Edmonton businesses turning to short-form videos for digital marketing
Posted May 1, 2022 8:56 am.
Last Updated May 1, 2022 10:09 am.
Embracing short-form videos as a digital marketing strategy seems to be the way of the future.
While some businesses still ignore Instagram Reels and TikTok for brand marketing, others are exploring those short snippet-style videos as a viable way to advertise a business.
Recent data from Instagram’s parent company Meta suggests 20 per cent of the platform’s users are on Reels. Meta also says Facebook users spend 50 per cent of their time watching videos.
Edmonton artist Ashley Thimot says Reels work for her and her business because they drive waves of user traffic to her account from the time she posts, to long after.
“For me, as an artist, generally I will film snippets of me working, or I’ll set up a camera and perform a timelapse,” said Thimot.
“I have gotten quite a few commissions by people I don’t know. Maybe it started from looking at Reels, but it usually generates traffic to my website, and then from my website is where people contact me.”
Sina Zere, the co-founder of Buff Experts, says despite her initial dislike of Reels, she’s found they’ve increased customer engagement and as a result, increased sales.
“I have to admit that at first, I was really against them,” said Zere. “I found myself rolling my eyes a lot, and I felt actually a little annoyed that I had to do it in order for the algorithm to favour our content.
“I would say content that is educational in nature seems to do really well, followed very closely by humorous Reels, that I think where people get to have a laugh or identify themselves in that Reel – like ‘oh yeah I was that person, or I’ve said that to somebody’ – those seem to do really well.”
Social media strategist Beverley Theresa says she thinks Reels and other short-form video are here to stay because they speak to people’s decreasing attention spans.
“I definitely think having something creative and sharing a story about your brand, whether that’s a product or service or behind the scenes, as well as having creative text – closed captioning is very important for accessibility – as well as using some of the different tools that Instagram offers for editing Reels,” said Theresa.
