RECAP TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:06:21 - 00:00:31:17
Duncan Alney
Hi, everyone, and welcome to our Executive briefing on dominating video on Social. It is a subject that is on our minds and close to our hearts. So let's get started. There's going to be a lot of content. I'm going to skim some some of it so that we can get through everything we have. If you want to get down into the nitty gritty, you can in the recording that you'll receive afterwards.
00:00:32:03 - 00:01:04:17
Duncan Alney
So obviously we are on Firebelly thanks for coming. We've been doing this for a minute. We are purely social media and everything we do and we're very excited about that. Our services include organic, paid influencer management, community management and of course, content creation. And some of the brands we worked with, you might recognize. In particular, I like to call out R-C Ranch because they make some amazing Wagyu steaks.
00:01:04:17 - 00:01:34:02
Duncan Alney
There and also the envy Apple and Jazz Apple family. Some of the beverage brands that you might recognize, for those of you in Indianapolis, you might recognize Ash. And Elm for those of you that are more national in your perspective, Noble Vines, Landmark, Fiji Water are some of the brands we've worked with, some other brands that we work with that are not in the food and beverage space include Netflix, Purdue University, Indiana University and of course, Kraus, among some others.
00:01:34:11 - 00:02:03:22
Duncan Alney
So let's get started in terms of video. So what is the case for video? That's the first question. And the case, it's a big case. Video platforms are overindexing a high performance. Of course, Facebook leads the pack with 2.9 billion active monthly users, followed closely by YouTube, which also happens to be the second largest search engine in the world, followed by Instagram.
00:02:03:24 - 00:02:34:13
Duncan Alney
2 billion active million active monthly users. Tik Tok, which is growing. These numbers are from January, so this might have grown. And then Pinterest, which is growing as well. And then as we look at video in specific short form, video continues to lead and dominate, and that's on three different platforms reels, TikTok and YouTube shorts. All of this is very, very focused content.
00:02:34:19 - 00:03:04:13
Duncan Alney
We call it the industry called Snackable content. It especially caters to people with limited attention spans. And 66% of all consumers report that short form video is the most engaging type of content that they watched in 2022. And that was a significant gain. Some of the types of content other than short form video images, live video gifts and memes, text based posts and of course, UGC are among the genres.
00:03:05:05 - 00:03:28:23
Duncan Alney
And so you might be asking how long should a social media video be? And in true consulting style, I'm going to say it depends. So depends on an Instagram video. If it's a story, if it's a reel, it’s a TikTok video. Twitter video. There's different lengths and best practices for all of these. But I think the common theme is that they are really short.
00:03:29:20 - 00:03:54:09
Duncan Alney
Why does video make sense? There's a market for video and people are paying attention. That's the short answer. 55% people view online videos every day. 69% of the people who watch videos with the sound off. So there's a case for subtitles. More than a billion videos are viewed on TikTok. Every day, social video gets shared 1200 percent more than text.
00:03:54:15 - 00:04:23:17
Duncan Alney
50% of viewers aged 18 to 34 would stop what they're doing to watch a video. 78% watch videos every week at my house. If a video comes on my 11 year old son rushes over to see what it is. Sometimes he rushes away too quickly, too. But video an easy. That's the that's the piece that we've figured out firsthand at Firebelly diving into video in a very deep and expansive way over the last six months.
00:04:24:11 - 00:04:48:18
Duncan Alney
And from Bryce Thompson, a senior content producer. Don't sweat the small stuff. So we've learned that cinematic lighting, having the best camera aren't all that important on social. So when you go over 98% of what's needed for most people. Don't wait. Just start creating. The other piece that's really hard about doing video is that we see this from, you know, tiny brand new masks of brands.
00:04:48:18 - 00:05:13:02
Duncan Alney
And really it's more of a challenge. And massive brands is that there are inadequate funds in terms of budgets. There's inadequate resources that could be people, could be processes. It could be protocol. And the other piece is that sometimes don't lack the lacking of goal. The other piece that's really hard is doing the video at scale is a “always on” mindset.
