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Social video content is the future. According to Cisco, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017 and video-on-demand traffic alone will have almost trebled.

More and more brands are turning to video as a way to engage with their audiences and create truly unique experiences.  

We recently launched a new social video campaign on behalf of Carphone Warehouse to celebrate the release of the Huawei P9 phone. The aim was to bring to life the Huawei P9’s camera abilities, particularly as the camera was developed with Leica, a high-end camera specialist.

360 video has been making waves in recent months due to the incredible perspective it offers

Inspired by this, we built the campaign around three tongue-in-cheek videos. Each video portrays a parody of three eccentric characters – a hipster, a foodie and a photographer – all getting carried away with their photography skills, whilst using the P9.

The videos play on popular social trends to connect with a social-media attuned audience, and were created with subtitles to account for the viewing behaviours we see across different channels – for example, a large majority of people watch videos without sound on Facebook and Instagram.

Part of the challenge was to get our audiences engaged with the campaign and each of the videos. Using Facebook as a primary channel, we enabled users to share the content easily and also react to it.

The first video, which appeared on Carphone Warehouse’s Facebook channel on Friday 27 May, has already hit 186,000 views, and had 29 shares and 162 likes, and shows the hipster character walking through East London with his P9. He then goes to elaborate lengths to capture a #facesinplaces photograph.

The second video shows a foodie crafting the perfect picture of her food, which turns out to be a pot noodle and the third features a passionate photographer taking ‘serious’ shots, but it’s soon revealed he’s actually capturing cat pictures.

Combined, we’ve seen 797,514 views, and 2,093 engagements (shares, comments, likes and clicks) across Facebook and Instagram.

Whilst we are delighted that the campaign reached 3.8 million on Facebook alone, we know that the format we choose to centre it around, allowed us to bring the campaign to life and drive its success.

Based on this, here are some tops tips for creating and marketing social video:

Use data and insights 

Knowledge is power and there is nothing like having insights to help inform your idea and make it as relevant as possible to the audience you want to target.

In this case, we used social media trends to help us identify the themes of each video, but there are many different ways you can gain insights from social. For example, following a hashtag or a group of influencers on a particular topic can help you understand what’s being discussed in real-time  

Choose the right format

Content can be created in many ways and video is undoubtedly one of the strongest formats. Moreover, there is a whole wealth of video technology out there that can turn your idea into an experience like no other. 360 video has been making waves in recent months due to the incredible perspective it offers.

Earlier this year we created the #AllStar360 – a 360 video review for the Samsung Galaxy S7 launch, working with four of the UK’s top tech reviewers.

Shot in a single take, the 360 video content has achieved nearly a million views since posting, across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and has resonated with the audience primarily because of the innovative format and breadth of opinion on offer

Make it shareable 

It sounds simple but take advantage of social media channels to help promote and share content across a number of different platforms, whether it’s sharing a snippet on Vine or a link to the full video on Facebook, make sure sharing options are clearly visible around the content you publish

Be creative

We’re constantly seeing innovation across the industry in how content is made and shared and we’re always looking to push the boundaries and find new ways to reach target audiences.

We recently experimented with vertical video based on insights from Facebook that 94% of people watch videos vertically on Facebook for mobile – don’t be afraid to try something new.

Make it relatable

It’s often a tricky balance to achieve, but making content that is creative is often just as important as making it relatable. The more relatable your content is, the more it aligns with your audience’s interests – but it also needs to link back to the brand in a clear way.

After all – social content always has a fundamental objective – it’s important to keep this focus through every stage of the process so that you don’t go off track.

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