It’s hard to dispute that Facebook is the king of social. It’s where just about every publisher, brand, and outlet in the world goes to connect with new audiences. A key method to building those connections is through video. Facebook touts over 8 billion daily video views, an enormous number. As a platform, they have consistently increased their dedication to video, in response to its growing popularity among users.
No doubt Facebook is already a component of your social video strategy. We have some critical tips that will help you tackle this goliath and publish your videos as effectively as you can.
Keep it as short as you possibly can
We harp on this a lot, but it’s the most important piece of advice for social videos: keep it short!
Users on Facebook check runtimes before they hit play, because they usually want a quick video snack, not a full meal. Videos under one-minute are the most successful, but going even shorter only helps.
Consider that the average view time for videos on Facebook is only 18 seconds! The shorter your content, the more people will choose to watch it and the more of it they will see.
It has to work on mute
Let’s be clear: this isn’t just a best practice, it’s an absolute necessity.
85% of video on Facebook is watched without sound! So the odds aren’t just that some of your followers may try your clip on mute, but rather that most of them will. Publishers have been slow to catch on here. Facebook’s own research suggests that 41% of videos on the platform are meaningless without sound. Don’t be part of that statistic!
Build your story around strong visuals. Complement those with text overlay to provide the context and information necessary to tell the tale. You’ll want a nice soundtrack, for anyone who does have the sound on, but on Facebook that is secondary to making your videos function without sound.
Use CTAs
For the vast majority of publishers, Facebook is not their home, just a platform on which they have a presence. The goal is to use that presence to gain followers, build a loyal audience, and drive those viewers to their own website. Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the key to realizing those goals!
Your CTAs can encourage viewers to follow your page. It can direct them to related content on your website. It can ask them a question and encourage them to respond in the comments. Whatever you want your viewers to do next, a CTA is the way to guide that behavior.
Facebook has an incredibly useful built-in CTA feature for videos. It allows you to overlay a clickable CTA on your videos, within certain parameters. We took a close look at this feature recently, be sure to put it to use!
Use audience optimization
While paid boosting is more powerful, Facebook offers their “Audience Optimization for Posts” feature to all Pages, free of charge. After turning it on in your settings, Audience optimization allows you to target users based on their interests, location, and demographics.
This is a simple way to hone in on your target audience for a particular video. That ideal group of users is the likeliest to be interested in and engage with your video, and that engagement will, in turn have your clip popping up on more feeds.
