How Video Testimonials Increase Engagement On Social Media
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Social media algorithms are tricky to figure out for even the most experienced marketers.
They are like a hidden formula that requires digital marketing managers to try every type of content to see what works and reaches their audience.
Even worse, once you do figure out your social media strategy, the platforms may change their algorithm, forcing you to start all over.
Despite these frequent changes, there is one factor that remains consistent: algorithms favor content that your audience actually wants to see.
One type of content that leads to higher engagement is video testimonials. By producing more social testimonials, you'll create content that passes the algorithms' tests.
In this article, we're going to show you how to leverage video testimonials to improve your social media presence and drive engagement.
Why B2B Marketers are Optimizing For Social Engagement
Think of engagement as a conversation between you and your customer.
They're speaking, and you're listening. Then you're responding, and they're reacting. This is the magic of your social channels.
Businesses sometimes get distracted by vanity metrics like follower counts and superficial engagement numbers. Instead, they need to be focusing on the meaningful conversations they're having with customers on the platforms.
After all, it's all about community on social media.
Businesses need to interact with their customers in an authentic way and share their stories. This will help form a tight-knit digital community that brings like-minded people—and prospects—together.
In addition, it can even serve as a form of social proof, showcasing how valued your company is in the eyes of those who support it.
Thus, you need to show up and guide the conversations to ensure your brand is presented in the best way possible.
In 2020, these are the engagement metrics that matter.
Meaningful conversations paired with engaging content that increases your likes, favorites, retweets and shares can make your social media presence powerful.
With this type of engagement, businesses can see high ROI on social media.
This year, businesses are seeing the highest traffic-related ROIs from social media which, in turn, catalyzes them to funnel even more into their social content and ad budgets:
But how can businesses create content that their community will love?
On Facebook, there are three main signals that the algorithm assesses to determine how many people that follow the page will be served that specific post:
- Who a user typically interacts with
- The type of media in the post (eg., video, link, photo, etc.)
- The popularity of the post
The relationship between these ranking signals and social media matters a lot to your business's visibility, authority, traffic, and notoriety.
If your post drives more engagement based on those signals, it has a higher chance to be seen.
Creating popular posts results in a powerful self-sustaining cycle — more engagement increases visibility and greater visibility increases the chances of more engagement.
But how do you know which types of posts will be popular on your channel?
The answer is simple: video content. And here's why:
Social Testimonials: Why Video Testimonials Perform Well on Social Media
Video testimonials are powerful assets for your social media accounts.
Let's take a look at the top seven reasons you should consider increasing your investment in video testimonials to more effectively reach your customers on social media.
1. Prospects are spending more time watching videos.
Now, here's the truly compelling trend we're seeing on social:
The rise of video content.
More than 88% of marketers say that they have consistently positive ROI from using social media in 2020, as compared to just 33% saying the same in 2015. That's a 50% increase in just five years.
But what exactly is causing that increase?
Video content has become more popular on social media over the past few years, and platforms have added features like Facebook's Creator Studio and Instagram TV (IGTV) to encourage content creators to publish more videos.
Let's face it: videos capture the attention of those passively scrolling on their feeds.
And it's not just short, GIF-like videos that capture attention. People are spending more time online viewing videos than ever before — between 84 to 100 minutes more.
That's a substantial chunk of your customers' days that's spent watching video content.
How are you working to capture their attention through content of your own?
Use videos on social media to boost engagement, visibility, loyalty, and, ultimately, the authority of your business's brand.
2. Prospects want to hear from your existing customers.
It's not all about you. It's about the value your business provides.
Prospects are searching for answers, and they can find them straight from the mouths of your existing customers.
Look at all the third-party review sites that have appeared over the years: Yelp, Google My Business, G2, TrustMary, TrustPilot and more.
The growth of online review sites speaks volumes about what customers are looking for when they connect with businesses. Trust and evidence of performance are two factors that consumers are seeking.
After all, more than 87% of shoppers begin their purchasing decision making process by searching for reviews online.
That's valuable. Package a testimonial into a video format, and you have a highly shareable piece of content.
Look at Lucky Brand's video testimonial for Celect. It shows how Celect helped improve Lucky Brand's processes and operations:
Celect | Lucky Brand Testimonial from Testimonial Hero on Vimeo.
Seeing how the product impacted the business makes this a powerful piece of content. You know the pain of not having smooth processes, and you can see how Celect improves operations for so many businesses.
By putting your customers as the focus of the video, your customers can get an understanding of the benefits that your product provides.
