Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably noticed that video has been dominating online. According to a recent Pew Research study, 77 percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone, which means that three out of four of us walk around with a computer in our pocket. But it’s not just a computer — it’s also a video camera. With social media we can now share photos and videos instantly to millions nationwide. 

In a world where we are bombarded by ads all day long, how do we rise to the top? How are we going to get our security brand recognized and remembered? One way is the use of video. If a picture tells a thousand words, does video tell a thousand pictures? Have you ever watched a video on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn? There are more and more of them showing up in the feeds lately, and there’s a good reason for that. YouTube has more than 500 million hours of video watched daily, and by 2021, a million minutes (17,000 hours) of video content will cross global IP networks every single second.

Those same smartphones that are in most of our pockets can instantly turn any of us into a producer of video content. And before you start thinking you can’t do it, hold your horses. Just because you don’t have your in-house video production team doesn’t mean you can’t produce video. Remember, raw is real. Whether we’re on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn, we’re looking to be entertained or to learn something new. If you’re new to creating video, take a cue from Nike and just do it. Stop yourself from having analysis paralysis or spending two weeks planning your video. It’s inevitable that you’re going to be imperfect out of the gate. But the more videos you do, the better you’ll get. Start off with 30- to 60-second videos about topics that you know well. 

Now let’s talk about the extra hardware you’ll need (which can all be purchased on Amazon). A tripod for your phone is less than $10, a Gimbal to help stabilize your footage is about $100 and if you want to be more reasonable, you can spend less than $20 on a selfie stick. And you don’t have to just take videos of yourself. Start getting into the practice of requesting a video review from each of your new installs. Even if only one out of five or one out of 10 says yes, before long, you’ll have plenty of videos on your social channels. 

Over 80 percent of videos viewed on social media are on mute by default, so that means you should incorporate captions so your audience can read what you’re saying. The app Rev.com and Zubtitle.com for desktop both allow you to transcribe the audio from your video into captions. Clips requires an iPhone or iPad, and not only can you add captions, but you can also add filters and music to spruce up your videos. Clips is free on iTunes and the other two are very reasonable at just a few dollars per video.

You’ll want to upload natively (add the actual video file within each social platform, not just the YouTube link) to maximize consumption. And be sure to write great headlines and descriptions. Keep in mind that the users on each platform engage differently, so over time you’ll want to create different videos for each platform. For example, with LinkedIn and Facebook you’ll want to keep things short and sweet, ideally 1-2 minutes, but with YouTube your videos can be longer.

Sales professionals and management may want to consider a third party like Wistia’s Sandbox, OneMob or Animoto. OneMob will require a salesforce of 10+ but the others will allow you to not only create personalized video for prospects, but will also provide analytics on who opened the videos, how much of the videos they consumed and much more. There are free trials with each of these tools and they’ll allow you to be a purple cow with your sales strategy by engaging with your prospects in ways that no one else is.