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In this interview, Dina Pruitt of D2Strategic, and K’ai Roberts Fu of Magnus Media Group Video Production discuss the many ways video can be used on Facebook and Instagram to boost visibility attract your ideal clients

K’ai Roberts Fu:

Hi, I am Ka’i Roberts Fu with Magnus Media Group Video Production. I am here today with Dina Pruitt of D2 Strategic, a social media marketing company. D2 helps their clients increase revenue and generate more leads using audience research, attested framework, and years of experience to create campaign strategies that work for their clients.

Now, Dina is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, so I’m pretty excited to be speaking across the country. She works with clients in well, pretty much everywhere. Dina, tell me a little more about D2 Strategic and how you help your clients.

Dina Pruitt:

Awesome. Well, we are a boutique agency. We work a lot with e-commerce businesses but also service businesses. So we primarily run Facebook ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, for them. We help e-commerce businesses grow and increase their online revenue, get found by more audiences, kind of expand their reach. I’ve helped a lot of clients last year that were used to going out and selling through trade shows, had to stop that, and actually transform their business by being able to sell their products five times what they were doing in trade shows online. So, it was nice to be able to do that, to be able to make that kind of difference.

Also, in addition to just doing ads for clients, sometimes I meet with clients and they’re just not ready. They’re not at a point in their business where they’re ready to really have someone come on and do done for you. So, I also do ad intensive training, so I can work with someone and work a day at a time and help them get set up so they understand better how to run their own ads.

K’ai:

So you can either do it for them or teach them how to do it themselves.

Dina:

Yeah.

K’ai:

Right on. Well, I know one of your areas of expertise is Facebook ads. You told me you’ve tested using video on Facebook ads. What kind of results are you seeing for your clients?

Dina:

Yes, that’s really interesting. I will say, I was a little slow to start running video, and maybe not, but just me, but I’m having my clients going really out and requesting because what I’ve found is just initially a lot of businesses had photography but they didn’t necessarily have videos in the can. So as video has become more important and people are more used to seeing video, and also Facebook and Instagram are pushing videos, I definitely wanted to test that.

Dina:

So as I have been asking clients to provide videos for me to test with their ads, I’m having really some good results. A recent campaign I saw the video ads, what’s something we look at, which is the click-through rate, how many people click on the ad and go on to the website, running it two to three times a still image.

So, yeah, so that was a pretty big result. Now, I’d say it can vary. It’s definitely something to test, but yeah, I’m actually happy with the initial results I’ve been having over the past like six months with running video.

K’ai:

Okay. When it comes to professionally produced video versus DIY video for this type of social media, what do you think is a good mix?

Dina:

Yes, I say it really comes down to context. So, it depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re looking at organic social and you’re maybe wanting to show a day in the life, behind the scenes or something, getting out your own camera and just shooting what you do or showing somebody something about your service or your product is fine. I would say that a do it yourself, if you’ve got a testimony or someone’s talking about your product and you want to really show that social proof, obviously having someone that has shot their own video and can share that with you, and that’s very organic and do it yourself and not professionally produced.

But where I see it being really helpful is particularly with my product-based businesses. That’s where I see yes, being able to showcase, being able to light, being able to know how to do it, it’s really important. Just shooting a photo or shooting a video of your own product and then trying to run ads with that kind of thing doesn’t really work as well. So, definitely the investment there, I think, is really important for having it professionally done.

K’ai:

I have to agree. It is neat how much can be done DIY. If I recall, you mentioned you have some background in video editing and production, so you kind of know what it looks like behind the scenes in order to get a really good shot that looks like it was casual, but we’ve got five or six different lights and three different camera angles, which is just something you can’t really DIY most of the time.

Dina:

You can’t. Lighting is so, I mean, is so important. I mean, yeah, you could maybe go find tutorials, but I mean, I struggle with it, so yeah. I definitely think that, especially around a product, having a professional that knows what to do is really key there. Yeah.

K’ai:

Yeah. Well, and you mentioned that some of your clients have taken a little while to get on board. They didn’t have video in the can, if you will. What are some of the challenges you’ve found with your clients, once you told them how the great results of video, what are some of the challenges they have in getting rolling with it, and how do you help them overcome that?

Dina:

Okay. Yes. The, I would say, two challenges really come to mind, one, is just knowing what to use, what to post a video about. I mean, and this kind of gets into, are they doing it for organic reasons and they’re trying to post it just on their Facebook or Instagram feed? Are they creating a video that’s going to be for an ad campaign?