3. Video testimonials humanize a brand and tell a story.
Video testimonials instantly form a connection with your customer because of the human-to-human connection.
In fact, 84% of people say that they've been convinced to purchase after watching a video testimonial.
As a previous (or current) customer shares their experience with a potential customer, they're essentially telling a story.
They're sharing how the company helped them solve their own most pressing problems. For other prospects, this may be valuable if they're facing the same obstacles.
There are so many different types of video testimonials you can create that tell a story about your customers.
For example, case studies outline a specific problem that the customer overcame using your product.
Moz promoted a recent case study with TopSpot Internet Marketing with a video on their social media sites.
Moz's use of this short snippet doesn't try to keep the user on the social media platform. This might affect the video's overall visibility.
However, it does use the reach of video to link out to the original case study, making it an effective piece of content to drive traffic to the company's website.
Your content marketing strategy isn't complete if you don't understand how to effectively share your testimonial videos on your social media channels.
Knowing how to package your video testimonials into snippets for social media will help you reach your audience in a way that is meaningful.
To create shareable video testimonial content for social media, consider the following tips.
First, vary video length based on platform. You should have 30 second (Instagram), 45 second (Twitter), 1 minute (Facebook), and 2 minute (YouTube) versions cut for each of the social media platforms you plan to use.
Next, add subtitles to optimize for those that watch with the sound off.
Lastly, coordinate with the customer in the video to share the video on his or her own channels as well as their company channels. This will help amplify the reach of your video.
By doing each of these three steps, you'll create content that your audience will want to share.
4. Video testimonials focus on the details.
With the right structure and direction, customer reviews on video can be very specific.
Customers have a chance to get into their story and get detailed with what worked, what could be improved, and their overall experience of your product and service.
Check out this customer testimonial video for FreshBooks, a bookkeeping and accounting software for other small businesses.
The customer, Sarah, who runs an interior designer business, has a clear and specific problem.
She uses words that will resonate with FreshBooks' audience. She also sets up a "before" the solution scenario and a desirable result, which is the "after" the solution scene.
Not only does this acutely pick at the customer's pain points, it also accurately reflects what so many businesses experience already: making conversion a slam dunk.
This use case is incredibly specific, but it is effective in outlining the problem that so many similar prospects will likely face.
Getting more specific with your testimonials can make them more relatable for others who are facing the same challenges.
5. Video testimonials are built for sharing.
Recall that one of the ways social media algorithms determine engagement is through how quickly and consistently your audiences are sharing your content.
Video testimonials are well-poised to take advantage of this tendency.
A great testimonial will delight prospective customers so much that they’ll want to tweet about it or post it on their LinkedIn profile to share with their followers.
With video testimonials, your customers can share their satisfaction with your product/service and the customer service you provided.
When sharing these video testimonials around social media, what you’ve got on your hands are customer advocates — individuals who are not influencers, but who are doing your marketing for you!
You’re basically building customer advocates.
Testimonials work because of the “Take it From Me” factor.
Because customers can “take it from me” (i.e., hear it from another customer), they don’t have to “take your word for it.”
And because you’re willing to allow other customers — people who have no incentive to mislead or lie — to share their story, potential customers will trust you more.
See, the thing is, you are not so much what your website claims you are. That may be enough to get people in the door, maybe even to consider your product and scope out its features.
But when it comes to making the ultimate purchase decision, you are what your clients say you are.
6. Video testimonials can be easily sourced from highly-shareable user-generated content.
Newsflash: user-generated content is not just for e-commerce businesses.
Many SaaS companies can use a variant of user-generated content on social media.
The example below shows an independent user’s professional review of Adobe Rush.
He’s using it for his own business and explaining why this solution was so effective, he simply had to make the switch.
While it’s not a formal “testimonial,” user-generated content is incredibly valuable on social media.
The best part is that it clearly (and, yet, subtly) positions you as the go-to industry expert for that particular solution without any extra effort on your part.
7. Video testimonials can be used as social ads to increase paid engagement.
Video testimonial ads are much more purposeful and targeted than other forms of marketing.
However, they work incredibly well, no matter where the potential customer is in their buying journey.
Consider Intel’s Meet the Maker series.
It gets right to the heart of Intel’s values, but it also happens to be an ad.
You’d never realize it. Instead, you have a compelling story that will capture the audience regardless of how “aware” they are of your business.
Conclusion
The only thing worse than sticker shock is buyer’s remorse.
Video testimonials cut down on this by clearly articulating the product offering and showcase authentic social proof, which, in turn, boosts trust and loyalty in your brand.
