Social Media Management Agency / Marketing Specialists

IBSM BLOG

By: Chris | October 05, 2020

7 Tips to Increase Social Engagement

with Video.

Video is a visually rich communication tool that can be tailored to suit any audience and share any message on multitude of social media platforms. Whether your goal is to drive more traffic, increase leads, educate a buyer into making a purchase decision, or improve conversion rates, video is one of the fastest and easiest ways to communicate with your audience.


It’s easy to churn out a video on social media nowadays. All you need is an idea, an online video maker and ta-da, you’re ready to post videos on your social channels. The hard part is creating video content that will actually engage your audience and benefit your business.

We’ve put together seven tips that will help transform your video engagement rates across social media and help you reach your business goals.


1. Optimize for attention

Firstly, you’ll need to customize your video thumbnail to encourage clicks. If the image captures the audience’s attention, they’re more likely to press play. Secondly, you’ll need to make sure that your video title clearly communicates what the video is about. Both of these steps are easy wins to implement and likely to increase your play rate.

2. Keep it simple

No matter the topic or message of your video, keep it short, snappy, and to the point. A good rule of thumb is to think of your video as a summary — you don’t need to include every single detail. Before you start production on your video, write down the top three points you want to include. This practice is an excellent way to make you really think about and condense your content into a shorter, concise message. Social media videos don’t need to be overly produced, high-concept movies. You’re not trying to recreate a Scorsese classic here. Keep it simple, easy to understand, and watch your engagement rates start to soar.

3. Optimize for each channel

Sadly, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all video format. Every social media channel has different parameters for the size, format, and style of video that works best.

Facebook

The social media titan allows users to post video in a variety of formats. Below, we’ve listed the specs for the most commonly uploaded video type: a shared post.

  • Video length max is 120 minutes
  • 1280 x 720 dimensions for both landscape and portrait uploads
  • Landscape aspect ratio: 16:9
  • Portrait aspect ratio: 9:16
  • Max file size is 4GB
  • Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV

Instagram

Instagram gives users the ability to share four types of videos. Each one has a specific length and limit that must be respected to ensure that your video is shared professionally.

  • Instagram Story: 15 seconds
  • Instagram Feed: 3 seconds - 1 minute
  • IGTV Video: 15 seconds - 10 minutes
  • Instagram Live Video: Up to 1 hour

For the most common type of video posting, an in-feed video, below are all the dimensions you need: 

  • Video length max: 60 seconds
  • Minimum resolution:
    • Landscape 600 x 315
    • Square 600 x 600
    • Vertical video 600 x 750
  • Landscape aspect ratio: 16:9
  • Square aspect ratio: 1:1
  • Vertical aspect ratio: 4:5
  • Max file size is 4GB
  • Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV


Twitter

Not always the first channel you think of when sharing video content, but statistics show that there are 2 billion videos watched on Twitter every single day. Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of your Twitter video.

  • Video length max: 140 seconds
  • Minimum dimensions: 32 x 32
  • Maximum dimensions: 1280 x 1024
  • Aspect ratios are between 1:2.39 to 2.39:1
  • Max file size is 512MB
  • Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a valuable platform to share tips, how to’s, and promotional videos — as long as you follow these general guidelines. 

  • Video length max: 10 minutes (we recommend keeping videos under 5 minutes to maximize engagement)
  • Max file size is 5GB
  • Accepted video formats are .ASF, .AVI, .FLV, .MOV, .MPEG-1, .MPEG-4, .MKV, and .WebM


4. Make your video accessible

Chances are your audience is scrolling through their social media feeds on a mobile device, meaning it’s likely that the sound is off. DigiDay found that an astonishing 85% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound. This signals a huge opportunity to include closed captions on your video to boost engagement rates. 



5. Brand your content

A Facebook study found that 23% of consumers are more likely to remember which brand made a given ad if the brand were featured within the first three seconds of the video. Basically, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, so make sure you brand your video from the get-go. Many online video makers have the option to add brand presets across all video content for consistency or upload your own watermark for a more professional video feel. 


6. Include a call-to-action

Video engagement should produce results that drive your business forward, for example increasing website traffic, acquiring email addresses or other visitor information, or even finalizing a sale. Without including a call-to-action (CTA) none of these things can happen. Provide a clear, specific CTA in your video. This could be anything from book a demo, download a whitepaper, or simply a click-through to a landing page. It’s recommended that you include your chosen CTA at different points throughout the video — not just at the end.

7. Native uploads win every time

If you’re not familiar with the term native, it means that you upload your video directly to the social media channel, instead of sharing a link to a video hosted elsewhere. For example, let’s say that you’ve made a 15-second social media video that summarizes a recently published popular blog post. You upload the video to YouTube (or Wistia) and post the link on your business’s Facebook channel. You’re then disappointed when the video didn’t hit the engagement rates it should.

This is because Facebook, and other social media channels, give prominence to videos that are uploaded directly to their platform. Not convinced? A study by Quintly found that native videos get 8x more comments, interactions for native videos were on average 168% higher than for YouTube videos, and native videos received on average 530% more comments when compared to YouTube.

Video is a must-do if you’re serious about performing well on social media. The opportunities for engagement are endless — as long as you follow these tips we’ve provided above. 



Category: Videos 

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