Congratulations on having a video you love! The next step is placing that video all over the World Wide Web so that anyone interested in the subject of your video can find it, view it and take action. Different social media platforms are best for targeting different demographics. Understand which platforms are best for your goals.
In this blog, we’ll breakdown the best ways to reformat and post your videos on some popular social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and Twitter! Two quick notes…
- Videos posted to social media should include subtitles or closed captioning, as many viewers will be perusing social media sites on their phones with their sound off. Learn more about video accessibility here.
- This blog is about directly uploading your videos to these platforms, not simply pasting a Youtube or Vimeo link. While posting a link is convenient, it doesn’t perform as well as directly uploading your video onto the social media platform.
Despite having to continuously compete with a growing list of competitors and an aging audience, Facebook is still the king in the world of social media and is the #1 platform for adults. In fact…
- 86% of the world’s 18-29-year-olds use Facebook
- 77% of the world’s 30-49-year-olds use Facebook
- About half, 51%, of people ages 50-65 use Facebook
- And just over 1/3, 34%, of folks 65+ use Facebook
More women use Facebook than men, splitting its viewership 54% to 46% respectively. A staggering 96% of users of Facebook utilize their mobile phones when perusing it.
The technical stuff
- The optimal size for a video on Facebook is at least 1280 pixels for the larger side (i.e. 1280 x 720 for landscape or 720 x 1280 for a portrait view).
- Facebook accepts nearly all kinds of video and audio formats.
- Videos on Facebook can be up to 240 minutes (2 hours) long! Unless you’re uploading a feature film, we wouldn’t recommend that. For the best organic performance, videos on Facebook should be at least 3 minutes in length.
Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo and video sharing app, continues to grow its users, with 1 billion people using Instagram every month. Instagram, however, hardly garners any attention from senior citizens, only being utilized by 8% of the population over 65. It’s almost split evenly down the middle between female users, 51% and male users, 49% and is more actively perused by folks than Facebook is, averaging 53 minutes per day to Facebook’s 35 minutes.
The technical stuff
- Optimal sizes for Instagram videos are 600 x 600 (square), 600 x 315 (landscape), 600 x 750 (portrait), 600 x 700 (Carousel video dimensions). When uploading a larger video, it will automatically crop it and cut off some of the video to do so. If you don’t want that to happen, click the circle with two triangles in the lower left-hand corner to “letterbox” your video, so the whole thing (or more of it) fits.
- Instagram recommends using MP4 or MOV format.
- Videos on Instagram are preferably 60 seconds or less. However, you can upload a longer video via IGTV. Viewers will be able to watch the first minute of your video and then select IGTV to watch the rest.
This professional networking site is the top social media platform for B2B social media marketing. Its demographics skew slightly older, with 30-49 year-olds making up the largest group of its users. Unlike many of the other social media platforms, there are more male users, 57% than female 43% on LinkedIn.
The technical stuff
- The minimum size for a video on LinkedIn is 256 x 144 and the maximum is 4096 x 2304 pixels.
- Most file formats for video and audio are accepted for uploading to LinkedIn.
- Videos on LinkedIn can be a maximum of 10 minutes in length.
Though it has 1/3 of the users of Instagram, Twitter can still be a very powerful tool to provide bite-sized information. Twitter makes it possible for users to reach practically any person or business simply by tagging them in a Tweet, which is where its value lies.
The technical stuff
- The maximum size of a video on Twitter can be 720 x 720 (square), 1280 x 720 (landscape), 720 x 1280 (portrait) depending on your video composition.
- Your movie file must be an MP4 or MOV file to upload to Twitter.
- Videos on Twitter can be a maximum of 140 seconds (2:20) and a minimum of 0.5 seconds (if you want to annoy viewers).
Tik Tok
Tik Tok is the new kid on the block and is growing in popularity quickly! This isn’t your parent’s social media, with a majority of users under 30. Unlike other social media, where video is a supplemental tool, on Tik Tok video is the primary vehicle for all messages. Some brands have jumped on board and are seeing the benefits of utilizing this platform.
Dimensions
- Videos in Tik Tok are all in portrait landscape (1080 x 1920 or 720 x 1280).
- Tik Tok prefers MOV and MP4 files but can also support AVI and GIFs.
- Videos on TikTok perform best between 9 and 15 seconds in length, but you can string together several videos to make a clip up to 60 seconds in length if you’d like.
Phew! There you have it. A quick trip through the most utilized social media platforms for video. We hope this information has helped you better understand where and how to post your videos to reach your target audience. If you have further questions or would like assistance with executing and managing these posts, give us a shout! Thanks.