How to Optimize Your Social Media Videos

28 Jun How to Optimize Your Social Media Videos

Social media videos are a great way to increase your organic reach and connect with your audience by showing some personality. Learning how to create high quality videos for your social media channels can keep followers coming back or send them running for the hills. In this week’s post I’ll share some quick tips for optimizing your social media videos to gain more traction and impact.

Pay Attention to Video Thumbnail

Capture the attention of your audience by keeping your thumbnail image in mind. This image should be clear and entice users to click play. The thumbnail image for your videos are also important because if someone visits your profile they’ll only see a thumbnail since the video will not auto-play from there. A blank image or strange capture won’t draw a potential viewer in. After the thumbnail the first few seconds are crucial to keep them watching.

Expect Viewers to Watch Without Sound

Consider that most of the time your audience is watching video with sound off. This means it could be useful to add titles or captions to optimize your social media videos.

Consider Video Length

Besides the time constraints that social media networks put on us remember that people have short attention spans. Play with longer and shorter videos to figure out what video length your audience responds to the most.

Upload Videos Natively

One of the best ways to optimize your social media videos is to upload videos natively. This may not seem like a big deal but social media network algorithms prefer natively uploaded videos over videos linked from outside sources. Another plus to uploading videos natively are that they look bigger and better within feeds. Check out the examples below where I show you what native video uploads look like on Facebook and Twitter vs. uploading links from YouTube on these two networks.

Shoot Videos Vertically

Some social media networks will require you to shoot and upload videos vertically, but shooting social media videos vertically can help increase your views. Remember that many users are watching videos on their smartphones and watching a vertical video is more comfortable that having to turn your phone to watch a horizontal video. Keep in mind that the way you shoot the video should depend on what network you’ll be posting it to – so this rule doesn’t always apply.

Use Descriptions and Tags

One of the best ways to optimize social media videos is to fill in any description or tag sections the network your posting to offers with keywords that apply to your industry and audience. Also pay attention to what you name the actual video file. These little details will help your video get found more easily in searches.

Mix Up Video Content

One last way to optimize your social media videos is to switch up the type of video content you share! Try tools like Boomerang, Hyperlapse or .GIFs to add a little more personality to your posts. These tools can be so helpful if you aren’t an expert at creating videos just yet. Below is a Boomerang I created on a trip to Vermont.

Follow these simple tips to optimize your social media videos and gain more visibility for your brand or business online!

<3 DhariLo