5 Simple Steps to Make Social Media Videos for Businesses

We’ve mentioned a few times on this blog why video is so important for small businesses.

As a quick refresher, here are a couple of reasons:

“84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.”

And “marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.”

So today, we’re going to show you how you can start making social media videos in 5 simple steps. 

Let’s jump right in!

5 Steps On How To Create Social Media Videos

Step 1: Determine the purpose and placement of your video.
Step 2: Format the video accordingly.
Step 3: Nail down your video topic and film.
Step 4: Lighten up your script and make the intro attention-grabbing. 
Step 5: Make your video make sense with the sound off. 

Step 1: Determine the purpose and placement of your video.

If you’re planning to make a quick, fun TikTok, the process for that is going to look a lot different than if you’re wanting to film a YouTube tutorial. 

What we do here at LYFE to work smarter not harder is invest in the time and effort it takes to film YouTube videos…

…and then we make micro-content out of them to fuel our social media videos.

But if you’re just starting out and don’t have the time or means yet to make full-on YouTube videos…

…making quick 30-second Reels or TikToks can be an easy way to get your foot in the door.

That is if you want to tap into some of the profitable video statistics we mentioned at the start of this post.

And if you don’t know how to create those types of short videos like Instagram Reels…

…we gave a super clear and in-depth tutorial in this post and give you some content ideas to help you get started. 

Once you’ve got a plan on what type of video, you’re going to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Format the video accordingly.

If you’re filming social media videos for a TikTok or a Reel directly from your smartphone…

…you won’t have to give this step much thought because you’ll already be filming in the correct, vertical dimensions. 

But if you do what we do and take a YouTube video and break it up into smaller social media videos…

…you’ll need to make sure the video is formatted correctly for each platform. 

So let’s look at some of the most common social media video sizes really quickly. 

The square size video is 1080 pixels by 1080 pixels, and that works across most social media feeds like:

• an Instagram feed post,

• a LinkedIn feed post,
• Facebook feed post,

…and so on.

The vertical dimensions we are used to seeing for both Stories, Reels, and TikToks are 1080 px by 1920 px.

That works across Instagram Stories, LinkedIn Stories, and Facebook Stories.

This goes as well for:

• Instagram Reels,

• TikToks,

• YouTube Shorts,

…and so on.

Now you can also do widescreen videos like what we see here on YouTube, which is 1920 px by 1080 px.

But we don’t usually recommend these dimensions across any other social media platforms. 

The square and vertical sizes take up more of the feed when a user is scrolling, and generally, garner more attention and engagement as a result.

So how do you reformat a video as needed? 

We typically use a software called Veed for all of our videos.

And we’ll get into some additional reasons as to why we like Veed here in a minute.

But we also have a tutorial on how to edit social media videos in Canva if you’re more familiar with Canva and want to check that out next.

Step 3: Nail down your video topic and film.

Now we have several resources for you here that will help you. 

If you’re wanting to film a YouTube video…

…you’ll need to create your video around a specific keyword that you know your audience searches for on YouTube. 

You don’t want to just pick a video topic that you like. It needs to be a topic that you know your audience wants to see.

So we show you the tool we use to check YouTube keyword volume in our YouTube keyword research post.

From there, you can also check out our video marketing post where you can see the exact setup we all use on this channel to film our YouTube videos.

If you’re wanting to film a Reel or TikTok, again check out our Instagram Reels post because there we share ideas small businesses can use to hop on trends.

As well as make them relatable to their individual business, and those ideas are applicable to both Instagram and TikTok.

And if you have a smartphone, you can start filming Reels and TikToks today.

So once you’ve picked out a video topic based on research, you’re ready to film your social media videos!

Step 4: Lighten up your script and make the intro attention-grabbing. 

Depending on the length of your video, you might not have a full-blown “script”.

But you should at least have key talking points of what you want to get across in the video.

And no matter what, your intro needs to be attention-grabbing. 

We’ve said this before on our blog, but people’s attention spans are not growing. They’re shrinking. 

You have seconds or less to make someone want to stop and watch your video. 

Now if you’re filming a YouTube video, doing that keyword research we talked about will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you here.

That’s because somebody will have typed in that video topic into the YouTube search bar; so you already know they are interested in that specific topic. 

But for other social media videos, your intro needs to hook them enough to make them stop scrolling. 

Now we have one more step that will help you wrap up your social media videos in a nice bow.

Step 5: Make your video make sense with the sound off. 

“92% of consumers watch videos with the sound off.

And 50% rely on captions making it imperative that you create videos that are optimized for silent viewing.”

Now we’re not saying to make silent videos, your videos should still include sound.

But your audience should be able to get value out of them even if they have you on mute. 

So as the statistic we just shared implied…

…you should have captions on your videos so that people can read what you’re saying if they’re not “listening” to what you’re saying. 

We do this with that software Veed that we mentioned earlier. 

And this is not a sponsored plug of their website or anything, we just genuinely use them all the time.

That’s because they make it super simple to resize videos and add captions.

But of course, there are so many programs out there that can do this for you.

And if you read our tutorial on how to upload a video on Facebook…

…then you know Facebook in particular has a captions tool built into that captions your videos for free.

A couple of other things you can do to make your video make sense without sound is to add visuals.

Or, add enough verbal cues to get your point across if you’re not adding captions for every word.

So that’s our 5-step method for making social media videos for small businesses!

And if you need the help of a reputable video marketing agency, don’t hesitate to contact us today!

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