Social Media Video – The Playbook
A framework for planning and producing effective social-first video.
We update this page periodically – the last update was in March 2024.
Almost every project we work on includes at least some outputs for sharing on social media. So we’ve spent a lot of time making and adapting content for sharing on social platforms, some of it more successful than others.
There are thousands of articles and accounts that claim to hold the secret recipe for successful social video content. This page is not a how-to guide, and that’s because we don’t believe a single recipe for guaranteed success with social video exists.
Instead, the information here is an attempt to collate a set of non-prescriptive thinking points for approaching social-first content, based on what we’ve learned from making it for a range of brands and organisations and analysing other campaigns. We’ve made it as a reference point that we can return to when developing ideas and strategies for clients (and if we’re already working together, we may have pointed you here during pre-production). But we also hope it is useful for anyone else that comes across it. We’re always learning, and audiences and platforms are always changing, so we’ll be updating this page periodically as our thinking on this evolves.
The groundwork
What is “social-first” video?
We mean video content that has been produced specifically for consumption on social media platforms.
And, contrary to what some people might tell you, there is no cookie cutter approach to making successful social-first content. Different things will work for different brands and organisations. Why? Firstly, because their audiences are different and social media is a fundamentally audience-driven thing. But also because “success” will (and should) mean different things to different brands and organisations.
So we need to answer a couple of questions at the outset:
What is the goal? What is the measure of success?
This is a really important question, and one that often doesn’t get the consideration that it should. What are you trying to achieve for your brand? And what would success look like for your brand?
Consider these scenarios:
1.
Goal: We want to educate our audience about the work our charity does and why it is important.
Success would be: People engaging with the videos, asking questions in the comments, and an uptick in people clicking through to our website to find out more about what the charity does.
2.
Goal: We want to increase local awareness of our seaside ice cream shop among local residents and visiting tourists.
Success would be: An increase in footfall coming to the shop and a gradual increase in followers so that local residents see the offers we share on our stories.
3.
Goal: We want to make people laugh and begin to gently drive an association between positivity and our brand.
Success would be: A post that goes viral and is widely shared using in-app features.
Why it matters:
You need to have a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve in order to work out the best way to get there.
You need to know what “success” would be in order to measure how well it has performed on those terms and make adjustments to your strategy as needed.
Viral content is often held up as the benchmark for successful social content, but “success” can mean lots of different things. We need to think more broadly.
The algorithm
We’re using “algorithm” here in a general sense to refer collectively to the thing that governs who sees your content in the first place – even among people who already follow your account or subscribe to your page. Different platforms approach this in different ways, and we’re not going to attempt to second-guess the finer details of what the different algorithms do and don’t like because we simply don’t know for sure.
But we do know this:
Social platforms are in the business of keeping people watching, so they want to put content in front of people that furthers that goal.
The signal they use to measure that is user engagement:
Did someone watch 80% of the video, like it, and then send it to a friend on the app? That’s a good indication that the content is engaging for people with similar interests to that viewer.
Did someone watch the opening two seconds of the video and scroll on to the next thing? That’s an indication that the content didn’t engage the viewer.
Content is king, and the value you offer the viewer is paramount.
Eight thinking points for social-first video
Not all of these will be appropriate for every project, film or client, and how you choose to employ them (if at all) is up to you.
1. Tell a story
People are drawn to stories: we’re surrounded by them all the time and they play a huge role in how we make sense of the world and our place in it. This carries over into content strategy too, and the extent to which a narrative can be weaved into a brand is often the difference between success and failure.
In the context of social-first video, a “story” doesn’t need to be complicated (and probably shouldn’t be). Instead, we’d suggest thinking of it as as a journey from A to B. This journey can take many shapes and doesn’t need to be a physical one. A traditional story arc (albeit a simple one) would look something like this:
Starting Point > The Goal > Challenges Faced > The Journey > Resolution
For the purposes of telling a story in social-first video, we think you can reduce that down to something more like this:
Starting Point > Something Happens > End
What this journey is is entirely up to you. It could be overcoming the limits of human endurance in a way nobody thought was possible; it could be up-cycling an old piece of furniture into something beautiful.
The key is to show and tell your viewer that a journey is going to take place, and that something is going to happen. Create the anticipation of a desired ending or payoff.
2. Don’t bury the lede! Hooks and foreshadowing
The expression “don’t bury the lede” has its roots in journalism and essentially means “don’t bury the most important or intriguing bits in the middle of the story”. Put them at the very beginning so that the reader knows what they’re getting and why it matters – in other words, why they should keep reading. You can (and should) apply this principle to social-first video.
In social media parlance, this is often referred to as the “hook”.
What is a hook?
A hook is something that immediately grabs the viewer’s attention and makes them engage with your post. A good hook will grab the viewer’s attention; a great hook will sustain it because they want what your hook has offered them.
