Social Media Marketing: Don't do Video for Video's Sake

Andrew Hutchinson's recent post about social media marketing and video (link at bottom of this post) says that video needs to be high quality for it to work in social media marketing. 

This may sound obvious, but there are a lot of social media marketers who will tell you that video is highly effective, and perhaps the most effective type of content, in social media marketing (for shares, likes, virality, etc.), so that's where your marketing efforts (and $) should go.

This may be true, but it only works if the video is very, very good. But let's be honest - that would be true for any type of content.

Dr. Andrew Stephen (Marketing, Katz Graduate School of Business, Univ. Pittsburgh) agrees. He recently gave a seminar for the American Marketing Association on social media marketing and debunked some of the techniques promoted by social media marketers.

Through his research he found that many of the techniques recommended by SMM experts are not necessarily true, like using humor, video, holidays, calls to action.

Instead, he found that specific focused information does best. In other words, content that is high quality and focused on your market gets the most social media value. 

So, focus on your market and quality, then determine whether text, images, audio or video (or some mix) is the best way to present it.

Andres Hutchinson's post in Social Meida Today: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/2015-04-09/do-you-have-produce-video-content-succeed-social-media-marketing