December 20, 2016
“In 2017 social video is going to be huge” – Captain Obvious, 2016
As everyone and their mum knows, video is massive. It’s so big that every single social network has some kind of video offering. With 300 hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute, 4 billion video streams a day on Facebook and upwards of 10 billion video views a day on Snapchat, there really is no question anymore about the superiority of video content. In fact the total daily digital video consumption of an U.S. adult is expected to reach 72 minutes in 2017, and 75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be videos by 2020.
So, with that in mind here are some useful tips for each of the 4 biggest contenders;
Snapchat
- Add text, emojis or drawings to your snaps as 33% of videos on Snapchat are watched without sound.
- Ensure your content is filmed vertically, as this is native to Snapchat.
- If you are adding multiple clips to one snap make sure the first one really grabs viewers’ attention or they will drop off, and fast.
Youtube
- The first 3 – 10 seconds of your video really do count, up to 25% of viewers will not make it past the 10 second mark.
- Stick to 720p or higher resolution as the vast majority of viewers will be watching on mobile devices.
- Add captions to your video, it can add up to 40% more views than those without.
- Decide whether your content needs to be a Story or a standard Instagram Video post.
- Again, all videos on Instagram start with no sound, so caption them form second 1.
- Keep your video content consistent with your image content.
- Hashtags are Instagram gold. Posts with even 1 hashtag get 12% more engagement.
- Videos added to stories must be added to your phone or device within 24 hours of posting.
- Behind-the-scenes content of campaign assets is always great content.
- You can now create and Tweet live video from the Twitter app, powered by Periscope.
- A live video is worth a lot more than 140 characters.
- Videos that are designed to entertain rather than sell lead to a 15% higher intent to share.
- You have 140 seconds or 15mb to work with, make them count.
- Once again, add captions to your videos, as 85% are viewed on Facebook without sound.
- Facebook’s Autoplay will count 3 seconds as a “view” so make them count.
- Give your Facebook Live video a compelling title as it’s going to be forced onto your audience one way or another.
- ***UPDATE*** Facebook now allows up to 50 people to Video chat simultaneously
Hopefully that should give you a bit of a head start in 2017.