What is foreshadowing?
In literature, “foreshadowing” is a technique used to keep readers engaged by hinting at what is to come later in the story. In the context of social-first video, think of it as the promise of a payoff: if you keep watching, you’re going to get something. It could be information or advice, it could be comedy or entertainment, it could be a look at something beautiful or impressive – anything. Just make sure you deliver on the promise!
Often this is spoken/done in text and is part of the hook (“10 Secrets You Didn’t Know About London”). But you sometimes see it in visual form too, which can be especially effective.
3. Captions and text
This is a small but important one. Most people that start watching your video will be watching with the sound off. That’s why captions and text overlays are so ubiquitous – in the absence of sound, they’re a great way to immediately communicate what your video is about and why people should watch it. Make sure to include them.
4. Search is getting social
As audiences increasingly seek out video content to answer questions or explain things (“How to…”), they’re also varying the places they go to look for that content and many now turn to social platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for this. This has opened up an opportunity to create social video that response to those queries. This won’t be the right path for every brand, but it’s definitely one to consider as part of a broader content strategy. It’s particularly well-suited to providing informational content.
You can use services like KeywordsEverywhere to identify gaps by comparing estimated search volume for certain words or phrases with the number of uploads that exist with those terms. High search volume and low uploads is a good bet for getting your content seen in response to search queries.
5. Engagement beats reach
This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. But audience engagement signals are the primary measures the algorithm takes into account when judging whether your content should be delivered to an ever-wider audience. So in theory, if you prioritise engagement then reach should follow.
More comments and shares > Higher engagement > Greater reach
6. Use emotion
Emotion builds connection. It’s extremely relatable because emotions are universal and human.
Showing what you did can be impressive, but it’s the emotional impact it had that can really resonate and stay with an audience. How did it make you, or someone else, feel?
Don’t worry if your film doesn’t focus on a central character; you can still make use of this. Your film focusses on a product. Present the problem, show that your product solves it, and show how solving that problem makes people feel.
7. Beware the safe zones
This is a technical point, but a valuable one. When you publish your content, you’ll notice that some platforms overlay interactive buttons and text on the top of your video. There is an area within the screen that is free fro these overlays, known as the “safe zone”, and this is where you should position the focus of your content.
We’ve made a set of Instagram Reels PNG overlay templates that you can download for free and use when filming and editing to see exactly where the safe zone is.
8. Evergreen vs. trends
We often think of social media posts as being pretty ephemeral – they generate attention for 24-48 hours and then drift off into obscurity. On Instagram, that’s not neccessarily the case. Visit the Explore page on Instagram and there’s a good chance that lots of the posts there will be months, and in some cases, years old.
Think about content ideas that will offer as much value in six months as they will today as part of your overall content strategy. The growth of SEO on social platforms ties in closely with this. Evergreen and search-discoverable content can continue to deliver sustained engagement over a long period of time.
The Platforms
Some platform-specific notes and ideas.
Content lifespan: We tend to think of content posted on social channels as ephemeral – that it is most likely to get attention right after it is posted, before it drifts off into obscurity 24-48 hours later. That’s absolutely not the case on Instagram anymore. Take a look at your Explore tab now and see when the recommended posts were originally posted. I’ll bet that some of them are months old. Good content will continue to deliver interactions for weeks.
Framing on Reels: Don’t overcomplicate things within such a confined frame. Center your content, keep the important things in the middle, and beware of the safe zones. You can download our PNG safe zone overlays for Instagram Reels here.
Use relevant topics: Instagram now allows you to tag Reels with certain topics. The list is quite small and you should make sure that you only select relevant ones, but this gives the algorithm more information to go on when serving up your content to cold audiences.
TikTok
Long-form content: TikTok has gradually increased the maximum length for videos on the platform from 15 seconds at launch to 10 minutes at the time of writing. A recent report from Tubular Labs found that from a set of US-based broadcasters and radio producers, longer-form videos (those more than five minutes in length) had the highest average views in 2023. What are the takeaways here? Clearly that short isn’t always best, but also that narrative storytelling – when done well – works on social.
Is LinkedIn overlooked? Nobody said that video on LinkedIn had to be confined to rigid pieces to camera against a green screen background. And yet, that’s what a lot of video on LinkedIn continues to be – stiff corporate lead generation campaigns. Which makes it the perfect place to do something different that really stands out and humanises your brand.
Resources
Tubular’s “2024 The State of Video”: Download the report here (you have to register, but you can unsubscribe).
Keywords Everywhere: Useful for identifying gaps between supply and demand for particular hashtag themes and search terms. You have to pay to access the most useful information, but we think it is reasonably priced (£20/year for 100,000 credits). Just be sure to toggle the browser extension on and off as you use it and remove services you don’t want it to provide data for in the settings panel to make sure you don’t waste credits.
