Video saved the landscape marketer

Photo: ©istock.com/mikkelwilliam/Elenathewise

Meerkat. Periscope. Vine. 
Instagram. Sounds like I’ve lost it and have started speaking in tongues, huh? But these words are not gibberish. In fact, they’re the latest craze in social media video services. More importantly, these video-based platforms are just a few of the free tools you can use to help promote and sell your green industry services.

Social media video marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your business. How effective? According to the Online Publishers Association, 80 percent of Internet users recall watching a video ad on a site they visited in the past 30 days. Of that 80 percent, nearly half took action with that brand after viewing the video. How’s that for effective?

Marketers are increasingly using these formats to display their products to consumers, allowing consumers to experience them. This approach allows a consumer to feel comfortable with an expensive purchase, reducing buyer’s remorse. That’s why it’s so important to show off your landscape products with small, bite-sized videos that add “life” to your company’s visual masterpieces.

So what are these tools, and how do they work?

Live streaming

Meerkat and Periscope are apps that make your mobile phone a live broadcasting machine. Both services connect with your Twitter account, allowing your followers to watch live broadcasts of your videos for free. Periscope now allows you to connect your cell phone number instead of a Twitter account; Meerkat now connects to your Facebook account.

In addition to live video streams, users who are watching your streams can ask questions and comment with you and your viewers. This tool takes live broadcasts and turns them into interactive sessions with consumers.

Live video streaming gives you the opportunity to give your consumers a look into your world. Have a beautiful job you just completed? Do a Meerkat/Periscope tour around all the great features of your job. Encourage consumers to ask questions regarding the design and installation methods. The opportunities are limitless, and interactive video will allow your clients and prospects to become engaged with your brand.

While both live-streaming video services provide a similar service, Periscope offers a few more features, such as 24-hour replay, allowing visitors to view saved video for a day, providing data on viewers and giving users the ability to watch broadcasts on desktop browsers. That said, due to its Facebook integration, I have a Meerkat account, too. I alternate using the two platforms to engage both Twitter followers and Facebook followers.

Microvideos

Maybe live streaming isn’t your thing, but you realize videos are too important to be ignored. Consumers not only love videos, but the stats prove they like them short. That’s why Instagram and Vine are great platforms to start crafting short, powerful, videos.

When Instagram started, it was merely a photo-sharing social media channel that was an “artsy” alternative to other platforms, allowing users to add filters to photos.

Facebook, which bought Instagram in 2012, brought video to the platform in 2013, allowing users to upload three- to 15-second videos directly to the platform and to share them on their Facebook feeds. So in addition to your beautiful photos, you can share short videos of your landscape projects effortlessly, adding cool visual filters to get your projects to “pop.”

A smaller social channel, Vine, allows you to upload two- to six-second video clips to Twitter or Facebook. Vine allows users to hold down the record button; it stops filming when users removes their fingers, allowing you to make cool stop-motion videos.

Additionally, Vine videos are “auto-looped,” meaning they’ll repeat over and over again until the user stops watching. While six seconds doesn’t seem like enough time to film anything useful, featuring small clips in your Twitter and Facebook feeds can help drive engagement with your audience. With Twitter’s backing, you can be sure that Vine will continue to add features that make it a viable service for years to come.