00:05:13:11 - 00:05:42:11
Duncan Alney
And so it's very difficult to live in that mindset for many brands. And this is a brand as a publisher is a concept that originated in 2013, 2014, with people looking at brand channels as being one of the last remaining places which is certainly true today, where brands can actually control their message and what they're publishing. And there's many places for brands to do this.
00:05:42:24 - 00:06:10:14
Duncan Alney
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts. And this is, of course, a mash up of our content. And then the other ones down there, Oops, sorry, I can't go back to YouTube and and other places as well. So there's a lot nf the blog. So there's a great amount of content on many different channels. Here's what our content looked like in one of the last three months of last year.
00:06:11:01 - 00:06:38:15
Duncan Alney
30 pieces of content, all video per month. And here are some of the lessons we learned. This one, you might think is fairly obvious, but we've got data to back it up now. Is that all forms of content don't work on all channels. There's specific things that work on specific channels. Also, there isn't a need to feel like you got to produce 30 pieces of content to produce 30 pieces of content yourself.
00:06:38:20 - 00:07:02:11
Duncan Alney
You can also consider creator content and ancillary content. In our case, we use blog posts, we import podcast audio grounds, additional niche focused content. And as my colleague Lauren Johnson likes to say, there is a great case for carousels and photography and other pieces of content you don't have necessarily feel like you've got to be all video all the time.
00:07:03:24 - 00:07:37:08
Duncan Alney
But here's what we found. After 90 days of producing and publishing only video reels, real views were up 613%. So six times more views. Instagram engagements were up almost 100%. Tik-tok views were up 400% ish. Website Views from Social. My colleague Abby loves this stat because this is where social is generating website traffic. 850% improvement as we were also able to see what type of content worked best.
00:07:37:14 - 00:08:07:15
Duncan Alney
So having looked at some of those things, let's see what how you can make video easier for yourself. And here from my colleague Austin Ryan, who is a delightful human, the need for highly produced professional looking content is largely being replaced by casual and user generated content. It's worth noting that high definition professionally looking content certainly has its place, and perhaps it depends from brand to brand.
00:08:08:00 - 00:08:38:04
Duncan Alney
But go back to the quote at this very casual form of video is something brands wouldn't have even considered 5 to 8 years ago. So let's talk about some different ways to share your story. You can, of course, use content creators. You can partner with influencers. You can use UGC and then you can just be authentic. Let's talk a little bit about the differences between these categories of content.
00:08:38:13 - 00:09:17:18
Duncan Alney
Content creators, these are people who are working specifically to sell the content that they create for you. It's specifically for you. It's fully focused on creating high quality content and then not selling you anything based on how many followers there are. And they can ranged in specificity from being amateurs to being highly professional influencers. Here, the differences, I mean, it depends, of course, on what category of influencer they are, how big, how small they are, whether they're niched, and they're primarily selling you their reach, their engagement or their ability to convert.
00:09:18:03 - 00:09:55:23
Duncan Alney
And it's based on their domain expertise and whether they do or don't have crossed and UGC, which is our preferred form of content. This is when people who love a product or service are not affiliated with the brand or their employees to create content simply because they love it. It's unpaid, it's Unsponsored, and then the opportunity there. As our colleague Jason Falls says over at Scipio, which is an influencer management platform, UGC platform, 80% of people trust the ultra authentic nature of UGC content when making purchasing decisions.
00:09:57:14 - 00:10:21:04
Duncan Alney
Let's look at some of the stats around these three categories. UGC typically gets four times higher flow through. And why is that? It's because it's a lot more credible. It doesn't look staged. Consumers find UGC ten times more, in fact, impactful than influencer content. And 84% of consumers said it crossed peer recommended oceans above all other sources of advertising.
