Is video content part of your holiday marketing mix?
It should be – video is the best performing content type across all social platforms, and it can help boost engagement, awareness and sales in your end of year push.
And if you’re looking to improve your video content approach, Facebook has this week provided three new tips that are worth considering in your process.
1. “Add a 3-5 second trailer to hold interest”
Facebook’s first tip is to add a brief preview of your video at the beginning of the clip. This is a fairly common approach on YouTube, and now Facebook as well, where you take a key snippet from the video and add it onto the start, giving users more reason to stick around and find out what happens.
It’s a simple way to potentially improve engagement and view time, which is a key factor in boosting distribution.
Facebook also notes that you can use your Creator Studio analytics to see when you’re losing viewers, in order to improve your video approach.
“Open up Video Details by clicking on your video in the Content Library of Creator Studio. Look at the Audience Retention curve, and uncheck “only include views over 15 seconds” to see where people are dropping off in the first few seconds of your video. We recommend looking at your retention curves often and aiming to improve your retention over time, as that will help increase your reach on Facebook.”
That could help provide more guidance on your content approach, while it’ll also help you see if these previews, when added, improve your retention results.
2. “Frame the story – with a 4:5 aspect ratio”
Facebook also advises that you should look to create videos aligned with vertical viewing.
As explained by Facebook:
“We live in a world were most people watch videos on mobile just inches from their face and often in vertical orientation rather than turning their phone to landscape. Try framing your visual story and build for vertical format. Editing your videos using a 4:5 aspect ratio may work best for your videos on Facebook.”
Facebook’s internal research shows that some videos have seen a significant performance improvement by switching from 19:9 orientation to 4:5.
3. “Engage your community – commenting on posts”
Facebook’s last key tip is to maximize engagement by responding to comments on your video posts.
“Joining the conversation in the comments section of your own posts can delight your audience and maximize your reach. Longer comments, like sharing your own perspective on the discussion or answering questions, can spark even more engagement with your content.”
Facebook also notes that you can respond to Facebook and Instagram video comments via the Inbox tab in Creator Studio, making it easier to manage your activity.
In addition to this, Facebook has also shared five general tips for video creation:
Some of those tips are probably a little generic – of course engaging content works, it’s the creation part that’s a challenge. But they may provide some more points of consideration for your approach, which could help improve your video marketing performance.
You can read Facebook’s full set of video tips here.
