Posted by As compelling video content continues to generate the most interest and engagement on social media platforms, being able to create captivating videos on Facebook has become a necessity for anyone trying to reach out and connect with an audience online.
Now, different types of Facebook videos will serve different purposes — from driving sales with things like an animated commercial to boosting visibility and expanding your reach with things like interesting educational videos. But that means you need to understand how these pieces of content work to invest your time and resources in the types of videos that deliver what you are looking for.
Lucky for you, that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about today 😎
In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at the world of Facebook Video content and give you some great tips and insights to take your content strategy on the platform to the next level.
5 popular types of Facebook videos you’ll want to keep in mind!
With such a huge pool of active users, there is probably an audience for almost any type of video content you can think of on Facebook.
And while experimentation can be a great way to innovate and discover new things that resonate with your target audience, it’s probably best to start with the styles and formats that have already proven to work on the platform in terms of broad appeal.
Let’s get to know some of them!
1. Educational video content
People on Facebook tend to watch videos for entertainment, motivation, and learning how to do something new or solve a problem they have. You can (and should) leverage those tendencies by creating How-tos and similar educational videos around what your audience cares about (and you can help with).
Remember, with educational Facebook videos, you aren’t just delivering value to your viewers up front (which is already a score point in your favor). You are also making it more likely that they’ll return to you for more.
Remember that while providing accurate and up-to-date information is vital with this type of content, you will waste your time if you aren’t tackling topics truly relevant to the people you want to engage. Here, relevant information that delivers value is everything.
2. Brand and culture videos
By far, one of the best ways to get people on Facebook to get to know you and what you do are culture videos — also called brand videos — which are meant to showcase you and how you do things!
If you are a content creator, this might be a peek behind the curtain showing how you do your creative work. If you are a company, this might be videos showcasing how a day in the office goes.
These videos aim to show your audience what makes you, your process, or your organization unique and give them a reason to care about what you have to offer. Facebook users love those kinds of takes, so these videos tend to perform really well, and you don’t have to for overly long or complex videos!
For example, we’ve been having a lot of fun sharing snippets of some of the Explainer Videos from Yum Yum Videos and work-in-progress shorts on the platform.
3. Live streaming videos
When you think of Facebook videos, live streaming is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. But maybe they should!
Live videos are one of the most effective formats on Facebook to get people’s attention. In fact, live videos have been known to drive up to three times as much engagement as traditional video content.
Live videos can be amazing tools to nurture closer relationships with your audience and improve your overall platform presence. They can be extremely flexible in regard to topics and format. Product presentations, seminars, and Q&As are ideal for streaming life. You can also invite your audience to a meeting to discuss something that piques their interest, such as recent or upcoming events in your niche.
4. Square and vertical videos
Not so much about content but about formatting, this category of Facebook videos refers to content specifically optimized to be easily consumed on portable devices, like phones or tablets.
Why would this be such an important thing? Well, it might not be if it wasn’t for the fact that 98.5% of Facebook users access the platform via mobile devices, and 81% of those do so via their phones.
With 78% more real estate in the News Feed on mobile than on desktop, square and vertical videos are an excellent way to cater to your overwhelmingly mobile-first audience and make your content stand out from the crowd. Moreover, larger previews for vertical videos now appear in Facebook’s News Feed on mobile, automatically improving your content’s potential reach.
5. Optimizing Your Facebook Videos for Performance: The Three Keys
Now that we know a few types of videos that mesh well with what most Facebook users look for on the platform, we need to explore three elements you should always tweak when working on your Facebook videos: audio setup, duration, and optimized copy.
6. Silent-play Ready Videos
This is the default setup for Facebook videos for a reason.
Given that most users will watch your digital content on the go (on mobile phones or tablets), you need to set your videos to provide the best possible user experience. Most people dislike scrolling through their feeds and having random videos suddenly start auto-playing out loud, and the last thing you want is to have your content be the annoying outlier.
Now, since you will always set your Facebook videos so that your users have to tap to enable audio, you also need to ensure your videos can be (for the most part) consumed even during silent play.
Captioning your videos is ideal — for accessibility as much as for silent-play readiness — but providing clear titles and descriptions (more on this in a bit) and using graphics and text overlays in your content can make the silent-play experience viable to most users.
