There are many ways to leverage the Facebook app to build and grow your community, and video is a powerful tool that can help you reach your goals.
Below, find 10 tactical best practices, based on feedback we received from our creator community, which can help you optimize video content, reach a wider audience and increase retention*.
Take your pre-existing long-form content and create a 3 min “Facebook cut.”
Leverage your existing library and cut longer videos down to 3 minutes. It’s a win-win: you get to maximize your assets and test out new formats that may pull in new viewers and increase retention (think recaps, highlight reel, “best of” and more).
Add a 15 second trailer to long-form videos.
The first few seconds of every video are critical. Think of your own content consumption habits: As you scroll, what grabs your attention? Visually appealing imagery, fast paced clips and a quick intro into what you are about to watch. To that end, try clipping a 15-second trailer to add to the beginning of your video to capture viewers and increase retention. Moreover, 15-second trailers have shown to drive better engagement than five second trailers.
Reframe your 16:9 videos into 4:5.
Frame your visual story and build for vertical format. People watch videos on mobile just inches from their face and often in vertical orientation, rather than turning their phone to landscape, which makes 4:5 the recommended aspect ratio for video on Facebook.
Pro tip: Smart Crop is a tool within Meta Creator Studio that will reframe and size the aspect ratios of your videos from 16:9 (horizontal) to either 1:1 (square) or 4:5 (vertical) for feed. It optimizes for the main subject in the content, keeping the main subjects centered and in-frame. We know it takes a lot of work to edit multiple sizing variations across platforms–with Smart Crop, you can automatically edit your video for the sizes you need.
Keep your descriptions succinct.
Keeping your video descriptions to one sentence can help increase your engagement, compared to longer descriptions of three sentences or more. People want to know what they’re getting into so be direct, explicit and descriptive.
A/B test your videos to learn what resonates.
Testing different versions of your videos can help you optimize performance, understand what kinds of content resonates with your audience and discover trends so you can make informed decisions about future posts.
Post Testing in Meta Creator Studio (under “Content Library”) lets you test up to four variants of a post to see which one your audience likes best. You can test different edits of a video, different descriptions, headlines and thumbnails–both pre-determined and manually-uploaded options.
During the test, the posts are circulated to a subset of your audience but are not posted to your Page. You choose how long you want the test to run for. When the test ends, the winning post is automatically published on your Page and distributed to your full audience. You also get to choose the metric that’ll determine the “winner” such as 1-minute views, comments, shares, reactions, people reached and link clicks. The “ Post Testing ” tab is your central hub for creating and managing tests, and reviewing insights.
Keep viewers coming back by letting them know when you’ll post next.
Get your fans used to your posting cadence by announcing your schedule and urging them to come back for your next video. This can increase return viewers and retention.
In the days leading up to your next scheduled video, use Stories to build anticipation, go live to talk about what viewers can expect, use a countdown and follow-up soon after your video is published with a Q&A, bloopers or behind-the-scenes tidbits to delight your audience.
Respond to comments.
When people comment on your posts, they hope that you will actually see it. When you respond to these comments, it helps remind your audience that you are really there which can incentivize more people to comment. More comments can lead to more distribution and an active, thriving community.
And while you’re at it, don’t stop at your own posts. Commenting on content from other accounts can lead to follower growth. Put simply, it helps get your name in front of more people.
Reshare your videos within two hours after publishing them.
Soon after you publish, reshare your video within two hours to both your timeline and your Stories. This distribution strategy can help increase both retention and views.
Don’t sleep on captions.
Not only do captions make your content more accessible, they can also grab the attention of people who watch video with sound turned off. Experiment with captions throughout your video to see if they drive retention. If you start your video off with a trailer, make sure there are subtitles then too.
Pro tip: While burned-in subtitles are recommended, Meta Creator Studio can help you generate auto-captions in a pinch. It automatically generates captions when you upload your video, though you can choose to turn them off for all your videos or for individual videos. You can also turn on a setting that will require your review of auto-generated captions before they publish.
Opt for more sophisticated call-to-action.
While it may be tempting to ask fans to Like, Comment and Share your videos, try instead to pose open-ended questions. You’ll learn more about your audience, including their likes and dislikes, when you ask them to open up. Similarly, you can join in and respond to keep conversations going in the comments.
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*Generally expected individual results will differ.
