Social Media Video Production: A 7-Step Guide to Nail It

Investing in social media video production is a great idea if you want to promote your products or services effectively.

Why?

Video can help you connect with your social media audience on a personal level, tell your story, and communicate your brand value.

What’s more?

According to a 2022 Wyzowl State of Video Marketing report, 87% of marketers say video has helped them drive more traffic to their websites.

Image via Wyzowl

And 94% of marketers say video has helped them educate their customers about their products or services.

Image via Wyzowl

That’s not all.

About 87% of marketers have reported getting a good ROI after using video to market their products.

Image via Wyzowl

According to the same report, 86% of marketers say that video is a powerful lead-generation tool.

This explains why investment in video content continues to grow.

In the B2B space, 78% of content marketers say their organization will continue to invest more in video in 2023.

Image via Content Marketing Institute

However, there is a challenge:

Social media video production isn’t as easy as creating copy.

In fact, if you don’t have video production skills, producing quality video content for your social media audience can be quite difficult.

Luckily, this 7-step social media video production guide is going to show you how you can start creating awesome video content to enhance your social media marketing content strategy.

Let’s get started.

How to Ace the Social Media Video Production Game

These 7 steps will make your social media marketing campaign more successful. 

1. Set Clear Goals and Decide on a Budget

The first step to producing awesome social media video content is to set specific goals.

Some possible goals for your video production could be to:

• Build brand awareness.
• Promote your product, service, or brand image. We tend to focus on product images because ours is primarily a visual product. An example is the hair brushes for procreating.
• Boost website traffic.
• Increase reach.
• Increase customer loyalty and trust.

According to a 2022 HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Trends survey, 22.4% of the respondents say their main goal with video is to drive brand awareness and 21.6% say they create videos for product education.

Image via HubSpot

Whatever your goal for producing videos, ensure you’re as specific as possible.

Setting specific goals for your video production can help you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and who to target.

If you’re just getting started with your social media video production campaign, start with a few goals to avoid overwhelming yourself.

Once you have determined the purpose of creating social media videos, the next thing is to decide on a budget.

In this case, many factors will determine how much your video production will cost.

For instance, the type of equipment you plan to use, where you will be filming, as well as whether you will hire a professional video production company.

If you plan to film a single-person video with your smartphone, you can expect your social media video production cost to be less than $200.

Otherwise, if you plan to have professional lighting and sound equipment, you can set a budget of between $1,000 and $10,000.

2. Choose The Right Social Video Platform 

Even though there are many social video platforms out there, you must consider several factors before you decide which platform to target.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you start producing videos:

• Who is your target audience?
• On which platform does your target audience spend most of their time?
• Why do you want to reach your audience and what do you want them to feel when watching your videos?

We recommend choosing a platform where your videos can reach your ideal audiences.

Remember to customize videos for the primary audience of each social media platform. Different platforms appeal to different users and people of different age groups, regions, income levels, education, gender, etc.

Instagram, for instance, tends to appeal to 18-34 years old.

For instance, in April 2022, approximately 31% of Instagram users were between 25 and 34 years.

Image via Statista

Facebook tends to appeal to users of ages 24-34.

Image via Statista

Facebook is also the best for sharing videos to drive website traffic, leads, and sales.

Equally, Instagram is also a great platform for posting videos to drive traffic and generate leads. It’s also ideal for implementing ecommerce marketing strategies like ambassador marketing.

3. Develop a Storyboard

Before you get started with social media video production, you must ensure you have all the material and information. If you aren’t sure you can take help from an experienced social media manager. That’s where a storyboard comes in.

Like a script, a storyboard acts as a visual guide or roadmap for your video production process.

It will also help you know which shots to create and how to create them during filming.

Here are some of the things you need to think about when creating your storyboard:

• What do you want to say in the video? It’s important to create content for each stage of the buyer’s journey
• Who will be involved in the video production process and what role will they play?
• What time do you plan to shoot the video and how much time will you spend creating it?
• What video recording software are you planning to use? Are you going to interview an industry expert via webcam or use a PowerPoint presentation with voiceovers?

4. Choose Your Video Production Equipment

To be successful in social media video production, you need to choose good equipment.

