How to create videos for social media with automation

How do you create videos for social media in the most efficient way and with the best results in terms of effectiveness and engagement? The topic is vast and increasingly crucial for anyone involved in marketing, in any type of business, from large companies to start ups. We created a whole cycle of posts on our blog around this question.

We started with a complete guide to social media videos divided into sections: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn. In fact, each social network has its own technical rules, its own stylistic customs, its own target audience. Then we went further, identifying and analyzing the 5 key best practices for creating videos for social media for any social media. 

Two crucial aspects have popped up in this list of best practices: data analysis and personalization. And it is from these two elements that we start again to dissect the theme of this post: how to create videos for social media through automation systems.

However, let’s proceed in order and step by step, first answering the basic question: what is video automation? And, consequently: what are the advantages and opportunities to be seized?

Video automation is part of the broader field of marketing automation; thus, we are talking about the set of digital processes that allow companies to simplify, automate, but also measure marketing activities. All with the aim of improving their operational efficiency and effectiveness towards different targets. How does this translate to the specific area of video marketing?

To understand this, first of all, you have to consider the traditional methods of video production.

First, there is an important study phase based on sentiment, the so-called “buyer personas,” the target audience more generally and, of course, thinking about the specific goals of your campaign. Next, we have the stage of script ideation and the actual production of the content. Finally, there is the distribution through the different channels and the evaluation of the results.

Doing this in the best possible way requires a lot of time and a wide range of specific skills, which also need to be coordinated. 

This expenditure of energy and resources can be very frustrating, or at any rate unsustainable, when the result is a single video, a standard one-to-many communication, which might bring unsatisfactory results for all kinds of target audiences starting the whole process over again.

The research, targeting (which varies from company to company, product to product, campaign to campaign) and ideation phases remain. In short, the “inputs” remain the same. But the outputs multiply exponentially. From a single set of text, images, and data, thousands of videos can arise, automatically.

And what is this multiplication based on?

Mainly on the characteristics of different target audience segments: videos, in short, automatically shape themselves based on who is watching them, to the limit of personalization. This is the central point, and we will address it in the next paragraphs.

However, let’s start by establishing the main advantages of video automation right away:

• Substantial savings in time, money, and resources for specific professionals.
• Soaring effectiveness: because video is no longer one-size-fits-all, but becomes a one-to-one, omnichannel communication that is capable of stimulating the attention and engagement of each individual viewer.
• Triggering a mechanism of continuous improvement, based on the evaluation of results and the possibilities of recalibrating communications, again automatically (another decisive point, which we will return to later in this post).

In short, the dynamic is obvious: it’s a virtuous circle!

Automation systems can apply to different types of videos, which are perfect for social media because they are so popular with audiences. Let’s quickly look at some of them.

Blog posts can be transformed into video format. To reflect on the effectiveness of this type of operation, it is good to keep this statistic in mind: when viewing a video, the average user retains 95% of the message it contains; when it comes to text, this drops significantly, to 10% (source: covideo.com).

The mechanism of this second type of video automation is related to what we saw in the point above but, in this case, the primary inputs are data and infographics, which can be “told” in a much more effective and engaging way, including through animations. This is the turning point of so-called Video Data Visualization.

By taking advantage of platforms such as Babelee’s (which we will return to a little later), we can bring together the two sides we have isolated above; concretely, you can take RSS news feeds from any blog and automatically turn them into engaging videos, with text, data, graphs, and images that update in real time; the end result, evidently, is perfect for social media.

When it comes to creating videos for social media with automated systems, it’s not just a matter of content. It’s primarily a matter of the target audience. With video automation systems, then, videos can be built quickly to suit each individual recipient, their characteristics, and their browsing choices.

And it is this breakthrough, that of personalized videos, that we focus on in the next section.

Let’s start with a question that lies at the heart of it all: what is the oldest secret of communication? Simple: knowing your recipient and, consequently, tailoring messages to their characteristics and behaviors, anticipating their needs and desires.

But how does this apply in the digital world? And more importantly, how is it possible to do so when we’re talking about audiences of thousands or even millions of very people? Again, the answer is very clear: this is all possible because of Big Data and its analysis.

What do we mean in practice? The ability of companies and marketers to collect a wealth of information about their audiences from the digital footprints that each user disseminates online, continuously especially on social media.

From this knowledge, then, personalized, one-to-one and even bi-directional communications can be made, distributed in an automated, multichannel manner to all its recipients. Combine this with the power of video, and your social media marketing campaigns become even more effective.

The benefits are all in terms of capturing attention, stimulating engagement, retention and advocacy. All of this combined. But how to make them?

You can make them by relying on platforms that specialize in video automation and video personalization such as Babelee!

We want to open this section, again, by drawing on a very old and still valid wisdom, which translates into this another realization: there is no such thing as perfect and unchanging communication. Therefore, there is no perfect and unchanging video marketing campaign for social media, either. 

However, every strategy can be continuously improved and updated. How? 

By learning how to broadly and surgically measure performance and very accurately (but also intelligently) evaluate the results achieved from time to time.

In short, by asking what worked and what did not. And where, specifically. And, then, for which target audience. But also even more circumscribed questions: is there a point in the video where people tend to abandon viewing? What are the click-through rates in relation to certain calls to action? And these are just a few examples, which could be multiplied ad infinitum. 

How, then, to handle all of this?

Again, it is a question related to data and its interpretation. Thanks to automation, this analysis is done with minimal manual intervention, with the most up-to-date Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems.

But, of course, it doesn’t stop there. In fact, analyzing the results is the step that leads to the recalibration of your video campaigns, again in an automated, effortless way, with the added possibility of fielding different test versions of your video, for cross-comparisons, for example.

The result? A positive spiral of continuous improvement, growing on itself, as if it were a renewable energy.For companies in all sectors, it is just a matter of triggering it, embracing this turnaround that has positive spillover effects on all fronts. In this way, the dialog between brand and customer becomes a true virtuous circle, supported by a win-win perspective.