So if it’s for an ad campaign, and that’s usually where I’m advising them, we’re going to be thinking about the strategy behind, “Well, what are we trying to do? What are we trying to target?” So I will help them come up with the content for that. If we’re trying to introduce them to a new audience, that might be give some background, give a tip, give some education. So educate and be entertaining, little tips or hacks are really good for service-based businesses.

Then, I think the other struggle that they have, besides content, is just around how to make it look good, if they’re trying to do it themselves. How do I light this? I had one client, I was trying to get them, I’ve been asking them for new photos and new video for a very long time. They just don’t know what to do. Do they have even the right equipment? I mean, so I think that’s the biggest challenges I see.

K’ai:

Right. So when it comes to, “Then once you get the content,” and they’re ready to upload it, is it best, for whatever statistics and things you measure, to upload the video directly to the platform, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, or is it better to use a YouTube link and have everything go to the same place? What is the most effective for clients that you have?

Dina:

Absolutely. With Facebook and Instagram, uploading to the native platform is absolutely the way to go. They want you to put video on their platforms. I mean, obviously they’re owned by the same company, so Facebook and Instagram are one and the same. They want that video on their platform, they want people staying on their platform. They reward you by when you do upload video by showing it to more people. So, that’s definitely something that’s really important. YouTube is a competitor in a way of Facebook, and so they will not reward you for linking to a YouTube video. They will show it to as few people as possible.

K’ai:

Yeah. I guess that’s something you probably advise people on too. It’s one thing to post it, but it’s another thing for it to actually get eyeballs on it. So, that’s one of the things you advise people on, how to actually get the eyeballs on their content?

Dina:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do a lot of strategy with my clients along organic social, and what to do, and how to help what they’re doing natively, organically kind of to amplify what we’re doing with the ads, but obviously one way to get eyeballs is to put some money behind it and run some paid traffic.

The thing that’s nice about that also is, and especially important with video, is that if you get someone watching your videos, then we can actually create audiences of people that watch videos on the Facebook or Instagram platform, and then run re-targeting ads to those people. So, that’s an audience that’s already engaged and showing some interest. You can actually target people that watch 25%, 50% of your video. Those are a warmer audience than just trying to reach completely cold traffic.

K’ai:

What you do really impresses me because I know my video, but everything else is kind of off there in ether, which is why I like to bring in experts to find out all these details. So, speaking of the details and the things you do for people, if somebody wanted to learn more about D2 Strategic, and you work all over the country, how do they get in touch with you?

Dina:

Well, you can come to my website, which is d2, with the number two, strategic.com. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram, @D2strategic. For any of you that may be testing out the new Clubhouse platform, you can actually find me on clubhouse at Dina Pruitt. So, I’m going to be hosting some rooms on strategy and helping people with Facebook ads through Clubhouse.

K’ai:

So, it’s a new platform. Can you just tell us a couple of sentences about Clubhouse and why they might want to meet you there?

Dina:

Sure. So, it’s an audio-only platform, but think of it like a podcast, but only in real time or a virtual stage. So, you’ve got an audience you can host like a podcast, like audio, but you have an audience that can engage and listen to you or can actually participate live in the conversation.

K’ai:

So, I love the fact that there’s so many options, like video but then live audio where you can wear your pajamas head to toe, not just on your lower half. Thanks for explaining that to everybody out there and to me. So, anything else you would like to tell us about social media or video?

Dina:

Actually, there is one thing I wanted to mention because it’s just so hot right now, and it’s such a really something that anyone that’s thinking about trying videos and getting into video should try, which is Instagram and Reels. Reels is Instagram’s kind of version of TikTok. So, people have heard about TikTok, they’re little 15-second clips, little short little clips. Well, Reels is what Instagram is, doing and they are pushing reels.

So even if you were trying to increase your audience, increase your reach, be seen by more people, definitely look at creating a reel and posting it because Instagram is pushing it hard. I’m in a group where people that have audiences that are less than a thousand are getting million plus views to their videos because they’re uploading reels. Those can be just little snippets, little tips. You can create something in 15 seconds that has some value to your audience. So, I would say that’s something you could definitely test out.

K’ai:

Oh, that is fascinating. Well, thanks for keeping us all on the cutting edge. It’s been great talking to you, and I look forward to hearing what you’re doing over the next several months.

Dina:

All right. Thank you, it was great to talk to you.

K’ai:

Thank you.