How big is the blast when a star larger than the sun explodes? That describes the skyrocketing popularity of video on social media platforms. As video was accelerating 258 percent on Facebook between 2016 and 2017, Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying, “I see video as a megatrend.”
How prophetic was Zuckerberg. Today, more than a third of the world’s population—2.07 billion people—are active monthly Facebook video viewers, watching 100 million hours daily. But Facebook isn’t alone. Video has also garnered millions of fans on other social media platforms.
Twitter, which Hootsuite reports has 145 million daily active users, is the latest popular social platform using video. That number is up 17 percent over 2018 and is expected to rise another 3 percent in 2020.
Twitter’s own research confirmed the previously reported power of video. They discovered that video tweets had ten times more engagement than tweets without video. They also found that video tweets, which are promoted, saved more than 50 percent on cost per engagement.
Another Twitter discovery was a 62 percent year-over-year increase in video viewership. What may be appealing to marketers is their finding of a 72 percent year-over-year increase in time watched.
The best Twitter videos
To foster more participation on Twitter, getting consumer attention quickly as they’re scrolling through the feed is paramount. What Twitter found is that marketers who grab the customer’s interest within three seconds experience a 13 percent increase in breakthrough metrics on the whole.
Brands need to keep their videos short to get full impact. Fifteen seconds should be the maximum and shorter is better. Copy should similarly be brief and less than 100 characters to lead viewers to the video.
Marketers should make it a point to start videos with a focus on the product. Videos that open on the product see a 24 percent increase in consumer interest and 34 percent rise in click content, according to Twitter research. Content should also center around how the brand is used while the video depicts that human interaction or desire. Twitter found that response rates rose 40 percent when these were employed.
The product should be the star of the video
This way, it clearly establishes the brand with viewers and consumers. Twitter discovered that marketers practicing this experienced increases of 25 percent in brand recall and 21 percent in message recall.
One interesting recommendation from Twitter was that CMOs place a permanent logo in the upper-right corner of the video. Their survey found that brands that did so experienced a 30 percent increase in unaided brand recall. They added that utilizing a dynamic logo added 14 percent more to unaided brand recall.
Another thing to consider for Twitter videos is the employment of captions instead of audio, especially since some users didn’t have access to sound. Twitter found that captions lengthened viewer content times by as much as 28 percent.
Many of these tips may also be valuable to marketers targeting an audience primarily using mobile devices.
