By now, you’ve noticed that there are lots and lots more videos on social media. Video is all over the place, and there’s plenty of bad video. Out-of-focus, way too long, disorganized videos, too. There’s definitely an up side to using video on social media, and there’s a down side, too.

You Can Get Lots of Attention

You’ll get attention–whether positive or negative is up to you. If you post all the time and share every moment, you may get unfollowed or muted. Not everyone is into cats, or cats wearing pajamas, or wants to see how you make a sandwich. By the way, if you want to be less annoying, you might like How to Be Less Annoying on Social Media. For starters, nobody wants your video sale pitch as a private message on Instagram.

Video Views Are Up

The time of video is here now. We’re all competing for attention from our viewers, and there’s only so much of it to go around. And people get tired of reading. Don’t you? I do sometimes. And I admit sometimes watching videos that are way, way off-topic. According to Lilach Bullock, 82% of Twitter users view video content on the app. See her excellent article Why You Need to Start Creating More Videos on Social Media. And you really need to create videos, particularly if you want to attract millennials, who are the most avid consumers of video.

Don’t Panic Yet

If you think you need a professional set-up to create good video, here’s the good news. You can create a good video on your phone, upload it to the social media platform of your choice, and share it there. Video, in my opinion, doesn’t have to be created by a videographer to get views. In fact, sometimes people prefer amateur videos (that would be me).

Goodnight, Dragons!

Every week, on our Twitter chat, #DigiBlogChat, I tweet out Goodnight, Dragons at the end of the chat! This week, since we were talking about video on social media for business, I created a little snippet, because after all, we needed a real example. It was created in about 15 minutes using an iPhone. The hardest part, truthfully, was clearing off my desk and getting the cats not to attack the card. So if that’s not proof that you can create a video, too, I don’t know what is.

Are You Using Video Yet? Why or Why Not?

Leave me a comment, and let me know your experience with video. Do you like video? Hate video?