Strategizing for Social: The Video Edition The amount of online videos consumers are watching has doubled since 2018-to address this striking trend, Emily is joined by Yelp's San Diego community manager, Anne, to chat about Anne's success in creating video content for social media.

Behind the Review host and Yelp's Small Business Expert, Emily Washcovick, shares a look at this week's episode of the podcast.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words is a video worth? Hubspot reports that the number of videos consumers are watching online has doubled since 2018. With this medium of content rapidly growing, content creators need to join the trend to maximize their impact across social media platforms. In this episode of Behind the Review, Emily chats with Anne Faire, Yelp's San Diego community manager, to learn more about the importance of video on social media and her strategy for creating engaging content. Anne has made over a hundred reels on Instagram since the feature came out, and her view count is close to three million.

As Anne reflected on her success so far, she shared some tips that can help you boost your performance on social media.

Don't put too much pressure on yourself

The algorithm favors the consistent—even if it's not perfect content. Meta, the umbrella company for Facebook and Instagram, has reported that the average attention span for a piece of content on its platforms hovers at just 1.7 seconds on a mobile device. "It's just digital popcorn," Anne said. "If you're scrolling and you're eating a bag of popcorn, and it was a little burnt… you're not going to just throw out the whole bowl and say, 'I'm never eating popcorn again.'"

The social media equivalent of that is when you post a bad reel, Anne explained. Followers most likely will not unfollow your account just because of one piece of content—each post should be treated like a quick snack for the consumer.

This mindset is especially true for a business owner running their own social media accounts. Oftentimes, business owners do not have an excess of energy or time because of all the other pressing responsibilities they have, so it's difficult for them to devote time to something like creating elaborate content.

"It's just digital popcorn—just eat it and go," Anne said.

Look for content in your everyday life

Some content creators become overwhelmed when they're looking for places to capture the large volume of content that consistent posting requires—but that feeling can be relieved when you seek content in overlooked places. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. As the saying "hidden in plain sight" goes, some of the best opportunities for social media lie in what business owners see and do every day.

"You already have more content than you think you do, especially as a business owner on Yelp," Anne said. "You can see what the content that people want to have, and create content around that."

Reviews are a great resource for identifying what aspects customers love the most about your business. With those starting points in mind, you can build an evergreen content library that features the most important parts of the business, to be used whenever social media content is needed.

"If you do have people on staff, they can help get photos and videos," Anne said. To help organize your posting, Anne recommends utilizing a planning tool like Later or Plan to help take some pressure off.

You don't need to have expensive equipment to be successful either. Anne recommends the following tools to help create video content:

• A basic tripod that can wrap around objects
• A small lightbox to supplement when shooting in poor lighting
• Video editing apps like InShot (free) and Mojo ($9.99/month)

Listen to the episode below to hear directly from Anne, and subscribe to Behind the Review for more from new business owners and reviewers every Thursday.

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