Social channels are a great place for video content to flourish.
Around 10 million videos are watched on Snapchat every day. On Youtube, in the same time period, more than 500 million hours of videos are consumed.
Over at Facebook, average daily video views go well beyond 8 billion. Instagram also reports that the number of videos produced per day has increased by 4x and time spent watching video on Instagram has gone up by more than 80% year over year.
What this means is that the social media audience has a huge appetite for video. So brands know that they can engage more audience using this content format.
However, this demand is also leading to 300 hours of Youtube video upload every minute. In fact, more video content is uploaded online in 30 days than the major US television networks have created in 30 years! Almost every social channel is experiencing similar fate making it difficult for marketers to gain exposure with video content.
In fact, studies reveal that only 1.2% of videos go viral on Facebook. So what happened to yours?
To help you cut through the content noise and boost your video’s performance, we have laid down six pointers. Let’s explore them one by one:
- The power of storytelling
Everyone loves a good story. And that’s not all. Stories also tend to increase the value of the product they are associated with. An eBay listing of spoons paired with a short story attracted 64% higher bids than one without a story. And this storytelling is the key to your online video success, especially social success.
On social channels, people are more likely to engage with videos that entertain or resonate or are useful than ones which are simply a sales pitch. So an attention-grabbing story is the first key to unlock social engagement through video.
Take cues from Oreo’s video strategy. In their videos, instead of selling the product, they build stories keeping Oreo at the core. Whether you go back to the time when they did an Oreo drone dunk or when they showed consumers how Oreo fits in their everyday life, Oreo has mastered the art of creating engagement through their video content.
Key Takeaway:
When crafting videos for your audience, focus on weaving the information into a meaningful story. To make the story more compelling, you can use the video subject to reflect qualities of your target consumer persona.
- The trick to staying within attention spans: Video Length
The video engagement is directly related to length. In fact, on social platforms, this effect is a bit amplified because of the content noise. Hubspot found that Instagram videos that received the most comments fell somewhere around 26 seconds. In fact, the same study revealed that the optimal length doesn’t go beyond the 2 minute mark
The reason for this can be explained by an important finding by Wistia. When they tested the impact of length on engagement, results showed that there is a significant drop-off in engagement after 2 minutes. But length too can have different meanings on different platforms.
For instance, the optimal video length for Twitter falls around 45 seconds but for Youtube it goes up to 2 minutes.
Key Takeaway
On social channels, users are already interacting with so much video content that hitting the sweet spot in terms of length becomes extremely crucial. So ensure that your video doesn’t exceed the 2 minute mark.
- The exposure of Native upload
The mode of uploading video on social platforms affects engagement significantly. People are less likely to interact with third party links and more with native formats. This can be attributed to the ease of watching the native video (third party links redirect you to other page) as well as platform’s algorithm working to boost native content. In fact, native videos on Facebook start playing automatically while a Youtube video needs to be tapped on.
So it doesn’t come as a surprise that native videos on this platform outperform third party links in terms of reach as well as engagement. Here, native videos get 185% higher interaction rate than non-native ones.
Key Takeaway
“Go for native uploads rather than sharing links from other sources,” say the expert sexual assault defense lawyers from Varghese Summersett . Native video uploading is a crucial key to unlocking engagement on social media as social channels are boosting native content in their own environment.
- The necessity of Subtitles
Is your video mute-ready? Most social video viewing happens without sound. So having subtitles in your video can enhance your engagement. In fact, 39% of people are more likely to watch a video entirely if it has subtitles in it.
Additionally, the completion rate of a video has a huge impact on the sales. If people stick around long enough to watch the full video, they are more likely to take the next step and complete the purchase or heed whichever call to action (CTA) you have at the end.
Key Takeaway
To ensure that your video gets engagement and that user doesn’t leave the video without understanding the content, make sure to include subtitles in it.
- The viral quotient of Trending topics and Hashtags
Many social channels operate on hashtags. Take Instagram and Twitter for example. These hashtags are often responsible for giving required visibility to content, including videos. So a factor that has the potential to improve your video engagement on these channels is content that is created around trending topics.
Similarly, video engagement can be enhanced on Instagram with the use of hashtags (where you can use up to 30 tags) while on Facebook, hashtags can be helpful but should be used in very limited quantity.
These hashtags can help your content go viral especially when they are created around current trends.
Key Takeaway
Tap into the power of trending topics and relevant hashtags to boost your social engagement.
- The need for Mobile optimisation
To drive engagement through video content on social channels, both platform and mobile optimisation is necessary. First let’s explore the platform optimisation factors.
Another factor which significantly boosts your social video engagement is mobile optimisation. As per CoSchedule, 91% of social media users are accessing these channels via mobile. So mobile-ready social videos are more of a necessity than an option.
In terms of mobile optimisation, other than video length, various other factors count. Like the mode in which video is consumed. For instance, Facebook reported that vertical videos are generating higher watch times and more engagement than traditional horizontal formats. Similarly, short videos perform better than long-form content. Also, subtitles are a key component in mobile optimisation.
Key Takeaway
When creating social videos, make sure to optimise them keeping your mobile audience in mind – keep them short, include subtitles, and go for vertical mode.
Conclusion
Video engagement on social channels is dependent on a number of factors. From video content to quality to mobile optimisation, various factors go into the making of a successful video. The above few factors can significantly contribute to increased video engagement. Do include them in your social video checklist.
SME Paid Under
About the Author
