How Long Should a Video Be for Social Media?

A lot of our clients get stuck on video. Whether it’s stage fright, busy­ness, lack of equip­men­t/­know-how, or just a tight bud­get, they sim­ply don’t make it happen.

Can you relate?

Well, I have some good news that may or may not take you by sur­prise (depend­ing on your own social media habits).

I did some dig­ging and discovered…

After look­ing at a lot of ana­lyt­ics and data regard­ing the atten­tion span of users on Insta­gram and Face­book, I was not actu­al­ly shocked at my dis­cov­ery. I reviewed my cus­tomers’ videos across all accounts this year, and here is what I found: 

Only 30% watched any video past the 15-sec­ond mark. 30%.

That means that 70% of those who clicked on a social media video stopped after 15 seconds.

Do you know how much time it takes to cre­ate videos that are 30 to 60 sec­onds? Depend­ing on sev­er­al fac­tors, it can take hours and hours (if not a day or more)! If your team has to pay a video­g­ra­ph­er hun­dreds or thou­sands of dol­lars to pro­duce amaz­ing videos, and you know that 70% will STOP WATCH­ING after 15 sec­onds, don’t you think it’s time to rethink your video strategy? 

The num­bers drop off even more to the point where bare­ly any­one watch­es your videos on social media to the very end! This only hap­pens when you have devel­oped a cult fol­low­ing using amaz­ing indus­try knowl­edge or humor. 

What do we suggest?

• Start with using your smart­phones and not a video pro­duc­tion team. In fact, use the pile of cash you saved on pro­duc­tion and fun­nel it instead into pro­mo­tion and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing! One epic video is nev­er going to cut it — you need to be con­sis­tent and pay to pro­mote your content.
• Record a few sec­onds per clip of a job: pres­sure wash­ing, sand­ing, mask­ing, spray­ing, brush­ing, the final prod­uct… Then quick­ly dress it up using a sim­ple video edit­ing app (iMovie on iPhone is an exam­ple). If you want to spend more time edit­ing, use a Desk­top app like Cam­ta­sia or iMovie.
• If you do decide to use a video pro­duc­tion team, make sure those videos are still super short: 10 – 15 seconds.
• If you do need a longer video, make sure the main point you want to con­vey is obvi­ous with­in the first 15 seconds. 
• Watch a lot of Insta­gram ads for inspi­ra­tion. You’ll see that the best ones are short and to the point to sell their prod­uct or ser­vice. Try some­thing similar. 
• Your videos should stir some emo­tion. Try to get your fol­low­ers to watch more! 
• Prac­tice using Insta­gram sto­ries to post your short video clips. This is a great way to gain fol­low­ers and get more views. 

As we men­tioned above, just stay con­sis­tent. One hun­dred 15-sec­ond videos shot with the phone in your pock­et will ulti­mate­ly be more ben­e­fi­cial than 1 or 2 Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions. Really.

Don’t over­think it — just start shoot­ing it, post­ing it, and share your pas­sion. It WILL take off.