Making Videos Perfect For Social Media

Social media management has fast become the best platform for advertising available, be it to bring in new customers or engage with your existing ones.

With the number of social media users rising and the average attention span falling, short online videos have become the premium way to quickly convey information to users who can’t be bothered to read.

Now, there are a few differences when making videos specifically for social media compared to others.

Here is some advice to help get your videos in your customers' news feeds...

Keep It Short

One difference about videos on social media is that they are normally found, not searched for. This means the people who happen upon your video aren’t going to be inherently interested in the topic, so you need to not only make it interesting enough to watch, but you need to keep it from being too long. Seeing a video more than a few minutes long will send most viewers scrolling on, as they aren't going to spend their precious time watching something they didn't even search for.

Keep your video short, 1 minute is a good point to finish at, but if you must go over keep it 2-3 minutes tops. A video that’s too long will dissuade people from opening it at all, let alone watch the whole thing.

Get Right Into It

Studies show that most people decide wether to keep watching a video on social media within the first 3 seconds.  Otherwise, they will just keep scrolling. Those first 3 seconds are the most important part of your video so you need to make sure it catches interest right away.

Make Use of Captions

Most videos on social media play automatically, without sound. This helps as it means the first few seconds of your video has a shot at pulling in someone who had no intention of opening it in the first place. So, when uploading, make sure all your videos have captions so people can watch without sound.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Creative

If you are uploading frequently, it also gives you more leeway to try something different every now and then. Your video needs to be attention grabbing so something creative might be a good way to get people clicking on your video that mightn’t have otherwise. Users mightn’t be looking for a builder, but they might be interested in a time-lapse of a house being constructed.

Always Upload ‘Natively’ 

A ‘native video’ is a video uploaded directly to the site, such as Facebook or Instagram, rather than a link to the video on a different site. Social media sites reward their users for posting on their site by pushing native content over other types. So, if you’re posting videos to Facebook, it’s more likely to be seen than if you were sharing Youtube links.

Keep an Eye on Analytics

As social media management becomes increasingly important, there are more and more tools made available to help us get the most from our posts. Apps like Facebook have built in analytics meaning you can keep track of your videos stats to see what works for your viewers. Do they prefer videos that are super short or a bit longer? Do they like it when you are producing videos that inform or entertain? Once you know what works you can build upon that, instead of putting time and energy into something that doesn't. (Learn more about analytics here.)

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In Summary

Videos are one of the best social media tools out there. If you want to become a better videographer for social media, you need to follow the above tips.

Don’t know where to start? No problem! Book a free 45-minute consultation and talk to the best business coach near you.