Even though there are plenty of video production equipment to choose from, the most important ones are:

• A good camera
• A microphone
• A lighting kit

Getting a lighting kit may sound like a waste of resources but good lighting can help you produce professional videos.

For the camera, invest in a digital camera or HD camera. If you’re just getting started, we recommend using a good-quality mobile camera. A mobile camera can also help you shoot short clips for Twitter or stories for Facebook and Instagram.

Consider getting a short gun microphone. It’ll help you capture pristine audio.

And if you plan to shoot videos outdoors, invest in a windsock for the microphone. It’ll stop the wind from distorting the audio quality.

It’s also best to use a tripod for high-quality footage.

5. Choose a Suitable Background

The background you choose can determine how people will feel when watching your videos.

For better results, you need to choose a background that appeals to your audience. It must also be relevant to your industry.

If your target viewers are in the food niche, shooting your videos in a kitchen setup will provide a great background.

Be sure to experiment with different backgrounds until you get the best that can help you produce awesome videos.

6. Set The Lights

To record high-quality videos, you need proper lighting. 

The choice of lighting will depend on the time you want to record the video. For instance, if you’re recording the video outdoors, you must ensure there is adequate natural light.

For indoor video recording, we recommend using ring lighting to brighten the space with cool and soft light.

Find out more about the best lighting equipment to ensure you’re investing in the best there is.

Also, ensure your camera doesn’t face the sun during the day or lights during the night.

Here are a few other video recording lighting tips to guide you:

• If you plan to record the video indoors during the day, open the windows.
• When filming outdoors, do it in a shade.
• If you plan to record outdoors at night, use a street lamp.
• Avoid too much backlight.
• Lastly, avoid mixed video lighting.

7. Edit Your Videos

Now that you have recorded your videos, it’s time to get on the technical aspect of social media video production—the editing section. Here you can leverage the best video editing tools and edit videos to add titles, music, and special effects, etc.

Additional capabilities of these editing tools include transcribing video to text, which allows you to create a text version of your content, making it searchable and accessible. You can also add subtitles to the video, making it more accessible to audiences around the world or those with hearing impairments. Modern tools are even equipped with AI voice cloning technology, letting you recreate and tweak voices, providing more flexibility in your productions.

Here are useful social media video editing hacks for beginners:

• Get the right video editing software.
• Hook viewers in the first 5 seconds.
• Make tight cuts to keep the videos at the best lengths.
• Edit out mistakes.
• Balance your audio.
• Enhance the visual appeal with effects and filters.
• Add captions/subtitles.
• Add sound and music effects.
• Adjust brightness and add light effects.

You could also use free premiere pro templates to add transitions, overlays, and more to your videos. It’ll step up your video production quality while also making your work easier.  

Useful Tips to Help You Nail Your Social Media Video Production

Learning how to produce awesome social media video content is half the battle. You also need to know how to nail the entire social media video production process.

Here are practical tips to help you achieve that:

Keep The Video in The Right Length

Due to the shorter attention spans users have nowadays, the last mistake you want to make is to record long videos.

Even though YouTube and Facebook allow for longer videos, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok users want short videos of up to 15 seconds long.

Be sure to find out the appropriate video length of each platform so that you don’t end up breaking the rules or pushing your viewers away.

Get the Video Thumbnail Image Right

The thumbnail image you use can determine whether people will watch your videos or not.

Get some inspiration from these HubSpot video thumbnails.

Image via HubSpot

Different platforms have different formatting guidelines for thumbnails. Remember to make the thumbnail engaging and feature your brand’s identifying information like the logo.

Plan Enough Time for Post-Editing 

Post-editing is as important as recording the videos. Plan enough time for it.

During post-editing, think carefully about which video formats are supported on different social media platforms. 

Ensure you add catchy call-to-actions, good music, and other important elements that make your video captivating.

Once you’re done all that, remember to share and promote your videos and measure your success.

Final Thoughts

Social media video production can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t know where to begin.

However, having the right information and applying it can make the whole process enjoyable and interesting.

We hope this 7-step guide will help you produce awesome video content to boost your social media marketing efforts.