As a social media user you may have noticed the following trends or techniques when it comes to Facebook videos. These are mostly due to the domino effect, where one person sees something a bit different then the next minute everyone’s doing it.
Meme style Header & Footer
The first example of this is quotation/caption videos, similar to Memes where the video has a header and footer with big bold writing. Usually an attention grabbing statement or question? Like this example posted by our client Trapp’d (cool video ayy)…
This works well when it comes to engagement, and increasing the likelihood that viewers will watch the video for longer, simply out of curiosity in the most case.
Adding Facebook subtitle captions.
Another trend, partly due to Facebooks current (supposedly soon to change) silent play feature, is to add text subtitles to the video. This can be done using Facebook’s closed caption feature, or by burning the text manually within the edit itself. Again the success of this technique is rather good, it grabs people’s attention who don’t have the sound playing as they scroll through the news feed. In some situations it’s not appropriate to watch videos with the sound blaring so subtitles allow the user to watch the video rather than being forced to scroll past it. This no doubt increases views.
Facebook live
A no brainier, Facebook live allows you to stream live to your friends and followers whilst interacting with them live in the comments section. Not only this but Facebook usually sends out a notification to everyone letting them know you are live. Once the live video is finished the video is then saved to your Facebook for playback by those who missed it. It keeps the comments and interaction statistics attached so people can see who asked what, and when. This is a cool feature and great for improving views and interaction.
Video trailer with link to full version
Traditionally the ‘trailer’ has been used for cinema films. It’s now becoming a technique popular on Facebook and Instagram content too. The trailer can be used in two ways, either as a preview/taster of content soon to be released, or more powerfully as a way of gauging interest in a video which maybe hosted elsewhere, either on a website or commonly on YouTube. Due to Youtube’s monitized platform (where you get paid for views) many larger social media accounts would rather have their content watched on YouTube simply because they gain revenue from it – so trying to send views to YouTube via Facebook trailers is a great plan. The final benefit of using trailers particularly on Instagram, is due to the 1 minute maximum video length restriction. If your videos are any longer than 1minute (which most are) then you need to publish a teaser/trailer on Instagram whist encouraging viewers to watch the full length version elsewhere via a link – again a great way to increase traffic to your other social accounts.
Why not test out some of these techniques and analyse the differences in interaction levels. For more advice check out our other blogs.
If you’re looking for a video production company to help produce your next video campaign, let’s have a chat