00:10:21:15 - 00:10:54:09
Duncan Alney
This is no surprise to many of us who follow Edelman and that trust barometer. For years, Edelman has been putting up this hypothesis, and the research to back it up is that people trust people like themselves. So let's talk about authentic video content. Authenticity captures people's attention and retains it. So the thing about authentic authenticity is it, in other words, is simply being real and it builds trust for sought out brands.
00:10:55:02 - 00:11:17:18
Duncan Alney
The difficulty that a lot of really large brands or brands that lack humanity have is they can't make themselves relatable. And so authentic video is a great way to increase their belief, the ability to relatability specifically. We are all human. We can't pretend to be human. We are human. So we should show off the fact that we are human.
00:11:17:18 - 00:11:41:03
Duncan Alney
That means we're quirky and life is messy and to show it off. Years ago, we used to talk about the corporate or the social mullet business and the front party in the back, the life parties in the back. And so, hey, warts and all, this is the approach that works. And focuses on people and mission, not on the company and products.
00:11:41:04 - 00:12:04:01
Duncan Alney
In fact, that there is a piece of legislation that's going on right now where people want a very clear distinction of the fact that companies are not, in fact people and that they should not be treated the same, were treated to a different standard. So let's look at the best platforms for video and really best depends on your goals and your capabilities and resources.
00:12:04:08 - 00:12:44:00
Duncan Alney
YouTube tends to be the frontrunner with 2 billion monthly active users. They also have the benefit of the Google engine and all the robust things that that brings. TikTok seems to have captured everyone's imagination despite being under siege or potentially being banned. It also has great deliverability and that FYP algorithm seems to know what discernment do. The other thing about YouTube is that they have an engine, the ad engine that TikTok is somehow lacking at this point while TikTok's engine is getting better.
00:12:44:11 - 00:13:11:24
Duncan Alney
That YouTube engine is unparalleled. Video sharing platforms are in demand and we're seeing our we do all our own testing. So we're seeing a lot of this on our own. We'll just look at this very briefly. In fact, we'll just skim it. But you can see the difference even without me playing these videos, because videos tend to not play very well from a sound perspective on Zoom.
00:13:11:24 - 00:13:40:23
Duncan Alney
So you can check this out in the recording. But Instagram leans towards slightly more produced content as compared to tick tock. Tick tock content is very real, though. It's very on the fly. There's a lot of humor and entertainment. At the core of that trending sounds play a big part of Tiktok's success and YouTube here you can see as its own charm and its own sort of behind the scenes vibe that it can bring to the table.
00:13:41:19 - 00:14:10:08
Duncan Alney
So our hypothesis that YouTube is still king in many ways, second largest search engine behind Google is not just an entertainment platform. Every minute, more than 500 hours of video uploaded to the platform, they're doubly more likely to purchase something. Also, you can run full funnel ads on on YouTube. 75% of users report that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands.
00:14:10:08 - 00:14:39:24
Duncan Alney
70% of users say they bought a product after seeing it on YouTube. Check it out. It is perhaps the only social media platform that is legally accessible by all ages, meaning children and your future audience are very, very active on YouTube. Despite any parental guidelines that you might put on there, they can access a lot of content that's still appropriate for children, whereas they might not even be on other platforms.
00:14:41:24 - 00:15:08:09
Duncan Alney
That being said, TikTok continues to rise. We were seeing a lot of really big things happening on TikTok last year. It was the first non Facebook app to reach 3 billion global downloads. I think this number is higher, as I said earlier, but the last number we saw was 1.2 billion active users, an average of 52 minutes per day.
00:15:08:24 - 00:15:33:21
Duncan Alney
And this is the astounding thing is users of TikTok are opening the app 38 to 55 times per day. Let's say you're a very normal person and you're awake for about 15 hours, but says you're opening it in excess of two times per hour. Entertainment and dance are the top categories on TikTok. There are anomalies to this, however.
