects. Instead, we must spend our time focusing on the strategies that work. This is why investing in social video marketing makes so much sense. Here, you are reaching out to your community and asking them to participate by sending you a video. It is an effective way to not only create awesome video content, but to develop much closer relationships with your customers and fans. 

Taking Advantage of Social Video Marketing

Social video marketing can create so much value for your organization. It goes beyond the content that you are developing. At its core, it is about connecting with people. Whether you are looking to build closer relationships with key customers or advance prospects through your sales funnels, you can get the job done with social video marketing.

Finally, I encourage you to contact us at Dubb. Whether you have questions about the topic itself or want to learn more about our real-time editing features, we are happy to help. Click here to learn more about Dubb and click here to reach out.