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What do Airbnb, YETI, and Red Bull all have in common? Besides being successful businesses, they are able to drive awareness and loyalty by staying strategic with their video content through their understanding of each social channel. As you look to your social video strategy, keep in mind the following tips to help you on different social media platforms.
Compared to YouTube where users are watching and listening, 85% of videos on Facebook are viewed without sound. Add context to your video content by incorporating closed captions. By adding closed captions you are also meeting them where they are at the moment whether it’s sitting in the waiting room or on the subway.
The first few frames of a video and a scannable description are critical as you have to grab people’s attention when they scroll through their feed. Think digestible “fun” or snappy but educational content rather than longer, in-depth content more appropriate for other channels. Two minute or longer videos likely won’t be watched completely unless it’s your existing followers or a cute animal video.
Although Facebook’s organic reach is steadily decreasing they still value in their algorithm uploading a native video over linking out a video from another website. Commenting, tagging and sharing from other users all work in your favor but Facebook will penalize any baiting attempts to generate each.
Videos uploaded onto Twitter autoplay as users scroll through their feeds by default and appear on the left-hand side of a user’s profile along with photos. Attention-grabbing initial frame with an accompanying tweet applies here.
Thinking of just linking out a video from elsewhere on Twitter? Native videos on Twitter get 2.5 times more replies, 2.8 times more Retweets, and 1.9 times more likes than linked video.
Use Instagram as a brand awareness building channel by uploading visually stunning videos, behind-the-scenes Instagram stories, and 15-second teasers of longer video content shown elsewhere. Along with already established features that are popular specifically on Instagram like boomerangs you can also potentially be one of the first success stories as brands and personalities test out longer-form content on Instagram TV.
With the relatively smaller amount of video content on this network compared to other channels, you can really stand out in feeds with video. Top of the funnel “How to videos” along with success stories can work here along with leveraging your connections.
Shootsta uses LinkedIn to provide targeted, relevant content to their connections and followers including tips and tricks.
By partnering with other industry leaders to create content along with Shootsta team members consistently engaging with their connections, LinkedIn has helped to successfully position themselves as experts and influencers.
YouTube
While the amount of success for IGTV remains to be seen one thing is for sure: people are not just watching video on their mobile devices, they are watching a whole lot. In fact, the average mobile session on YouTube is more than an hour.
On YouTube your longer content can truly shine. One study found the average length of a video ranking on the first page of YouTube is 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
The same study reviewed over 1 million videos on YouTube and also found positive correlations for organic rankings around:
- Number of shares
- Total views
- Likes
- Total comments
- Number of channel subscribers
Fortunately, there is a way to encourage more subscribers and increasing your total view time, which YouTube has publicly confirmed as a ranking factor.
Along with integrating call to actions in the video itself asking viewers to subscribe, you can add an end card containing additional videos and a subscribe CTA.
In optimizing your video on YouTube think about what other action you’d like a viewer to take after watching a specific video. Is your content on another user's channel and you want them to follow your social channels? Or do you want them to visit a specific landing page?
In getting someone’s initial attention to view your video, according to the YouTube Creator Academy, 90% of the best performing video productions on YouTube have a custom thumbnail and not just a video still. Each thumbnail should be distinct from the rest of your channel’s content and any text displaying the photo should be readable on any screen size. The accompanying title should accurately represent the content viewers can watch. In reviewing your analytics if the majority of viewers are dropping off within the first 10 to 15 seconds you may have an issue with a misleading title.
As you test out different content from the thumbnails to the video message itself, you can also track engagement, views and, and watch time using Wipster Pulse. You have a central point to review your engagement analytics for YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter along with one-click publishing to each social channel.
