How to Build a Complete Video Strategy for Your Organization

Live streaming is just one element of a successful overall video strategy for your organization. This post addresses how to approach a broader video marketing strategy to grow the reach of your organization and brand. This guest post covers how to develop a more comprehensive video strategy for your organization and is brought to you by our friends at Waymark, an online video maker that empowers anyone to make exceptional video ads in minutes.

Define Your Video Goals

The first step of building any successful marketing or engagement strategy is to determine what success will look like. From there, you can build backward until you find your focus.

There are a variety of reasons for deciding to grow your video strategy. You may be looking to build your search engine optimization (SEO), extend your reach, further your engagement, or foster a stronger community. It’s important to decide which of these motivations are most important for your organization as you set your goals.

Once you set your goals, you can develop your strategy. Your strategy is the map you follow to decide what types of content to produce. Your tactics are the actions you take to execute that strategy — in this case, the types of videos you choose to create and the channels you use to distribute them.

Some video channels work better than others for particular goals and strategies. In this post we’re going to give you some foundation-setting ideas for building a strategy, an overview of all the types of video you should consider, and some tips for creating good video content itself.

Rules for a Great Video Strategy

Some core tenets to keep in mind as you define your goals, strategy, and tactics:

Be audience-focused in all things

You (hopefully) know why you’re creating a video and putting it into the world, now ask yourself — why is my audience watching this? Get in the habit of asking yourself that question throughout the process of creating any piece of content.

Make your video evergreen

You should be creating video content that can be recycled, cut up in new ways, and reused across platforms. Think about taking highlights and snippets from your recorded broadcast and putting them on Instagram or Facebook.

Be consistent

The worry when developing content for any sort of content strategy is that when you put out a piece of content, your audience will immediately start to wonder when the next post will be coming. Make sure your strategy outlines a clear structure so you can avoid this issue. Commit to a 10-part series instead of committing to a certain cadence, and be reasonable about your bandwidth to produce.

Set your metrics

Tie your goals to specific numbers — follower increase, percent of audience engaging, email click-through — define what you will consider success so you can evaluate as you go and determine if it’s worth continuing to invest in.

Three Types of Impactful video

A great video strategy will integrate several of the following types of content, and use them across channels.

1. User-generated video content

Consider how you can tap into your audience to create video content that you won’t have to put much production effort into. You can run a hashtag-driven campaign, Q&A, or competition. Ask your audience to upload a short video about what they love about your organization, or to answer a timely question. Share your favorites and make people feel included.

2. Social media in-feed video

Produce content for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn that delivers a specific message in line with your goals and strategy. These could be explainer videos, team member features, FAQ videos, hype videos for events, or anything else under the sun.

3. Stories

Use Instagram stories or Snapchat to create content that is more in-the-moment or behind-the-scenes. This is a great format for interviewing stakeholders and team members, or for giving your followers a sneak peek of what’s to come.

Keep in mind that your video strategy should be unified across channels and types of videos. You should always optimize your content for each channel, but you should ensure your video campaign remains cohesive across platforms.

Tips for Impactful Video

Once you’ve chosen what types of video content you’re going to produce, consider these tips to pack the biggest punch for your effort:

Be SEO-forward

Optimize your titles and descriptions. Video is weighted heavily in search results. A well-written description and the right title can give your site a big boost.

Transcribe your videos

On social media, many people watch videos with the sound turned off. Including a transcription ensures viewers get the most out of your video whether or not they have sound on.

Batch your content-creation

Don’t think of your video production (or posting schedule) as a bunch of one-off videos — think of them as a unified series. When creating longer-form content, consider how you will be able to repurpose it into smaller chunks that you can use on social media, email, FAQ, or brand videos.

Include a call-to-action

Even if you aren’t selling something, you should be thinking about video as a way to drive viewer action. How can you get your audience to consume more of your content and take the next step to get plugged into your brand and community?

The 5 Major Video Channels You Should Consider

Depending on your audience engagement levels and resources, choose a few of these platforms for your video:

Facebook Video

Facebook gives people the space to share your content and engage with one another in the comments, in a way they likely wouldn’t on other platforms. Creating a Facebook community group is also an effective way to drive engagement and connections between your audience members.

Instagram Video

Instagram is especially impactful if you have a mobile-focused audience and are looking to make short-form video. The maximum length for an in-feed video is 60 seconds, and a story can be made up of a series of 15-second video clips. Instagram audiences are highly engaged as well. This will allow you to make the most of short-form video.

Email Marketing

Video is a great way to get the most out of the emails you send. Your audience more likely to engage with a quick video than a huge block of text, and you can communicate more effectively with video.

YouTube

YouTube is helpful for storing your longer form content and building playlists of videos that connect to one another. It’s also a very high-impact platform when it comes to SEO, given that YouTube is owned by Google.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a must if you have a more professional audience or are looking to hire for your team. A LinkedIn video is often posted in a format similar to a vlog or TED talk, where the speaker presents their point of view.

Final Thoughts + Further Reading

It’s important to consider your goals first when developing and implementing a video strategy for your organization. When used with intentionality, video is a powerful and engaging way to tell stories and drive action.

You can use online video makers like ours at Waymark to make beautiful videos in just a few minutes, so you can put your strategy in place quickly and effectively. An exceptional video strategy is very much within your reach — put a little thought into it, keep your goals in mind, and you’ll have a powerful driver for engagement.

Kay-Anne Reed is the Marketing Manager at Waymark, an online video maker that is focused on bridging the gap between local advertisers and the future of video. Waymark empowers anyone to make exceptional video ads in just a few minutes.