Checklist for successful video content creation.

At Mighty Social and the amazon agency 360 we often find clients prefer longer videos for their social media marketing. However, the value of short video cannot be underestimated. To drive best performance, we champion shorter videos together with the use of the Social Insight Engine - ad targeting technology.

This blog explores how to measure video success and we share best practice recommendations for your video content creation.

Why do shorter videos work better?

A recent Nielsen study found that even video views which last less than 10 seconds effectively build awareness and increase purchasing intent. Furthermore, the study shows that “every part of a video view — from the initial impression to a complete video view and everything in between — drives value.”

Digital marketers often have a love / hate relationship with the fast-paced nature of social media marketing. Trying to stay ahead of changes to the Facebook News Feed and its algorithms has been especially challenging last year when Facebook launched many platform updates.

Today more than ever, attention spans of viewers, especially on mobile, are short. Therefore, marketing messages have a limited time to make an impact.

How can your Facebook video content become more powerful?

• Videos have to jump to life very quickly, ideally within the first three seconds to stop people from scrolling past in their News Feed.

• Design the story board so that the video on social is ‘back to front’. This is essentially the opposite of TV, which gradually builds up a narrative. The most impactful occurs first, rather than at the end.

• Use text on the video to grab attention and get a message across quickly (one consideration here is that the text is not too large, so as to comply with Facebook’s text regulations).

• For increased VTR, the content should not be overly promotional.

How can you optimise video placement?

The content for Facebook News Feed should be bespoke, tailored and customised for video placement. If this is not possible, instream placement is another option. Instream placement refers to mid-roll video placement, which was rolled out at the beginning of the year, but began without the ability to exclusively target.

However, advertisers are now able to exclusively target with instream placements – this is a relatively new feature of the platform. Videos suited to the instream placement typically reflect YouTube-style videos of around 5-15 seconds.

How can you create KPIs and measure video success?

There are two ways to measure video performance, based on whether the key message is presented within the first 10 seconds of the video. (If it isn’t, you want the audience to watch the entire video, we recommend using instream placement and measuring success with a KPI of view-through rate).

If the key message is presented within the first 10 seconds of the video, there are more available placement options, including news feed, instant article, right column, suggested videos, Instagram, and audience network. In this case, KPI options are also more varied. We recommend looking at video views, video retention rate or unique video views to measure video success.