Tips for Using Video on Social Media

When it comes to your digital marketing strategy, your social media can’t be an afterthought. These days, many people connect with brands through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This means that social media is a massive source of potential new customers, but that it’s also highly competitive. 

With this in mind, you need a way to stand out from the crowd and effective use of video can do just that. Here, we’ve put together some video tips for social media so that you can up your social game.

Most of the time, you will need to create video content specifically for social media. Existing videos that you may have on your website or from a previous marketing campaign might not be right for the social audience. People usually engage with social media on-the-go or whilst they’re doing other things, meaning that although they look like they’re completely engrossed in their devices, their attention is fleeting at best.

People are so overwhelmed by content now that most of it just gets scrolled past until something catches the eye. Your video needs to capture people’s attention, but also keep it for the duration of your message, which is why our first video tip for social media is to keep it succinct and entertaining. If your message needs more time, that’s fine, but keep it engaging for the duration.

You don’t have to create the next viral sensation to have a successful social media video either – it can just be something that captures the spirit of your brand and what you’re all about. It can be as simple as showing a behind-the-scenes glimpse of your workplace or your production process. Your audience wants to know the real people behind the brand.

You should never compromise on the quality of your video content, but some sensational epics come with just too large a file size for the different social media platforms. Certain aspect ratios are also not supported by all platforms. 

You can always upload a video via YouTube or Vimeo to keep your video as intended, but you will need to advertise the link or have the video embedded rather than posting it directly onto your social media profile.

For example, a regular Facebook feed video has a recommended size of 1280×720 pixels, .mov or .mp4 format, and 16:9 as the only supported horizontal aspect ratio, though there are more options for portrait videos. Instagram supports square, vertical and horizontal videos, but favours square videos of 600×600 pixels, with the highest possible video resolution.

Even though you’ve created a video specifically for social media, that doesn’t mean that it is appropriate for all platforms. Our next tip is to design your video specifically for the social media platform you are going to upload it to. People engage with different social media platforms in different ways. Think of Instagram for example – a social media designed for the visual. Your videos for Instagram should look slick, professional and aesthetically pleasing to get the most out of your Instagram audience.

On the other hand, Twitter is all about short, snappy content, so any videos you upload shouldn’t be too long. Twitter is also often the main social media used to discuss breaking news stories or trending topics, so if your video has a topical relevance, Twitter may be the best place for it.

Whatever platforms you are thinking of uploading your video to, take a look at the kind of content that is thriving in your areas of interest. Which videos are getting shared the most? How long are they? Do they have anything in common? Just as adverts need to be adapted for TV, radio and print, each social media platform has its own style.

Possibly the most important video tip for your social media campaign is to measure audience engagement. You need to know which of your videos are working, and which aren’t doing so well, so that you only produce content that your audience engages with in the future. 

As there are no academy awards or box office sales for social media videos, you need another way to gauge the success of your videos – metrics:

A video’s play rate is the number of times your video has been played past the autoplay point. Getting a high play rate is dependent on an attention-grabbing opener, title or copy to pique interest so that the video can work its magic.

These are fairly straightforward indicators of whether people like your video or not. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (for now) all have likes, and there are also comment and share features, so that you can see how your video is being received.

The click-through rate is the number of people who have gone one further than just watching your video. This is the percentage of your audience who have followed the call to action by clicking a URL included in the post or within the video.

Not everyone will see your videos through to the end, which comes back to keeping things engaging. People may watch past the autoplay, and even be enjoying the content, but may also become aware of time and look to see how long is left. If they deem the remaining time to be too long, they will stop watching. This is useful for dictating how long your future videos should be to maximise engagement.

Hopefully these video tips for social media have been helpful and have given you some fresh confidence to stand out from the social media crowd with some outstanding video content.

If you need help with your social media films, why not get in touch with us and see how we can help?