15 Creative Social Media Video Ideas to make your brand stand out
Aksara NKR - July 6, 2023 - Leave your thoughts. 13 min read
Social Media has transformed into an essential part for businesses and individuals to showcase their products, services, and talents. With so many options available to use for promotion, social media videos have proven to be highly effective.
Videos possess a unique ability to captivate and engage the audience in a unique way, thereby making it an ideal medium for communication. Moreover, it is evident that video content is rapidly becoming a dominant form of media on social media platforms.
In this article, we will see 15 creative social media video ideas to turn your thoughts into inspiring content.
1. Behind the scene videos
2. Customer testimonials
3. Product demos
4. How to videos
5. Influencer collaborations
6. Q&A Sessions
7. User-generated content
8. Animated explainer videos
9. Event Coverage
10. Day in the Life videos
11. Live videos
12. Giveaways and contests
13. Announcements and Reveals
14. Breaking news & trending topics
15. Funny meme & humorous content
1. Behind the scene videos
BTS or Behind the Scene videos gives the audience a perspective of what’s going on behind the scenes of their favorite brands. These types of videos can be highly engaging and entertaining for audiences as they offer an exclusive view into the behind-the-scenes of how the brands work, a funny video about their employees, or anything at all.
Overall, BTS videos offer a personal and exclusive touch. This method can be a powerful and engaging way to build a community and build brand loyalty.
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Here’s an example of a Behind the Scenes video. While we all have seen the creative side of Starbucks, we don’t know what's going on behind the scene. As you can see from the above example, the BTS of these campaigns gives a third-eye perspective of what’s going on behind the lens. This kind of social media video can give your audience a refreshing insight into the creative process of Starbucks. While this video has been created by a Video Creator, he shares his own version of creating a short commercial for Starbucks.
2. Customer testimonials
Customer testimonials are an effective way to showcase customer satisfaction with your product or service. It is technically user-generated content where the customers share their feedback and opinion about your product or brand, which is converted into an easily accessible form, i.e., video.
Having customer testimonials can help build trust and credibility with potential customers who are considering purchasing your product or service. Usually, when a general non-customer audience sees positive reviews from other customers, it allows them to feel more confident about choosing your brand.
This example of Zoom sharing their customer testimonial of a user about how seamless it is to integrate Slack with Zoom gives the user a real-life use case, emphasizing the ease of use and efficiency it provides the users.
3. Product demos
Product demos are a type of video content that showcases a product's features, benefits, and overall usefulness. These videos can help customers to understand how a product works and how it can solve problems.
By incorporating product demos into their social media content, businesses can create attention-grabbing and engaging content that will retain customers viewing the content for longer periods of time. Moreover, it can also lead to a better understanding of the product for potential customers and can increase the probability of converting them into a customer.
Product demos can help build trust among potential customers and boost engagement with a brand’s social media profile.
When it comes to product demos, it can show the true potential of a product, app, or software. By combining a product demo with a tutorial, Apple showcases the true potential of the iPhone’s camera capabilities and captures the attention of iPhone users by teaching them how to shoot with light and shadow. This not only acts as an informative video for iPhone users, but it will give ideas to the general audience on how the device can be used, its potential, etc..
Here’s another great example of a product demo:
4. How to videos
How-to videos are nothing but video content that demonstrates step-by-step instructions to do something. These videos are both engaging and informative to watch as it provides value to your audience and helps them to solve a problem or learn a new skill.
Overall, how-to videos can be a great way to create engaging social media content that provides value to your audience and helps to establish your brand as an authoritative source of information.
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In this example, Animaker, a cloud-based video editing platform, takes its audience on a journey by providing various tips and tricks around video editing. By doing this, they don’t constrain their audience limited to Animaker users but target a general audience as well. By offering tutorials, guides, and insightful content, Animaker position itself as an authority in the field of video editing.