00:15:34:11 - 00:15:59:22
Duncan Alney
These are the ones that dominate. There are people that do just different kinds of content. Definitely, when content is categorized by stage of the funnel, there are different approaches on TikTok to that. Brands focusing on short form videos to increase brand awareness and to stay relevant with Gen Z and relatability. As I said earlier, in connectivity in the app's popularity.
00:16:00:10 - 00:16:23:10
Duncan Alney
So you're seeing people because you're seeing this behind the scene content. If you look at Firebelly’s content or TikTok content is completely different than anything we do. And great thanks to Sara and Bryce for bringing us into this place. The For You page, which is the sort of Mecca for brands or anyone on content, is the anyone doing content.
00:16:23:10 - 00:16:52:07
Duncan Alney
And TikTok is where the algorithm where you get based on how the algorithm decides your content is performing and based on that user's tastes and preferences. So before we end, I want to put this framework that we developed in front of you. Questions to Ask about a TikTok video. If you're considering TikTok or if you're reconsidering TikTok, you've really the core of that is all about relatability.
00:16:52:24 - 00:17:16:19
Duncan Alney
And that is I cannot emphasize that enough. You know, we started out doing this is our second iteration on on TikTok. Our first was significantly lower performing because we had very buttoned up content and that is just not essentially relatable. So are you capturing attention fast enough? Is it entertaining? And I keep coming back to entertainment and relatability.
00:17:16:19 - 00:17:53:12
Duncan Alney
Is it entertaining? Is it hitting the right niche market? FYP Are you using the right hashtags? Are you being real? Are the videos too polished? Are you using trending sounds? Is it relevant? I think the trending sounds pieces is difficult for some people to understand because it's trending. Sound can really determine whether or not you're going to be successful and really trending sounds or sort of the way people get interested in that and seeing how you or a brand can interpret that trending sound and interpret it into action.
00:17:54:17 - 00:18:30:12
Duncan Alney
Relevance is key on social media and it is hyper key onto TikTok. So with that, let's wrap up now before we take questions. This is a 30 minute segment. Let's take questions. But I want to really talk about what our chief storytelling officer, Michael Husain, says. Social media storytelling isn't linear, it's a mosaic. And so you basically have things being presented out of sequence and how can you ensure that your story essentially comes through regardless of the sequence?
00:18:30:15 - 00:18:54:00
Duncan Alney
Imagine you're telling a story that goes 1 to 10 nine as it's being presented first three is being presented, the second one is being presented. So it's very important that all your social elements simultaneously stand out and yet work together. While that may seem I'm going off script here, but while that may seem like a very easy endeavor, it is actually very difficult.
00:18:54:10 - 00:19:07:18
Duncan Alney
And you find most brands still struggle with that. And so there's a lot of improvement that we'll see in this place. With that, I'm going to turn it over back to Arnelle for questions.
00:19:08:18 - 00:19:36:06
Arnelle Mitchell
Yes, thank you, Duncan. If you do have questions, please go ahead and your questions into the chat. And while you’re doing that, I do have one question some people may have. So you mentioned you TikTok is on the verge of being banned. How serious would you say that ban risk is? And how seriously should brands take TikTok?
00:19:36:07 - 00:19:36:23
Arnelle Mitchell
In general.
00:19:38:19 - 00:20:06:00
Duncan Alney
I'm going to say that the level of risk for TikTok being banned at this point is moderate. I do not think it is a serious risk. I think that if you've seen what's been going on recently, TikTok would have been in DC lobbying. There's a lot of people that depend on TikTok. I think the last number I saw was in the millions of people that depend on TikTok for their livelihood.
00:20:06:06 - 00:20:27:03
Duncan Alney
So I do not think it is a serious risk. I think it is a moderate risk. As a company that consults and advises brands on their social media strategy and execution. I do not think you should ever as a brand, have all your eggs in one basket. Should you be on TikTok. I think you should. Should you only rely on TikTok?
