Social Networking for Success: Video Marketing Is at Your Fingertips with Animoto

Social Networking for Success: Video Marketing Is at Your Fingertips with Animoto

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Video is just about everywhere these days. It’s a good thing we’re in the imaging industry: we could, and should, be leaders in video marketing. It’s what we sell to our business customers, so it should be what our businesses excel in. If you find your business is behind the eight ball with using video in your social media marketing, then take a look at Animoto.

You may be thinking: ‘This is time consuming; I have products to sell. How will I find the time to add this to our marketing plan?’ Well, if you can carve out less than 30 minutes, you can create a professional marketing video.

Animoto empowers anyone to make videos with an easy online video editor. The videos can help you increase sales with ads and promotions. With Animoto, you can create marketing videos for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, as well as improve brand awareness with powerful professional how-to videos. You do not need any video-editing experience since they have a drag-and-drop editor. Animoto-Logo-2018I recently needed to create a 30-second marketing video and gave Animoto a shot. Not only did I find the creation process streamlined, I was especially pleased when I needed to make edits. I was able to change out photos, text and background colors quickly and easily. I was even on the phone with someone, and as they asked for changes I was able to make them as we talked. This allowed us to collaborate on the project.

Animoto Video Storyboards

All you need is some content, and Animoto will provide the rest to get you started. We’re in the imaging business, right? Beautiful product photos: check. Experts on creating how-to videos to educate customers about imaging: check. Creative people who would love to build engaging videos to share with the world: check. Sounds like the imaging industry needs to be the experts in this fast-growing area.

Using Animoto, you can take all of those pieces and put them together with an easy to use video editor. There are built-in video storyboards you can choose from, or you can start from scratch and get as creative as you want. The storyboards are adjustable video templates that make it easy to create and customize your marketing videos. There are many themes to choose from, like ads and promotions, how-to guides and seasonal sales. Once you choose a storyboard from a theme, you can easily adapt it to fit your needs.

Next, you simply drag and drop images and video clips into the video storyboard. Then you can customize your piece by editing the text, choosing a song from their library of licensed music, and changing fonts, transitions, colors and more.

After you’ve edited your video, you are ready to produce and share it. You easily can post it to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms right from Animoto. You can also e-mail your video or embed it on your company’s website.

Animoto: Mobile & Desktop

Moreover, if you are always on the go, Animoto has a free app for your phone. In just a few minutes, you can create video slideshows set to music using the photos and video clips already on your mobile device.

However, to make the most powerful marketing messages to increase your business, the desktop program with a subscription cost makes the most sense. There are three tiers to choose from, and all three have a 50% off rate when you pay annually rather than monthly. The Professional package is their most popular. For $264 for the year, it’s the least expensive video marketer you’ll ever hire. You can even try it for free for two weeks to see if it works for you.

Video Engagement

Consumers are watching hundreds of millions of hours of video every day. They are watching millions of hours of video daily on Facebook alone! Videos have a 135% higher organic reach than regular photo posts. Customers, and potential customers, are more willing to watch a video about a product rather than read about it. They actually expect companies, large and small, to have video content. And that expectation is heightened when the business they are looking at is in the imaging industry.

The square video format, rather than the traditional horizontal video, is also growing in popularity. According to Animoto, square videos take up 78% more space in the Facebook News Feed and get more engagement than horizontal videos. That’s why Animoto offers both formats in their video editor.

If you are wondering about the square format, look no further than your phone. Animoto surveyed 1,000 consumers and 500 marketers and found that 84% of viewers are watching social video via their mobile device. They also found the best time to post is during the evening, since 56% of people are viewing during that time.

At 49% of the share, Facebook is the top location where consumers engage with branded videos on a daily basis. YouTube was close behind at 32% and Instagram followed with 24%. Perhaps the most significant finding though is that 64% of consumers made a purchase after watching branded social videos.

The reality is that video marketing is definitely here to stay. If you don’t think you have the time, know-how or budget to create quality videos for your business, think again and check out Animoto.

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