This post is presented in paid partnership with Shakr.

“The single most important strategy in content marketing today is video. Whether it’s video on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Youtube, the content you need to be thinking about creating and marketing on social for your business is video. Period.” Gary Vaynerchuck

In a world where it seems like most folks spend 24/7 on their phones, and everyone is “pivoting to video,” it’s becoming increasingly hard to stand out in a crowd, make an impact, and grow your audience.

In partnership with Shakr, a video marketing social media tool, we brought together some of the top industry experts to give you everything you need about why leveraging social and video marketing is critically important for your business. You can check out the livestream here, and we’ve included some of the top tips below so you can get started making your videos.

Start with “Why am I making this video?”

Most folks make the mistake of jumping right in without ever asking themselves the most important question: why am I making this video? You’re most likely starting to create video content because you want to grow your business. Whether it’s driving sales of a new product or growing exposure for your brand, it’s important to define your business goals before you get started. Tracking success is critically important, so don’t forget to set benchmarks ahead of time.

Be authentic.

If you’re getting started making videos, you should be able to answer the question, “what do you stand for?” within 30 seconds of being asked. While it’s easy to replicate other’s behavior, if it doesn’t feel natural to you or your brand, folks won’t want to engage with your content. Know who you are, and be yourself!

Engage your audience.

You should be thinking about talking to your audience, not talking at them. You should approach your video and social strategy as a conversation, where you are engaging with folks and they engage back. Try a call-to-action where you ask them to share your content or a hashtag. Like and respond to every comment. The more you interact with them, the more they’ll watch your content, and they’ll be a direct line for understanding what interests them.

Build a diverse team behind the camera.

When you look around at the folks on your team making your content, you should see a diverse group of people. By bringing in more voices, more experiences, and more opinions, you’ll be creating better content that, resonates with more people, that will drive the most miles for your brand. It will also help you be more culturally relevant, which will add to the virality of your content.

Make the most out of the videos you create.

Once you invest in making a video, you should be creating as much micro-content as possible. This means taking a longer video creating blog content, cutting it down into clips to be distributed over time, and using short clips to drive viewers to the longer content. The important thing to remember here is to be mindful of the platforms you’re using and what kind of content performs best for those audiences. There are great tools available to help you customize your content for different platforms.

To get started making awesome social media videos today, sign-up for a Shakr free trial here. Don’t forget to share your videos and tag #Shakr for a chance to be shared!

Thanks to Shakr for making this event possible, and to our expert panelists, Grace Kim, VP of Marketing at Atlantic Records, Claudia Page, SVP of Partner Product at Dailymotion, and Mary Wilson, Producer for BuzzFeed’s AM to DM.