Social media loves video. With the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels, you can imagine why. Depending on the channel, you will want to optimize your videos for the most engagement.
Here are a few quick tips to ensure you put your best foot forward with video content on social media.
1. Optimize for the platform
Each social media platform has a different requirement for the maximum video length allowed. Make sure you check the requirements for your platform of choice. 47% of value in a video is delivered in the first 3 seconds.
- Facebook: Shorter videos (under a minute) are ideal for sharing fun and interesting content. When you went to tell a story or explain a complicated concept, Facebook found that videos that were at least three minutes long performed best.
- Instagram Feed: In the feed, up to 1 minute; high engagement for videos averaging 26 seconds.
- Instagram Stories: Each story can be up to 15 seconds in length. Stay below seven video stories in a row (under 105 seconds) for best engagement. Remember to shoot in a vertical format for Instagram stories.
- Instagram IGTV: Anywhere between 15 to 60 minutes, varies by account. When posting a video to IGTV, it will show one minute on your feed and allows viewsers to click through to the full IGTV video.
- Twitter: Up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Create a teaser that links to longer content elsewhere.
- TikTok: Up to sixty seconds in a vertical format.
2. Trim videos to length
You don’t have to be a professional video editor to create an engaging social media video. Learn how to trim or clip your video into the right size.
- How to trim video using Windows 10’s Photos app
- Split a movie into clips in QuickTime Player on Mac
- At margo, we love Descript, a collaborative audio/video editor that works like a doc. It includes transcription, a screen recorder, publishing, full multi-track editing, and some mind-bendingly useful AI tools.
3. Assume your listener can’t hear it
People often watch videos on social media without sound, not to mention there are many people that are hearing impaired. Add closed captioning to optimize accessibility.
- Facebook allows you to upload closed captioning files to your videos.
- YouTube can perform automatic captioning for your videos. Remember to go into your video settings to review the captions for errors.
- Rev is an inexpensive, easy-to-use captioning tool that will create caption files for your videos or burn captions into the video itself.
