Written by Paul Tedeschi

No company can afford to be static. Especially on social media. If you run a social media campaign that doesn’t exploit the power of motion, it’s time to make the leap into video.

If you’re not leaping, you’re not leading. Even if you’re posting relevant content at the right times to reach your audience, if your social engagement is at a standstill, it’s probably because it’s standing still. When motion graphics and video are employed in social media posts and ads, they attract, engage and increase brand awareness by a lofty margin. Which means the brands who use video are lifted, too.

Let’s float some statistics.

According to various surveys, people gaze 5x longer at Facebook video than at static posts, while GIFs on Twitter boost engagement by 55%. Marketers everywhere report that the use of motion directly leads to a demonstrable increase in customers. Instagram, arguably the most known and popular video and photo sharing platform, has been a video-friendly ad partner with brands of all sizes. With its Story feature, Instagram puts the spotlight on video content creation and sharing.

According to Instagram, 500 million accounts are using Instagram Stories, one-third of the most viewed stories come from businesses, and one in five stories gets a direct message from its viewers.

Even LinkedIn is embracing video, according to Peter Roybal, Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn, reports that when people see a video on the platform, they are 20x more likely to share it with their connections than any other type of LinkedIn post.

It’s not surprising, then, that according to Hubspot Research, over half of consumers want to see videos from brands — beating any other type of content. What may be surprising, however, is that you can lead the race.

Social video doesn’t need to be difficult, time consuming, or expensive. You no longer need a production house, professional actors or a Hollywood budget to leverage the power of video quickly and easily. Now you can create eye-popping, scroll-stopping motion content on time and on budget. The sky, as they say, is the limit.

Product launches. Dance challenge trends. Moving manifestoes. Unboxing and explainer videos. All offer insight into how people use video in social media. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth ten thousand shares and hundred thousand likes.

Of course, while video content creation isn’t new, it takes time, trial and error, to figure out the best way to use it.

You wouldn’t put a print ad on television, yet that’s what advertisers essentially did during the infancy of the medium. They weren’t using it effectively. Creative pioneers like Mary Wells Lawrence, who’s “End of the Plain Plane” campaign for Braniff International Airlines in the 1960s, helped bring a creative revolution to the masses, began using the visual medium of television as a new canvas for their work to drive engagement and brand awareness. Today, screens of all sizes vie for our attention and video content is the surest way to get it.  

It’s almost silly to remain static on social. From Facebook Content Creator to Adobe Spark to one-stop marketing and content shops like ours, the intuitive tools are in place to create motion graphics, videos and animations with the spontaneity that makes social so pervasive and persuasive. That said, it also takes the right people behind the camera—creatives, strategists, media teams, editors, directors, etc.—to develop video content that is strategic as much as it is entertaining. That’s our approach. We ask questions upfront to see how we can produce the right video content for our clients to help them achieve their goals.

Because what’s become clear is that video shouldn’t just be a campaign nice to have, but a campaign essential.

The chasm between brands that use video and brands that don’t is getting wider. It’s time to rise above the competition. Leap into motion. You’ll be amazed how far it takes you.