There are so many video options out there, thanks to social media. This week we're going to talk about where to start when your brand is ready to get comfortable with video but doesn't have a big budget and if you’re limited on time.
It's also really low tech. A lot of it is that you just need a camera, good lighting, and a tripod to start. And I talked about that last week, but we're not gonna go back into that topic. Let's talk about the place to start first. In order to get comfortable with video, there are two places I recommend to clients: Instagram and Facebook. If your ideal audience is on either Instagram or Facebook, you can create content there, and then reuse it on your website. We're going to talk about that a little bit today. We're going to talk about Instagram and Facebook stories or going live on Facebook or YouTube because you can essentially pull the video up from YouTube as well. So let's talk about Stories. Stories are those little bubbles you see at the top of Instagram that only last 24 hours. Facebook also displays them at the top.
They are not algorithm dictated, meaning they show up when they are available and in order. It's key that you take advantage of that so you can stay at the top when you're in those stories. And when I explain this to a lot of small business owners, they often don't get it. There's an algorithm in Facebook and Instagram feeds. Unless you click the most recent on Facebook, then the most recent will display, but Facebook is only showing about five to ten percent of what we post on our business pages. So when you're in those stories on the top of Instagram and Facebook and they're connected, it's gold. Hopefully, that makes sense. Stories are a great way to get started because you can connect them from Instagram to Facebook and they disappear within 24 hours. If you're worried about how you sound or look, it's a great way to start, and to put yourself out there.
By connecting Instagram to Facebook, you're just basically killing two platforms at once. I forgot to mention, you can save stories to highlights in Instagram stories settings if you turn on the archive feature. With stories, one of the best ways to get started is to observe what others are doing on stories. I usually suggest to my clients to give it a week, observe and take notes of what you like that people are doing, and keep notes on ideas for stories. Then take the leap yourself into sharing a little bit about yourself, the products or services you offer, behind the scenes, and answering questions your followers are asking. Don’t forget to try to stay in that bubble because staying in the bubble keeps you on top with your followers that are following you.
After you've done this for a while, it becomes second nature and you can start dipping your toe into possibly pre-recording videos just on your phone. A lot of people start with the stories and all they do is talk and create some fun stories. Then they're like. “Okay, I'm ready to use my phone to record some short videos.” This is just a great way to get started. Another way to get comfortable on video is to go live on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. You'll want to prepare a topic, an outline, and a call to action to keep you on track. And I had to do this myself because I have this tendency to ramble on and we don’t want that to happen. When you are on live, just prepare an outline to help you stay on track.
I have a script that I follow for my lives on social media. After the live, you can download the video, and then if you need to trim the beginning and end, you'll need software, which can be pretty intuitive, like iMovie if you have a Mac. For PC, you can use Adobe Premiere or Windows 10 Movie Maker. I have a client of mine saying there's something that she uses that just was built in IRPC. To download your video from Facebook, you kind of have to hunt for it. If you can click on the video and then the three little dots, you can then download the video. On Instagram, they will give you an option to download to your phone once you’re finished making your video.
Instagram also gives you the option to post to IGTV when you're done. You can put it in a series, and then it will auto-generate captions from there, which is really kind of cool. If you want to do prerecorded videos with captions, you have to load them into Instagram or Facebook. Facebook and Instagram will automatically generate the captions. If you load it from creator studio, it will not auto-generate captions. I've gotten in the habit of starting to do it manually. It’s no fun because that means I have to go on Tuesday morning and upload the video from my phone, and yesterday I think it was the afternoon before. So that's the thing about it. One thing I will say is, I'm going back to stories.
You will want to eventually caption your stories. There are tons of apps out there that do it, just go to the app store. That means actually recording your video outside of Instagram and then loading it in. I know a lot of people are really bent on the need to have captions, and I'm trying to get better at it. The threads app from Instagram will actually put captions on it for you, but it only lets you do 15 seconds at a time, not 10 minutes. So just be aware. Once you've got used to it, you can eventually do things like the one mentioned above, but at the beginning, just make sure you include a summary of your story so that people will know what you’re talking about it.
With the lives, and also your prerecorded videos, you'll want to add captions as well. I suggest you download and post video content from the video to your website with transcription, or revise the transition transcription. Google loves videos on your website with rich keywords and copy. This was and still is a game-changer for me. I started doing this a little over a year ago and it helped my Google rankings tremendously. I am now ranking really high for my keywords because I make sure those keywords are always somewhere in the post, in the SEO, and in the background. SEO is a whole other topic we can get into but we won’t discuss this here.
Your next action step from this is to do a video this week, and if you're not on video, start experimenting with Instagram or Facebook stories or go live on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.