What Zoos Can Teach Businesses About Video in Social Media - Social Media Explorer

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by Jacob Maslow | April 21, 2019
Zoos can teach small and large businesses about social media. All it takes is a look at how zoos, many of which may be in your area, use social media to tell stories, keep followers engaged and break news.
When researching how zoos used social media to find success, we found the following:
Zoos are Masters of Storytelling
Storytelling is the key to many social media and content marketing campaigns. But businesses often don’t know how to tell a story. Zoos, on the other hand, are a great example of storytelling and engagement.
How do zoos tell a story?
Video is a prominent platform. The San Francisco Zoo, like many others, make use of new additions to their zoo to tell a story. When a new baby is born, it’s storytelling time. YouTube seems to be the platform of choice for storytelling because video is such an engaging platform.
A video titled “It’s a Gorilla! Baby Gorilla Update,” received 2.7 million views and it’s a video showcasing the baby gorilla. The title keeps viewers in suspense as they wait to see if the baby is a boy or girl.
The narrator of the video does a good job of detailing the gorilla’s features.
Businesses can do the same with their own “babies,” or new products. When new products are introduced, use video to showcase the product’s:
Uses
Features
Be sure to explain which pain points the product helps solve and why your product is different from the competition. Storytelling is a powerful tool when marketing on social media, so make sure to use storytelling on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Showcase Weirdness and Cuteness
Zoos have an advantage in the social media space because they can easily use the cuteness of animals to attract social media followers. You can use a lot of different angles to stand out:
Cuteness
Weirdness
Anything that makes you different
Weirdness is a fun aspect because you can correlate it to business, too. Zoos and their weirdest animals can correlate to a business and their:
Quirky employees
Different approach to solving problems
Work ethic
Cuteness and weirdness are best shown through images and video, and this is a key aspect of social media. When your business has a new product or a weird, different approach to solving a problem, showcase it on Instagram or YouTube through videos or on other social media platforms using images.
Different is a good thing on social media.
Followers Love When Zoos Go Live
Go Live. This can be done on everything from Facebook to Instagram. When trying to build a brand, going live allows you to engage with followers in an entirely new way. Fitness enthusiasts are doing this a lot to build their brands.
Zoos have the content – animals – which most people love.
Businesses can livestream to demonstrate how to use a product or service, or they can go live to hold a Q&A to help customers better use their products or services.
Businesses can also give a live, behind-the-scenes look at how business is conducted. Show a major event from your business live, or choose to bring your followers to a company meeting live.
When you start using video in social media, it allows for a much more personal approach to social media that followers love. Since video is key to social media marketing success, it makes sense to start using video today.
Every day, over 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube along, and 45% of people watch over an hour of video on Facebook every week. When 86% of online marketers are using video, it’s important that you are, too.
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