Just look at how compelling a video testimonial with a success stories is:
Sharing this on social media will reach more potential prospects.
When you use video on social media, it automatically boosts engagement for two simple reasons.
Firstly, users on social crave video, but they aren’t saturated with it. And, secondly, social media algorithms naturally favor video, giving it reach.
With more eyeballs on your video testimonials, you’ll be able to create a lasting impression over a series of memorable interactions.
Supercharge your social media content with video testimonials. Reach out to Testimonial Hero to learn how you can harness the power of video testimonials.
Dan shares on:
Brokers no longer need to spend hours each week tagging conversations manually and adding notes after each call—ZRA does all that for them.
During customer calls, brokers, salespeople, and customer success agents can easily see AI-generated notes from previous interactions and continue the conversation, whether it involves offering the customer more information about a particular token or solving a simple troubleshooting issue like two-factor authentication.
Using ZRA has streamlined customer processes, from sales to customer service calls to onboarding. “When we go through a customer onboarding process, we need a lot of information from the customer to remain compliant,” Dan explains. “With Zoom Revenue Accelerator, our onboarding team can easily see what’s been collected and what’s missing.”
After each call, ZRA will automatically create a summary and generate a list of the next steps to complete the onboarding. “Our onboarding team can now save time. When engaging with a customer, they can focus and prioritize that customer conversation.”
With automatic, AI-enabled insights into customer calls, Caleb & Brown now uses the intelligence gathered from conversations to guide business decisions. “When we want to start a new customer acquisition campaign or explore a new business line, we have insights into what matters most to our customers,” Dan says. “We can adjust our acquisition strategy and the key messages we use in our comms to match what we see.”
ZRA makes data sharing between teams easier, so brokers can share customer feedback with product and engineering teams—something they couldn’t do easily before. “In the past, it was quite clunky to pull a clip or audio file to share with other teams. Now, they can easily search through transcripts and provide those snippets as text snippets. It’s been a huge improvement to our workflow,” Dan says.
The enhanced collaboration—furthered by the adoption of Zoom Chat and Zoom Meetings—has also improved security. Teams can communicate faster and use ZRA to share data and call recordings to identify bad actors and confirm client identities quickly.
"Our teams can look at the data and make sure the voice and conversation style matches previous conversations. The auto-generated transcript that ZRA provides makes it much easier to search previous conversations." — Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
In addition to tightening security, ZRA has made it easier for Caleb & Brown to track potential compliance issues and conduct quality assurance.
Along with ZRA, Caleb & Brown adopted Zoom Phone.
As a distributed company with global teams, it was important to ensure that distance didn’t impact customer experience. According to Dan, their previous provider “had significant latency issues and delays in the conversation. It made conversations quite disjointed and felt very unnatural.”
Switching to Zoom Phone solved those issues, and with the seamless integration of ZRA, they’ve gained data analysis capabilities they didn’t have before.
Since they’ve started working with Zoom Phone and ZRA, Caleb & Brown has gathered valuable data from every single customer call. “Previously, only a fraction of those calls were analyzed and reviewed. Now it’s 100%, and our team doesn’t have to do anything—the software does it for us. It’s quite magical,” Dan says.
This analysis has led to significant time savings and given the team a deeper understanding of their customers.
“Understanding those conversations and what topics matter most to our customers at scale has been absolutely phenomenal. We can’t put an exact number on it, but days, months, years of work have been saved.” —Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
Caleb & Brown have gotten so much value from Zoom Phone and ZRA that they’ve expanded their Zoom ecosystem.
One such integration involves Salesforce. ZRA integrates directly with Salesforce, which means agents no longer have to spend time searching for the information they need. When a customer calls, their profile pops on the screen, allowing agents and brokers to swiftly navigate through that customer's data for additional context for a particular request. “If a customer wants to update their address, for example, the agent can click see and change that information directly in Salesforce. The useability is phenomenal,” Dan says.
Another addition is Zoom Contact Center, which provides a better way for the global support team to service customers. Rather than having support team members to have unique phone numbers, they leverage intelligent routing to streamline call volume through a single phone number. This capability makes reporting much clearer, as it's easier for leadership to understand the types of conversations being had and who is having those conversations.
With so many solutions to offer, Zoom enables Caleb & Brown to improve productivity, know their customers better, and get deeper deal insights to drive more revenue.
“One of the biggest benefits of working with Zoom is their complete product line. Having one provider that you can go to for many solutions makes things quite easy.” —Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
