8 tips for thumb-stopping mobile content

April 16, 2019

What’s the first thing you do in the morning?

If you’re like me, you reach for your phone to switch off the alarm, take a look through your app notifications overnight and maybe read and respond to a few emails. We’re not alone, my phone-addicted friend, not by a long way!

A massive 80% of social browsing happens via a mobile device, and if you’ve never taken a moment to watch someone else scrolling, or think about it when you’re scrolling yourself, then you could be forgiven for not noticing just how swiftly we move those thumbs.

In fact, our human brains can process messages 42% faster on a mobile device than on desktop, and more than half of all video views come from mobile devices. This is both good and bad news for marketers. It’s good because we know that even if the newsfeed is very crowded, human brains are able to cope, but it’s bad because that gives us very, very little time to get our message across! Having attended a workshop at Facebook this week, I wanted to share some of the considerations and thoughts learned there.

So, what are the 8 top tips for creating mobile video?

  1. Ensure your videos are short, 10-15 seconds is great.
  2. Get your brand or product in there by the 3rd second.
  3. Start with the most captivating moment – it could be a beautiful image or a flashing headline, just whatever is going to stop that thumb.
  4. Engage the user with the copy – and not just the text above/below the image, use image overlays.
  5. If you have a hero for the piece – perhaps a product – make sure that is the focus.
  6. Create a video which can be enjoyed with sound off, as well as on.
  7. Frame the story – can you crop the original video so it’s suitable for vertical?
  8. Think motion, not video – it doesn’t have to be live-action, it could be a cartoon or animated stills.

Creating thumb-stopping content is something we do every day at immediate future – it’ll help your organisation stand out from the rest and most importantly, work for the algorithms which reward relevance and engagement.

If you’d like to know more, get in touch!

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