Videos are one of the key tools in promoting the products and services that your business offers in the market. Unlike in the past, today we live in a world where it is relatively easy for business owners to make a video showing the quality of the products and services they offer to the general public.
But to be successfully accepted by social media users, your videos need to follow some standards. In addition to the quality of your videos, one of the most important aspects that you should pay attention to is the duration of the videos.
For the duration of videos posted on social media, the rules “the shorter – the better” and “quality is more important than quantity” apply in most cases. In other words, it means that in the context of the internet world and social media, what is important is to have quality but short videos with a clear message. This is because the attention span of social media users is not very long.
In this and the next blog we will write about how long your social media videos should be. Various social media platforms have different rules and limitations about how long your videos can be. But that doesn’t mean you have to make the most of those time constraints.
According to the latest research, each internet social platform has an optimal (best and most effective) video length that should be observed if you want to reach its users.
For years now, the most used social media among all generations is Facebook. Although Instagram and TikTok have become particularly popular, their popularity hasn’t necessarily significantly dwarfed that of Facebook. Therefore, especially if you intend to promote your products to potential customers of all ages, the best place to do it is Facebook.
But how long should the videos you post on Facebook be? As for the platform itself, you have the option to post videos that are up to 240 minutes long. That, of course, does not mean that you should take the opportunity to post a 4-hour long video on your Facebook business profile.
What is the recommendation of the Facebook experts? In one of their articles, they recommend that businesses advertise their products and services with videos of up to 15 seconds, of which the first three are the most important because then you will either gain or lose the attention of the majority of Facebook users.
Of course, the 15 second rule doesn’t apply to literally every video that would be posted on Facebook. The length of videos in some situations will depend on the type of video you want to post. If it is a video recommendation, a video in which you answer FAQs, etc., you can and should publish a video that is longer (no more than 2-3 minutes, because the views of videos usually drop after the second minute).
Unlike Facebook, Instagram is a platform where the majority of users are younger (according to Statista over 70% of Instagram users are aged 13-34). This means that if you have a product or service that you would like to introduce and promote to 13-34 year old internet users, Instagram may be the right place to do it.
Like Facebook, Instagram also has certain limitations regarding how long the videos you post can be. But as with Facebook, the rule applies here that your videos should not reach the time limit if you want Instagram users to watch your videos to the end.
Although you can post videos as long as 60 seconds on Instagram (or longer using the IGTV option), the experts at HubSpot think that the best length for videos you post on Instagram is around or up to 30 seconds. The reason for this is almost the same as with Facebook videos, which is that Instagram users like to watch short videos, especially when it comes to brands they are not familiar with.
CONCLUSION
The fact that videos on these platforms need to be short if you want them to be watched is not something that should scare you. On the contrary, this should stimulate your creativity and encourage you to pay attention to the quality of the videos (content) and not to their quantity (length).
Another very important tip: when creating videos for social media, do it in a way that media users can understand your message visually. Sometimes they find themselves in situations and circumstances where it is not appropriate to use headphones or turn up the volume on their phones. Therefore, your message should be clear not only from listening to the audio, but also from just watching the video you post.
In the next blog we will write about the length of videos on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.
