How To Build a Video Marketing Strategy For Twitter

A guide to optimizing video marketing across Twitter.

How To Build a Video Marketing Strategy For Twitter

A well rounded and balanced video marketing strategy should be constructed to deliver video to wherever audiences are. For some brands that can mean extending video delivery into mobile apps and home television sets using over the top (OTT) applications; it also means reaching viewers across social. Today understanding your audience is as important as understanding the channel you are delivering content on.

This post reviews concepts to consider when building a video strategy for Twitter. Twitter is a conversational platform, starting and opening up dialogue with customers has no barriers. Due to its sheer volume of users and the number of tweets being launched into the Twittersphere at one time, finding success on Twitter means making your content stand out. It is because of this fact and that video is new to the platform that incorporating video can drive real measurable results.

Here are the top things to consider before launching a video strategy for Twitter.

1 – What are your high-level Twitter goals related to your business?

It’s important to set engagement goals for your brand on Twitter. This will give you something to aim for and set expectations for success. Some common goals set by other video marketers:

  • Grow the reach and audience size by increasing Twitter followers.
  • Identify and engage with key customer (and future customer) advocates
  • Drive SEO and key traffic back to the website for conversion

2 – What is your brand’s value-add by participating on Twitter?

Twitter is very noisy as it is, what will your video content bring to the Twitter stream? What value is your video content adding? Examples of brands delivering value on Twitter comes in the form of:

  • Engaging with customers and customer service
  • Sharing a touching story or valuable facts
  • Product or service promotions

3 – What types of video content to publish to Twitter?

Once you have established your brand goals for Twitter you can then decide on which videos to produce specifically for the channel or existing videos that should be repurposed. The video content you share on Twitter should be relevant to your organization or vertical. All videos don’t need to be specifically about your organization or brand directly, but should definitely be aimed at building reputation and trust.

Move fast and flow with the speed of the Twitter stream by posting quick, timely video updates rather than lengthy how to’s or lectures. For event marketing — post quick video updates and recaps. It’s important to include relevant metadata including event hashtags. Hashtags will ensure your videos will become part of the Twitter conversation around the event.

Customer success and brand advocacy can be viral and a huge win with video on Twitter. When a follower, customer, or potential customer asks a question via Twitter responding with a video instead of a short text response can drive brand value and customer retention.

Best practices for your Twitter strategy

Once you have a handle of the type of video content to post to Twitter, next consider how you can leverage that content to add to the conversation to achieve your goals.

1 – How To Optimize Video Content For Twitter

Twitter is all about bite-sized content both in text and also with your video content. It’s important to consider whether to upload your video content directly to Twitter or to a 3rd party video hosting service like YouTube, Vimeo, or a premium video marketing platform.

When video is uploaded to Twitter directly playback duration is limited to 30 seconds. If you share a video link from an 3rd party video hosting platform, like Vimeo or YouTube, length is not limited. However, keep videos under 30 seconds is a good length guideline. There a benefits and drawbacks to posting video via native Twitter vs 3rd party video player.

For instance, if you’re sharing a video link, rather than uploading to Twitter directly you will get more analytics and stats that the Twitter video player won’t offer. If you go the 3rd party route, make sure you’re using a hosting platform that displays videos in a Player card. Player cards turn video links into embeds that can be watched directly inside the tweet which is critically important for increased conversion.

Once you have selected your video hosting/player option, you should next optimize the video thumbnail to make it appealing for click-through. The thumbnail you select will display as the main image in your tweet and will be critical for driving conversion. In addition to the a catchy thumbnail, come up with a short, catchy text description to include alongside the video in the tweet. Make sure to include hashtags and relevant keywords in the description to ensure the right audience sees it.

2 – How to build an engaged audience

Segmenting audiences on Twitter relies on the usage of hashtags. Create a brand hashtag and invite customers to share videos of your product and services using that hashtag. Make sure to retweet these videos to show appreciation and engagement, this will also add that content to your brand’s stream so others can see it. To reach a wider audience outside of your brand, across industry, tweet use industry specific hashtags. To get the attention of advocates tag influencers with @replies so they see your videos.

3 – How to convert your audience

Once you have nailed audience engagement on Twitter it’s time to configure for conversion (which is really the most important part). Here are a few things you can do to optimize conversion on Twitter:

  • Include links back to your website or blog in your bio, as well as in tweets
  • Include calls-to-action inside the videos themselves using in-video CTAs and interactivity.
  • Offer special Twitter-only deals with exclusive, time-sensitive promos
50Wheel is the world's leading website for video strategy and marketing technologies. Browse hundreds of software tools, guides and get strategy advice.

You are now leaving 50Wheel.com

On your way!

50Wheel.com provides links to web sites of other organizations in order to provide visitors with certain information. A link does not constitute an endorsement of content, viewpoint, policies, products or services of that website. Enjoy!

You will be redirected to
in 3 seconds...

Click the link above to continue or CANCEL