The route of the future is video production, without a doubt. Compared to typical images, it draws more attention from viewers and fosters a personal connection with the customers. You're losing out if you're not using video in 2024. First, let's discuss the kinds of videos that work well on various platforms. From Facebook and YouTube to TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. You may submit your videos in a different format on each of these networks. Fortunately for you, though, with a little more tweaking, you can use the same piece of material for all of these platforms. Let's now examine how to improve and optimize your videos for various social media platforms.
Recognize Your Audience and Where These People Are
It’s fair to state that there are many ways that individuals utilize various forms of social media. Therefore, you must decide on one crucial item before you even begin creating your video: who is your target audience? Numerous elements will depend on who your target audience is, including:
The message and tone of your video.
The objectives of your video.
Which distribution channel would be most effective? Where will the video be hosted?
Your videos should have a very precise target demographic and aim for every piece of content, just like the rest of your marketing campaigns.
For instance, C-suite personnel are often older than solopreneurs if they are part of your target. While the latter might interact more with casual communications, the former could choose a more formal tone. Whether or not your video appears on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or even TikTok will also depend on the feedback you receive from viewers. Where you host the video will directly depend on the platform. For instance, you have to host the movie on Facebook's video player instead of YouTube if you intend to promote it there. Ultimately, Forbes discovered that such videos received ten times as many Facebook shares as videos on YouTube.
Make the Ideal Thumbnail
The audience chooses whether or not to watch the video based on what they see initially. Therefore, the thumbnail makes the initial impression on the viewer, who is also your intended audience. As a result, the thumbnail image has to grab the viewer's attention and entice them to click and watch the video. You have a lot of alternatives when selecting the thumbnail picture from your video frames on social media networks. In addition, if you don't want any of them for the video frame, you can proceed with the customized thumbnail. There are no limits, so take full use of it.
Pay Attention to Aspect Ratios and Video Length
Changing the aspect ratio and resolution of movies to meet the needs of each platform is a basic component of optimizing videos for various platforms. While YouTube thrives on horizontal (16:9) videos, certain sites, like Instagram, prefer vertical (9:16) or square (1:1) videos. Videos that are uploaded directly to your website should have the usual 16:9 aspect ratio; nevertheless, vertical videos are the most appropriate for social networking. Since 9:16 is the most common aspect ratio for videos posted on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others, it is more appropriate for mobile devices such as smartphones. Your engagement levels may suffer if you post your videos on social media without taking the aspect ratio into account. Make sure the dimensions of your video match to prevent letterboxing or cropping.
The Duration of Your Videos Matters and Their Audios
The duration of the video is crucial to engagement. Optimal video duration varies by platform and is determined by user behavior. For example, shorter videos tend to do better on sites where consumers have shorter attention spans, like Instagram and TikTok. On the other hand, longer-form content may be displayed on Facebook and YouTube. Adjust the narrative and pacing of your video to the typical watching duration of the platform. You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of a social media audience, as anyone who regularly browses through it will attest. This is where the duration of your video matters. Different social media platforms recommend different lengths for videos.
For the best chances of interaction on Facebook, it's typically advised to keep your videos around one minute in duration. There's a general rule of thumb when it comes to video durations on social media sites that cater to younger viewers, including Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat: the shorter the better. Contrary to popular belief, silent videos often do well in terms of interaction on social media. Lastly, you can increase the potential reach of any video you post on social media by adding hashtags, video descriptions, and targeted keywords to it. These will attract new audiences that are actively looking for information that is relevant to your content.
Utilize Websites
Videos may be shown on your website in any size or aspect ratio. These will be viewed by your audience on a variety of desktop and mobile devices. However, it's better to keep with the standard 16x9 widescreen aspect ratio if you want the movies to be indexed and shown in a Google search. You may provide a thumbnail and more structured data with the Yoast Video SEO for WordPress plugin to make sure your videos get traffic. Furthermore, it's critical to make sure your website's videos are responsive, meaning they should scale with the rest of the page and look well on phones and tablets without having half of the thumbnail slide off the screen. This is automatically taken care of if you utilize a premium hosting provider such as Wistia. However, YouTube embeds require further work to make them responsive.
Conclusion
There's a lot to consider when optimizing your videos for social media. Create a vision for your video or videos first. What is the overarching objective you are attempting to achieve? Your creative and business decisions will probably be influenced by the response to this question. Compile your assignments across a range of platforms and become familiar with their features. Think about the duration and other aspects of your video. Furthermore, continually monitor the metrics for each of your videos. You can determine what is and is not working with this.