Here’s another how-to video from Animaker that teaches users how to place videos inside different objects -
5. Influencer collaborations
Influencer collaborations are getting popular these days, where brands and social media influencers collaborate. These collaborations are designed to promote the brand’s product or service through the influencer’s social media accounts as sponsored posts.
This type of collaboration helps the brands to reach new heights and audiences as they spread the word, increase brand awareness, and more. When an influencer posts about a particular product, brand, or service, their followers are more likely to trust and engage with the content than if the brand had posted directly.
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In this example, a popular cricket athlete, Virat Kohli, collaborated with a brand called Herbalife to promote their nutrition & other products. With Instagram’s collaborate feature, the entirety of Virat Kohli's followers (245 Million) will be able to see this post tagged along with Herbalife’s Instagram profile. This allows the brand to get immense exposure and helps to reach the right target audience.
6. Q&A Sessions
Q&A Sessions are a great and interactive way to engage with your customers on social media platforms, mainly to address queries asked by the audience about the product or service. This not only helps to cover the general topics but also helps to address and cover the FAQs by the audience in a public manner.
This kind of social media video helps the general public to know more about the product and spread awareness about it. This form of content is also popular on Instagram, where they have a dedicated Q&A sticker that allows viewers & followers to ask questions.
When it comes to any popular Content Creators or companies, there will be many questions around them. It can be anything right from general questions like their age, their background, etc. to deep questions that revolve around what they do. Usually, these questions are covered by other content creators other than the Brand, or YouTuber to leverage the search volume. But when the brand or the content creator themself answer these questions via a Q&A video, it becomes popular and trending among the follower base.
In this example, one of the most subscribed YouTuber PewDiePie answers the questions from his audience with his wife, Marzia. Pewdiepie is a popular Swedish YouTuber who is known for his funny gaming content and react videos.
7. User-generated content
User-generated content is the simplest way to create content. User-generated content is nothing but the content generated by your loyal followers & customers about your brand, product, or service.
If your product is popular among the general users, there will be organically generated content that you can reuse by giving them credits. Additionally, you can also conduct events & giveaways to users who create content around your brand to win a special prize. This helps & motivates your users to create such videos.
In this example of user-generated content, over the promotion of the brand, this YouTuber showcases the unique feature of the keyboard and creates hype among their audience. This not only promotes the brand indirectly but also has an opportunity to become viral. From the brand’s perspective, this content can be repurposed and published on their social media channels for promotional purposes.
8. Animated explainer videos
For beginners, an explainer video is a type of content that is designed to communicate a brand’s product or service. Not just that, it can also be used to walk through a particular process and how to do it or even use it for training purposes.
These kinds of Animated explainer videos can be good for marketing purposes as they are preferred by general audiences. This is mainly because most of the people who are consuming video content prefer to watch short & animated videos over long texts.
Apple showcased its path toward carbon neutrality using a simplistic yet stunning Animated Explainer Video. It showcases their commitment to sustainability and builds a positive brand reputation. This helps to attract consumers who are environmentally conscious and promotes their ethical practices.
9. Event Coverage
Event coverage is a highly effective marketing technique that ensures consistent exposure across various social media platforms and channels. With the clippings from an event, you can build hype, tease the prizes they can win, and lots more. Additionally, you can treat the non-attendees with content exclusive to registered users and share them via social media live streams, private YouTube videos, etc. Creating a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is one of the most powerful techniques in marketing. Sharing these events on social media can create a FOMO for your audience.
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In this video, Animaker showcases its participation in Devlearn, a place to explore what’s new and what’s next in the world of learning and technology. This kind of post creates hype among its users with the anticipation of new and improved features from Animaker and with event coverage like this, it not only creates a sense of curiosity but also a commitment to evolving and delivering a better experience to its users. Additionally, this marketing strategy also attracts new users who may be enticed by upcoming features and improvements.