00:20:27:06 - 00:20:49:12
Duncan Alney
No, you should not. So we started doing this years ago when we our business several years ago was primarily on Facebook and Instagram and we were advising our clients to diversify Pinterest and other different platforms. So that's my short answer. I do not believe it to be a serious risk.
00:20:49:12 - 00:21:01:14
Arnelle Mitchell
Also, Chris says early on, you mentioned that 69% of videos are viewed without the volume on. Is that just on IG?
00:21:01:16 - 00:21:24:15
Duncan Alney
I believe that, you know, people that are on the go, whether they are in their car at a traffic light or whether they're at the gym early in the morning looking at their phone in the middle of their workout. I think that there are many times in life that we do not view videos with the sound on. So I think it's not specific to Instagram.
00:21:24:23 - 00:21:28:01
Duncan Alney
It's on all platforms.
00:21:30:06 - 00:21:42:09
Arnelle Mitchell
Thank you. Yes. Anyone else has questions? Go ahead and drop them in a chat. Or if you want to unmute yourself, you're welcome to do that to whatever you're most comfortable with.
00:21:44:23 - 00:21:55:20
Arnelle Mitchell
Abby Thomas. She asks, How do you think TikTok strategy will evolve for brands once in-app commerce is being widely used and is available on TikTok?
00:21:57:09 - 00:22:24:03
Duncan Alney
Let me read you the question one more time. How do I think TikTok strategy will evolve from brands once in-app commerce is widely used? Available on the app? Now? I think that's an interesting question. I think that is unfolding. I think we've seen that on other Mike Wong or consultant hat is going to say that we can use behavior from other platforms where social commerce is.
00:22:24:03 - 00:22:51:11
Duncan Alney
That is the necessary justification and you start seeing e-commerce or social commerce becoming a part of the experience. For example, who would have thought ten years ago that we'd be buying things or we'd find anything relevant on Instagram and then proceed to buy it? So I believe that it will evolve very quickly and in-app commerce will be much more widely used.
00:22:51:18 - 00:23:04:01
Arnelle Mitchell
Bryce asked, What do you think would be the consequence for brands that don't jump in on on the emerging video on social climate? So what are the consequences if you're not accepting of video?
00:23:06:05 - 00:23:35:16
Duncan Alney
I think that's a really interesting question because I don't think you're necessarily facing obsolescence by not adopting video. I think the greater risk is the missed opportunity, and that is the reason why we spend so much on our own. I mean, one of the things we do in Firebelly is we practice what we preach. And so we wanted to see the full effect in terms of impact, in terms of costs and consequences by going full on into video.
00:23:35:22 - 00:24:02:20
Duncan Alney
And I think what we have seen is that our audience has grown, our credibility has grown, the engagement has grown, and the website traffic from social has grown. So I think it's it's not that there is at least I can't identify or point to with any certainty that there is a consequence, an actionable consequence for not doing it other than the missed opportunity.
00:24:03:02 - 00:24:08:21
Duncan Alney
Does that does that make any sense at all?
00:24:09:21 - 00:24:36:01
Arnelle Mitchell
Yes, I think I'll let Bryce answer. So we have another question. Bryan asks What about video on IG and Facebook? So we'll need some context if you want to. Brian add in some more information. It was probably in relation to something we said earlier. So Brian, you go ahead. In adding that clarification, I'm going to go to the next question.
00:24:36:09 - 00:24:41:04
Arnelle Mitchell
Mike asks How effective are videos on your website?
00:24:41:12 - 00:25:19:01
Duncan Alney
So that's a great question, Mike. Videos are very effective on your website. However, the effectiveness of those videos is reliant on the quality of your website traffic. So as long as you have good website traffic, you can use videos very effectively, you can use them in more polished off like Vimeo. If you're concerned about the quality of the video or not having any commercials at the beginning or end, or you can use YouTube, you can certainly embed Instagram reels, TikTok reels, I mean all of those work and they're very effective.
