Social video: This is a very important thing. People watch over 100 million hours of video on Facebook every day, and YouTube reaches more viewers in the 18-49-year-old demographic than any cable network in the United States. Snapchat reportedly has 10 billion video views every day.
While these are already huge numbers, the volume of social videos is still growing. Video tweets increased more than 50 percent Cisco predicts that by 2020, approximately 1 million minutes of video content will surpass global IP networks every second. If you don’t include social video in your online strategy, you will be left behind.
But with so many videos appearing in social media feeds, it takes some planning to ensure your video content doesn’t get lost in the noise. We’ll start by looking at some general principles for social video, then dig a little deeper into the specific optimization strategies that work best for each network.
How to optimize video for social media
Here are some key ways to optimize your video for social media to maximize engagement with followers and fans.
Get attention quickly
Browsing social media feeds is an overwhelmingly mobile activity, with social media time spent on mobile devices ranging from 63 percent for those over 50 to 78 percent for those aged 18 to 34.
This means that you’re primarily dealing with users browsing a long feed on a small screen and have little time to catch their attention. Data from Facebook and Nielsen show that 47 percent of the value of a video campaign comes from the first three seconds of the video and 75 percent from the first 10 seconds.
Because most social videos play automatically, viewers see the beginning of your video without having to press the play button. This gives you the chance to lead them into your content with stunning, compelling visuals.
For example, this Lexus Facebook video is only four seconds long but packed with graphic-intense graphic elements and impactful brand messages:
Test vertical video
With so much social media activity happening on mobile devices, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even YouTube have introduced vertical video formats to maximize viewing area on mobile devices so that viewers don’t have to rotate their screen. Especially if you’re targeting the younger demographic who do almost all of their social browsing on mobile, it’s worth testing vertical videos across networks to see how they perform.
This National Geographic Instagram video of a giant panda uses mobile screen space to deliver maximum cuteness in your face:
Wait for the audience to watch silently
Most autoplay social videos do this with the sound turned off, and Digiday’s research shows that most people — up to 85 percent — never turn up the volume. If your video requires sound to be understood, most viewers have no chance of engaging.
It is important, then, to create a video that stands on its own with no audio tracks, with subtitles or text to convey any message that highlights any visual component that appeals to the eye and requires words. Take advantage of automatic captions where they are available (like Facebook’s automatic captioning tool) or add your own – but also consider creating videos that convey most of their meaning with images alone.
This Twitter video by DiGiorno is more fun with the music pumping, sure, but it conveys his message equally well without the sound:
https://twitter.com/DiGiornoPizza/status/821715023512801280
Choose your thumbnail wisely
Autoplay may be the default, but users have an option to disable this setting, or it may not work if users have a poor connection. This means your video needs an engaging thumbnail to entice users to click to watch, so don’t just choose the default. Take a look at your thumbnail options to make sure the image conveys the value users would get by pressing the play button.
The thumbnail in this KFC Instagram video shows one of the last frames, but it’s a good choice as it highlights the product and works well with the video description to convey the full message even if the viewer doesn’t watch the rest of the video at all.
https://www.instagram.com/p/7RCyNtNwuK/?taken-by=kfc&hl=en
Now that you understand some of the basic principles of how to optimize video for social media in general, let’s look at some network-specific strategies so you can get the most out of each of your social media channels.
How to optimize video for Facebook
Upload local video
If you already have videos posted on YouTube or other video sharing sites, it can be tempting to share a link on Facebook. But doing so drops your video’s organic reach from 13.2 percent to 7.9 percent, according to eMarketer.
Simply put, the Facebook algorithm values local video and it’s in your best interest to play by the algorithm’s rules. You’ll also notice that only local videos, not linked ones, are part of the video gallery on your Facebook Page.
But wait, there’s more: Only local videos will play automatically in viewers’ feeds, while linked videos will not.
Give your video a catchy description
Don’t neglect the text portion of your Facebook video post that serves as the title. Make it highly crawlable and attractive to engage viewers as they scroll through your Facebook feed.
don’t go overboard
The maximum length of a Facebook video is two hours, but Wistia found two minutes or less to be the optimal length.
If your content is extremely engaging or detailed, it might make sense to go a little longer – Wistia saw almost no drop in engagement between the sixth minute and 12th minute – but most streamers shouldn’t even come close to that two-hour mark.
How to optimize video for Twitter
Just like on Facebook, upload local videos It gives Twitter the advantage of autoplay so users see your video directly in their feed without having to click through. Local videos also become part of your photo and video library, and your most recent images will appear to the left of your Twitter profile.
Twitter internal data It also shows that local videos get 2.5x more replies, 2.8x more Retweets and 1.9x more likes than the linked video.
Native Twitter videos can be from one to 140 seconds long, and videos shorter than 6.5 seconds will automatically loop, Vine-style, something like this from IKEA:
Live life on your own terms! see more #IKEA PS 2017 collection: https://t.co/N6Puvmy4fS pic.twitter.com/FgT1FFdFAB
— IKEA USA (@IKEAUSA) February 10, 2017
How to optimize video for Instagram
Instagram videos can be between three and 60 seconds long, and all videos are automatically looped. You can post any content you like as an Instagram video, but there are two Instagram-specific apps that by definition can help you create Instagram-optimized videos.
Boomerang
Boomerang creates short GIF-like videos that loop back and forth, creating a boomerang effect, you guessed it. The app takes up to 20 photos and combines them to create a short, quick video that fits perfectly into the Instagram universe, for example this image of the USA Basketball Women’s National Team:
hyperlapse
Hyperlapse is a stabilization technology for time-lapse videos that gives you full control over the speed at which time-lapse videos are played. This can be a great way to show off a quick video of an event that would otherwise be too long or slow for Instagram, like a sunset, a party, or even a tour of a city or property.
Lowe’s does a great job using Hyperlapse videos to create ultra-short project tutorials showcasing the products they sell:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BQS_wOiFLBr/?taken-by=loweshomeimprovement
How to optimize video for Snapchat
Snapchat videos are maximum or 10 seconds long (except Snap Ads) and must be recorded via the Snapchat app; pre-recorded video will not be uploaded here. Because Snapchat is a mobile-only social network, viewers mostly watch videos in portrait mode; so make sure you shoot vertically.
A Snapchat video only lasts for 24 hours, like any other content on this network. If you want a chance to reuse your videos later or post them on other social networks, be sure to save them to Snapchat Memories.
After all, if you don’t save your Snapchat videos, you can’t use them later to create content for other social networks, like this epic video of Jimmy Fallon and Ariana Grande:
For more ways to optimize different types of video for your social marketing strategy, including live video and 360 video, check out our post 6 Social Media Video Formats Marketers Should Try.
Ready to put your video marketing plan into action? With Moyens I/O, you can upload, schedule, publish, promote and watch your social videos all from one platform.
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