10. Day in the Life videos
A Day in the Life is a popular social media video category that allows the audience to get a different perspective on the brand rather than just being bombarded with promotional posts. In terms of marketing, the day-in-the-life videos also help to build trust with your audience with transparency, eventually helping to grow more followers and eventually convert them to potential leads.
This video showcases the day in the life of a Japanese Game Planner. These kinds of videos are considered to be extremely popular due to their authenticity and relatability. They also act as a medium to provide behind the scene, tell compelling stories and educate them. Showcasing such real experiences helps create a trustworthy relationship with the audience.
11. Live videos
At present, almost all social media platforms allow users to live stream, and this comes in handy for sharing any sort of content or information in real time. This helps to cover all aspects right, from the marketing perspective to building a personal relationship with your audience.
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In this Instagram live, Insta360 collaborated with a Pro BMX athlete to showcase their lineup of action cameras. This not only acts as a way of promoting the product but also provides a real-life demonstration of the camera’s capabilities. Additionally, the collaboration with a pro-BMX athlete adds credibility and expertise to the live video. This interactive live session helps to engage with the audience by allowing them to ask questions and gain firsthand insights into the product’s performance.
12. Giveaways and contests
Everyone loves to win free stuff or a goodie. That’s why giveaways and contests are one of the easiest ways to gain engagement and leads for your brand. With this single event, you can create multiple posts around the giveaway, like a teaser post, reveal post, announcement post, etc., and gain more traction to your profile.
In this giveaway video hosted by @Thatsdax, all you have to do to win the giveaway is like a specific video, comment on it, and share it. This method of marketing is an effective way to increase the brand or the channel’s visibility and engagement. Hosting a giveaway and setting specific requirements such as liking and commenting encourages the audience to interact and participate. Moreover, this method leverages the power of social media algorithms as increased engagement boosts the video’s visibility and reach.
13. Announcements and Reveals
When the big day arrives, there’s no better way to unveil the surprise than to announce it big to your social media followers. If you are announcing something big, a normal text-based announcement is going to be long and boring to read. This is where a good and short social media video comes into action. According to reports, “Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text..”.
In this video made by Apple, they announce their all-new MacBook Air 15 by teasing its features & brand new design and creating anticipation and excitement. This type of marketing is centered around announcements to create buzz, control the narrative, and generate media coverage that increases the brand’s exposure.
14. Breaking news & trending topics
With social media and smartphones being so accessible, the majority of adults get their breaking news and trending topics through these platforms. Moreover, with newsjacking becoming common these days, there are many brands that create social media videos and posts around breaking news & trending topics. Leveraging breaking news and trending topics can be highly beneficial & effective if you are looking to improve your social media presence.
It allows businesses to capture the attention of the audience and engage with a wider audience. By aligning breaking news, trending & viral topics with their company, brand or social media profile can increase brand visibility and reach.
In this example, the host talks about how hologram technology can be the future of video calls. Certainly a clickbait title, but filled with facts, right? In this video, they showcase a device that allows users to communicate with another person in 3D perspective, giving a sense of physical presence. Tapping into a niche or topic that has the potential to go viral can attract widespread interest and engagement.
15. Funny meme & humorous content
Funny memes and humorous video content can play a significant part in your social media video marketing strategy. This is mainly because brands can leverage humor to engage with their audience. This not only helps to attract the general audience but also helps to increase brand awareness and even promote their products or services in a casual manner.
This example takes us through a relatable journey where we have adapted technology into our day-to-day life and how it starts to backfire. It reminds us of the importance of finding a balance between technology and reality and being cautious of technology’s downside in a humorous way.
Phew! Hope these social media video ideas would’ve sparked some sense of ideas and inspiration.
In conclusion, social media video marketing is a great way to engage your audience and leverage your brand. By using these social media video ideas, you can create engaging and compelling content that resonates with your audience and that helps to grow your business.
Got any questions? Have other ideas that can be added to this list? Please add them to the comments below!