00:25:19:01 - 00:25:38:19
Duncan Alney
I think what they do is from a brand ownership side, they actually reduce your need to make sure that your streaming at that level because it's screaming off the video platform. And so I think it just only adds credibility and adds content.
00:25:39:24 - 00:25:40:12
Arnelle Mitchell
Got it.
00:25:40:19 - 00:25:44:22
Duncan Alney
I see. Go ahead.
00:25:44:22 - 00:26:06:00
Arnelle Mitchell
Bryan here added his clarification. So he was asking about, you know, what about Instagram reels and Facebook? He just says he was wondering, you know, why they were included. They were included. But we instead of calling them Instagram, we call them reels. But he's wondering, I'm thinking, why Facebook wasn't included in the overview.
00:26:07:21 - 00:26:32:01
Duncan Alney
I think that's a that's a good question. We'll we'll make sure to do some deeper research into where Facebook reels are is what tends to be an audience skews slightly older. And so I think adoption on Facebook is sometimes slower than it is on other platforms. However, once adoption sinks in on Facebook, it's pretty much there to stay.
00:26:32:16 - 00:26:58:13
Duncan Alney
I still hear people complaining about why the poke was removed. So, you know, there you go. So reels on Facebook do work. I believe that in some cases we post reels to Facebook and Instagram and they certainly work. And no old folks don't matter. I'm kidding. Old folks matter significantly. I am one of the old folks. And so I think it just depends on your audience.
00:26:58:21 - 00:27:37:08
Duncan Alney
Certainly certainly people in in the. I'm trying to think of my lost generation, the x, the x, generation X and baby boomers. This has adopted video very significantly. We presented on Pinterest last month and we what we were enthusiastic to see that even even baby boomers are actively using Pinterest. So I think that Facebook reels do matter and I think that we don't have the latest information or testing or from our research to give you that definitive answer today.
00:27:38:04 - 00:27:38:15
Arnelle Mitchell
Mm hmm.
00:27:39:06 - 00:27:43:12
Duncan Alney
And comparatively, I would say Instagram reels are still probably a bigger opportunity.
00:27:44:14 - 00:28:02:05
Arnelle Mitchell
Definitely. Yeah. Awesome. Bryce has one more question, and then we'll go ahead and close out. Bryce asks, Do you think Instagram will continue to chase TikTok in terms of features and innovation in this?
00:28:03:08 - 00:28:27:20
Duncan Alney
I'd love to say that my opinion matters. I don't think my my opinion matters in the grand scheme, however. If I were to speculate, I think what we're what we've seen is Instagram and what Meta in general has slavishly chased any competitive innovation. So I think that they will continue to chase TikTok. One piece of a couple of things.
00:28:27:20 - 00:28:53:13
Duncan Alney
One is and Instagram's audience isn't necessarily receptive to some of those changes one and two, it is interesting, despite me saying that it's only a moderate risk that TikTok faces. TikTok has launched that, while I should say Bytedance, the parent company, has launched a competitive brand called Lemon with the number eight effort. So Lemon8 are actually on there.
00:28:53:19 - 00:29:08:07
Duncan Alney
It's a fairly new space. It's a Pinterest lookalike. So if that's anything to go by, either they are diversifying or they're hedging their bets. So I don't know the definitive answer to that question price. However, it is a great question.
00:29:08:17 - 00:29:33:20
Arnelle Mitchell
Mm. Totally. Thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in with us today. Really appreciate it. And if you are interested in learning more about video and you need help implementing some video strategies into your own social media, we would love to talk to you about it. If you are interested in talking to us about that, I'm going to go ahead and put our link in where you can get in contact with us.
00:29:34:11 - 00:29:37:20
Arnelle Mitchell
But other than that, have a wonderful Wednesday.
00:29:39:05 - 00:29:46:01
Duncan Alney
Thank you, everyone.
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