7. Leverage Your Video Copy
Your Facebook videos should stand on their own and deliver quality content that your audience enjoys watching and benefit from. However, when working on a Facebook video content strategy, your job doesn’t end when you finish your video!
A creative or intriguing title will tip the scale for many viewers deciding whether to watch (or keep watching) one of our videos. Your video’s description can be a goldmine of user engagement, where you direct people to watch more of your content or visit the rest of your online presence.
When uploading your videos to Facebook, take some time to develop a catchy title, some good keywords, and a description that quickly summarizes your content and immediately does something to invite viewers to keep engaging with you. That way, every video you upload on the platform will benefit your strategy on multiple fronts.
8. Average Video Duration
By and large, how long your video lasts depends largely on the message you want to communicate. But, generally speaking, shorter videos will most likely outperform long ones on Facebook.
Social media users tend to be rather impatient and prefer quick content — understandable when you consider that most of them are on the go and browsing Facebook for short periods of time.
So, even though your videos can go up to 240 minutes on the platform, audience retention rates should always be a concern when you work on your videos. For the most part, your video content strategy on Facebook should favor short and sweet videos over longer experiences.
Is there a magic number? Well, yes and no.
A popular rule of thumb is that, whenever possible, you want to keep your Facebook videos under the two-minute mark because attention spans and viewership drop dramatically after that first mark. However, that’s hardly the case for all types of videos in all formats!
So, a better rule of thumb is to always strive to make your videos as short as possible without sacrificing the integrity of your message. That way, you are giving your content better chances of engaging your audience effectively.
9. Telling Stories with Facebook Stories Videos: And Why You Can’t Afford Not To!
Facebook story videos have seen a tremendous surge in engagement since the format’s inception a few years back, so an article about Facebook videos wouldn’t be complete without them.
These dynamic, eye-catching, short videos have proven to be the perfect way to quickly captivate Facebook users and get them hooked on the content and message you want to convey, and a lot of their appeal comes from their ephemeral nature.
Stories are brief user-generated photo and video clips that can be accessed for a limited time only, given that they vanish after a day.
This unique format not only gives you a low-pressure space to post short, regular content but also a place to try out new things and gauge your audience’s response in a lower-stakes scenario.
You can use Facebook stories as part of your overall Facebook content strategy to create short-live narratives around your audience’s current topic of interest, to generate anticipation before bigger releases, or just as a way to keep popping up in your followers’ timelines regularly.
Just don’t make the mistake of thinking of Facebook Stories as a low-quality, low-effort testbed! Yes, users tend to be much less demanding of the quality of the short stories they consume, but all the content you upload to the platform represents your brand in one way or another.
Start uploading senseless, pointless, or boring stories, and you’ll quickly tell a lot of people that there’s no further reason to check out the rest of your content.
10. Story Videos Vs. Timeline Videos — The Difference
As important as they are, something else you want to avoid with Stories is treating them like Timeline Videos (or vice versa), as the two serve distinct purposes.
Timeline videos are the regular posts you post on the main page of your Facebook profile. The posts are chronologically listed and comprise everything between status updates, photos, videos, and links.
These videos are more suited towards one-time viewers and are generally longer than story videos. For example, educational videos tend to perform best as Timeline videos. Timeline videos also remain permanently in your profile and can be quickly accessed whenever needed.
Timeline videos lack the ephemeral content nature of Stories and remain stationary regardless of duration when people watch them — unlike stories, which move along quickly, with each post lasting about 5 seconds.
Story videos can be much more effective than timeline videos in reaching more potential viewers and boosting your overall engagement. They are entertaining yet don’t have to take up much time, as stories typically are made of multiple posts that each appear briefly.
So, while but have an important place in your Facebook video strategy, make sure you give both their proper due and use them accordingly.
Parting Words
What began as a university-student-focused social platform has become one of the world’s biggest video streaming services. But even though the demand for Facebook videos is undeniably high, learning to focus on the type of video content that performs best on the platform is crucial to have the time and effort you spend making these videos pay off in the end!
Hopefully, after reading this, you should be well on your way to creating appealing and attention-grabbing videos that will captivate your viewers on both Timeline and Story formats and start uploading content that brings you closer to the people you are reaching out to 😉