SOURCE: Simply Measured.
By Kevin Shively – March 4, 2015
Videos seem to be all we hear about lately. New native videos on Twitter, enhanced video service on Snapchat, and in their Q4 2014 Earnings Call, Mark Zuckerberg announced that there are over 3 billion video views on Facebook each day.
This number is no fluke. Facebook is putting serious weight behind native videos, which now autoplay in users feeds. Many marketers on Facebook have started to see more reach from videos than other media types, including photos.
Simply Measured’s Q3 2014 Facebook Study
While videos may be seeing more organic reach than photos, producing high-quality and relevant videos can be a much bigger task than producing photos, so many marketers are tentative to focus too much effort on this content type.
How do you ensure that your time is well spent on a Facebook video? Simple: You use your data. Facebook provides some crucial metrics that you may be overlooking when planning your videos.
Optimal Video Length
One key aspect that differentiates videos from other content types is duration. How long are users viewing your content?
Facebook allows users to break down video views by how long users stuck around. This info, in aggregate, allows you to identify the optimal length before users tune out.
Pro Tip: When producing marketing videos, be sure to have your message towards the beginning of your clip. You may be inclined to develop a slow build throughout the footage and work towards a climax, but we have short attention spans on social, so you want to ensure that I get your point, regardless of how long I watch for.
Activity From Paid and Organic
Facebook gives advertisers and marketers an impressive level of data, allowing you to identify and compare views on both social and paid.
By comparing paid and organic views, users are able to gain insight in a couple of ways:
1. If the videos being posted by your paid advertising team are different than those you’re posting organically, you can glean insight into which content is more effective by comparing the total views against views that lasted 95% of the video’s length.
2. If you’re responsible for ads on Facebook as well as organic content, you can learn about audience types and how they respond to your content, as well as which content to put some money behind.
Pro Tip: Facebook videos autoplay in user feeds. Be sure that your content is clear and understandable with or without sound to encourage users to continue watching, turn up the volume, or click through to engage further with your brand.
Content-Specific Insight
When looking at a specific video, you’re able to identify retention dips, so you can discover which areas of your content need attention.
If you identify that 50% of viewers drop off after 14 seconds, you can focus on that part of your video to discover what might have lost people. This can help shape your brand’s messaging if the analysis and testing are done thoroughly.
Pro Tip: Be sure to make your first few frames visually attractive, and the copy of your post tight and interesting. Users on mobile scroll through their feeds at a rapid pace, and you need to catch their eye before you can keep it.
How Are Videos Performing?
In our Q3 2014 Facebook benchmark report, we found that for the top brands in the world, videos still accounted for less than 10% of brand posts, and under-index on engagement.
Have you been posting more videos in 2015? How are they performing? Are you seeing engagement grow? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll keep you posted when we look at how these same brands performed in Q1 2015.
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Facebook Network Study | Q3 2014
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Kevin Shively
As Sr. Content Marketing Manager, editor of the Simply Measured blog, cohost of the #SimplyMeasured podcast, and generally delightful person, my job is to tell stories to the internet...You're welcome internet.
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