Including social media videos in your social media strategy isn’t just a trend — it’s a proven way to increase your website traffic and drive engagement. 82% of website traffic comes from video. At Be the Page SEO, we’ve seen firsthand how video can increase social media engagement and drive blog views. As fantastical as these numbers may seem, the data doesn’t lie.

Why Social Media Videos Are the Magic Amplifier

Video is more engaging than plain ol’ words on a page. Let’s be honest, the visuals, sounds, and ‘storytelling’ from a video hold our attention longer than reading 2,000 words on a page. In fact, videos on Facebook alone have over 8 billion views per day.

Even more, people watch 71% more videos now than they did last year.

Social Media Videos & Be the Page SEO

Before Be the Page SEO started adding video to our social media, our blog’s reach was modest at best. After incorporating video content, our blog views soared by over 180%, and average views per post increased nearly tenfold. 

On Facebook alone, our videos reached an audience 20 times larger than our blog’s previous traffic — clear evidence that video is a traffic and engagement multiplier.

• Total blog views after posting videos on social media increased by approximately 181.88%.
• The average blog views per period increased by about 976.92% after introducing videos on social media.

Social Video Views Relative to Blog Views

The number of social video views on Facebook for Be the Page SEO videos is about 2011.43%. After we started sharing videos on social media, our Facebook videos were seen about 20 times more than our blog posts.

In other words, for every 1 person who read the blog, about 20 people watched the video on Facebook.

This is huge and reinforces that videos can (and do!) help you reach a much bigger audience!

Social Media Videos – Where to Start

Whether you’re creating a video for a new blog or wanting to boost a product or service, you need a goal or a strategy before you even begin the video-making process.

1. Consider your script’s talking points.
   • What is the purpose of the video? Driving sales? Brand awareness? Driving traffic to new content?
   • What are the keywords you’re focusing on? Have you checked if they are on trend?
2. Create an outline to start with, and then write the content from there.
   • Yes, you can use AI, and a lot of video-creating tools like Veedio offer AI for this. You will need a good prompt (that’s where your outline comes in!) to help simplify the process.
   • Just remember to keep your target audience in mind and be sure the text aligns with your brand and voice.
3. If you’re creating your own video with Canva or using AI, make sure that the captions are clear and follow along appropriately with the video.
   • This is a bit of a learning curve, and the process is different depending on the tool you’re using.
   • Also, you want to make sure that the video provided by AI is appropriate for your topic. You don’t want a video of a concert in action when talking about a book club.
4. If you’re using AI for the voiceover, you want to make sure the voice is clear and easy to understand, while also following along with the captions on the video. If you’re providing your own voiceover, check that the speed matches the video as well.
5. Check that background sounds or music do not overpower your voiceover. Adjust the sound levels as needed.
6. Don’t forget your watermark or logo!
   • There are different ways to do this. For example, Be the Page SEO adds a slide at the end of every video with a QR code and website information.
   • You could also add your logo to a corner of every video/slide as well.

Social Media Video Pro-Tips

Keep in mind that the sweet spot for video length is about 20 seconds, but if you’re creating longer short-form videos, keep them under 60 seconds.

YouTube, for example, has a policy that will not allow music in the background that is not owned by you for videos over 60 seconds due to copyright restrictions.

By keeping your videos under 60 seconds, you’re able to post across all social platforms without restrictions or having to create different videos for the various platforms.

Also, remember to keep your content in the social post short and to the point. Your viewers are watching the video and are not going to want to read a three-paragraph social post in conjunction with it.

Something also worth sharing is that AI video tools are going to sound appealing, but, to be honest, I spend more time editing the AI videos than I do creating them from scratch. AI just didn’t get the videos it picked to align with the content. As time goes on, and the technology improves, this could be a time saver opportunity, but, in my experience, it’s just not there yet. 

If you’re doing the videos in-house, practice will make perfect, and don’t be afraid to get creative! But overall, the bottom line is that if you want to increase website traffic, boost engagement, or build your audience, including video in your social media strategy will deliver measurable results.