How To Get Longer Social Media Video Watch Time
If your business uses Facebook video, and you would like to encourage users to watch your videos from start to finish, there are a number of strategies you can adopt which will help you to achieve this objective. Some of the tips described below will tell you how to establish a Facebook ad campaign which will result in having users watch your videos for longer periods of time than they might normally.
You may have to try several of these tactics before you hit on a process which achieves the desired results, but altogether these tips should help get your videos viewed for longer periods of time.
Upload the video to your library
While some marketers prefer to upload a video directly into the ad system for Facebook, it can be much more effective if you upload a given video into your page’s library instead. Your video library is located under the Publishing Tools section, and to upload a video into that library, all you have to do is click on the Upload button which is seen at the right side of the screen.
You can upload videos in any format whatsoever, but for optimum results it’s probably better to choose a widescreen video that has an image ratio of 1920×1080 pixels.
When you choose this option, mobile users will have the capability of simply rotating their phones to see the video in landscape mode, which will provide the very best user experience.
Since your goal is to achieve 100% video completion rates, you should be very concerned about providing the best possible user experience, so that viewers will hang around to see the entire video.
This is especially critical for videos which tend to run longer such as vlogs. If there is one one exception to this approach, it’s when you’re trying to have micro-content viewed which is shorter than two minutes, and in these cases, a square aspect ratio of 1080×1080 is probably a better way to go.
Optimize thumbnail attribute and video text
After you’ve accomplished an upload of your video to Facebook, you’ll need to optimize it. Make sure to carefully consider your video title and to add an engaging description which culminates in a call to action. You should also add relevant tags which describe the content, and which will help to attract visitors to watch your video.
Next you should upload an SRT file which will supply captions for your videos. For this, you can use a transcription service such as Rev, which will have them typed up for you. You’d be surprised at how important captions can be, especially since most videos will auto-play with no sound being heard – it’s the captions which will retain your viewer’s attention.
Facebook favors videos which use SRT files, because it helps to analyze the video content so it can be shown to the right target audience, which is a major benefit to you. After this, you should upload a custom thumbnail which is a high-quality image containing as little text as possible.
If your thumbnail image contains more than 20% text, you may possibly lose out on placement in your Facebook ads. To find out how much text is included in your thumbnail image, use the Image Text Check tool which Facebook makes available in its Creative Hub.
Schedule your video to be released
Once your video has been optimized and is ready to be launched, you can have it scheduled, so that your ad campaign can be timed to go live at the same time which your organic video does. The benefit to doing this is that you will have the opportunity to comment on it first and allow it to reside permanently in your video library, so you should make a point of scheduling the video organically rather than simply uploading it.
To schedule your video, you’ll have to click on the small blue arrow adjacent to the blue-colored Publish button, and then select the option for scheduling the post. Then you’ll have to select a date and time when you would like your videos to be published. If you have a time-sensitive video, or one which offers a temporary discount, you have the option of taking it off your feed after a specific date or time. Once you’ve done this, just click on the Schedule button.
Making the first comment
It’s very important that you make the first comment before the video actually goes live, because this will have the effect of increasing watch times and clicks on your videos to a significant extent. In order to achieve a 100% viewer completion rate, you will have to use every possible tool which helps you achieve that goal, and making the first comment is one of those tools.
Once your video has been scheduled, open it up in your video library, so that you can make the first comment yourself. You can use the same strategy for all of your blog posts and your social media posts as well.
Create a Facebook ad campaign to promote the video
Once your video has been scheduled and is ready to go, you should then turn your attention to Power Editor, so that you can create some ads. To do this, choose the Video Views objective, because it will present your ad to an audience which is most likely to watch your video for the longest period of time. You can choose your budget at the Ad Set level, and then set the timing for your video to go live at the posting time of your organic video.
Next, you need to choose your ad targeting, and for this you will have to consider the appropriate demographics, just as you would for any tags you put on an organic video. It’s a good idea to target your audience based on language, since people who don’t speak your language are not likely to watch the video.
Then you should choose Mobile Only for placement, deleting the Audience Network placements. This will leave you with only suggested feed video ad placements as well as in-stream video ads. The users who watch these videos are known watchers of video content, which means you’ll have a higher retention rate, and longer video watch rate for your prepared video.
Heather Hart
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