Adding video content into your social media marketing strategy can give your platforms more energy and really bring your brand to life. Video can humanise your brand and allow you to showcase the people behind the brand more. This means it's crucial to make sure your social video is meeting the guidelines of each social platform otherwise they won't perform as well as they could be doing.
85% of businesses plan to use video marketing as a marketing tool (source) and that includes video on social media. Brands are relying on video content more as more customers want to see short videos over image content as it is more engaging and involves them in the brand more.
Here is a guide to your social platforms;
Instagram has many different ways you can upload video content to the platform, these all vary in sizing and lengths so making sure you are posting them in the correct format is crucial for audience viewing.
Your Instagram feed videos are the videos that can be posted onto your profile, these are the videos that show up on your customers feed for them to interact with. There are two different types of instagram feed video, you can either post landscape or square, therefore these all vary in sizing. The minimum sizing for landscape video is 600 x 213 and the minimum for square is 600 x 600. By knowing this it will help give your audience better viewing of your video. On instagram feed the video length needs to be up to 60 seconds and has to be a minimum of 3 seconds, typically you normally lose 33% of engagement by the 30 second mark of the video. This indicates that you want to be making sure your video is shorter so it will keep audiences engaged for longer.
Videos on instagram stories are recommended at 1080 x 1920, if they are smaller they will not fit the size of the screen and there will be a background to your video. These videos are recommended to be around 15 seconds maximum however they can be as short as 1 second, 1 out of 4 consumers make a purchase after watching a brands instagram story (source) so by including video can help increase purchases of your products or services. Instagram stories do delete after 24 hours, unless they are saved as a highlight to your profile where it will stay on your profile until you remove it.
Instagram TV was created to allow people to create longer videos than instagram feed videos. The video length must be at least 1 minute long but it can't be longer than 10 minute if you are uploading from a mobile, if you are uploading from a desktop it can be up to an hour. The recommended sizing for IGTV is the same as instagram stories 1080 x 1920. Instagram live can be as long as an hour and as short as a few seconds, after streaming your live stream you are able to access it through the live section on your profile. You are able to make these public for your customers to re-watch if they miss it. The sizing for instagram live is the same as both stories and TV 1080 x 1920.
Facebook is very similar to Instagram, they have many different formats where you can post videos onto, Facebook users spend at least an hour watching videos (source), this shows it's really important for brands to be posting video on Facebook as audiences are choosing to watch the content.
Facebook video posts should be 1280 x 720, 600 pixels is the minimum width for any landscape and portrait video. These videos can be as long as 240 minutes, however the shorter videos that get uploaded to Facebook are more mobile friendly and are more popular to the Facebook audience. The average and most successful video length on is between 24 - 90 seconds. However if you are creating 360 Facebook videos the max length of the video is 40 minutes with the dimensions of 4096 x 2048, these types of videos are great for showing office spaces or if you need to show an area of something.
Facebook ad video is a bit different to Facebook feed video, they should either be 1280 x 720 or 720 x 720, with a maximum length of 120 minutes. The carousel ad videos where you post multiple videos for an ad should be 1080 x 1080, these videos should be shorter than 30 seconds with looping videos up to 90 seconds.
Facebook stories work similarly to Instagram stories, their minimum dimension is 500 x 500 with maximum being 1080 x 1080. The video length should be at least 1 second but has to be a maximum of 15 seconds, these also disappear after 24 hours. Facebook Live videos are recommended that you broadcast for at least 10 minutes, these live streams can go for around 4 hours. These live streams can then be posted onto your Facebook feed allowing customers to see them after they have been ended.
Twitters doesn't have many options for video formats, you have feed posts and video ads. However, there are more than 2 billion video views on Twitter everyday (source), therefore as a business you want to be targeting your Twitter audience with video content as it will get views and be watched by a much wider audience than just your brand.
There are two types of video format, landscape and portrait on twitter. The best landscape dimensions are 1280 x 720 and the best portrait dimensions are 2720 x 1280. You are also able to post just square videos onto the feed which the dimensions are 720 x 720. The video length for Twitter is 140 seconds (2 minutes 20) but the average length of video on Twitter is only 43 seconds, and any video that is posted that is shorter than 6.5 seconds will automatically be put into a loop. Video ads are recommended to use 640 x 360 or 1280 x 720, similar to feed videos, therefore it makes it easier for companies to turn feed videos into ads as you are able to use the same dimensions for both. The maximum length for ad videos is 140 seconds.
LinkedIn launched their video content feature in 2012, 75% of executives claim they watch b2b video marketing every week (source), this shows that executives are interested in watching marketing content that business and brands are creating, and it's an important feature to use on linkedIn. Video content can really help promote your business to other business owners and help people see what you offer.
LinkedIn video's resolution can vary from 256 x 144 pixels to 409 x 2304 pixels. LinkedIn video can be as large as 5GB or as small as 75MB, with a video length no longer than 10 minutes but no shorter than 3 seconds.
Video ads on LinkedIn are different to the native videos, these ads can be between 3 seconds to thirty minutes long, but the most effective ads are around the 15 second mark. The square shaped ads can range from 600 x 600 pixels up to 1080 x 1080 pixels, LinkedIn doesn't at the moment offer vertical videos. LinkedIn doesn't allow users to upload more than 25 videos through the campaign manager within the first 24 hours after launching a new campaign.
Having knowledge on video timings and guidelines can really help your business when considering using video. By knowing this information it can help improve your video marketing strategy and make your videos more effective than before. By knowing these key points you can help your business be interacted with more and audiences will find it easier to interact with your platform and encourage more people to take action from the video content you have created.
If you need help creating short videos for your social platforms chat to us to see how we can help.
See related articles.
