This is an excerpt from the latest Storykit Talks. Want to see the whole thing? Check out, or listen to all of our latest Talks, here!
How long should my video be?
As long as it needs to be. And no longer. Facebook’s own data agrees with us here: there’s no perfect length, just make your story compelling. Focus on the story rather than the length, and you’ll increase your chances of being viewed. “But that answer doesn't really help because how can you know if you have my viewer's attention?” asks Jonna. Of course, it's always nice to have some guidelines. We often use 10-15 seconds for our bottom-of-funnel ads, and 40-60 seconds for our top-of-funnel storytelling, such as our thought leadership, how-tos, and company news. Experiment with different formats and try to work out what works best for your audience.
What size should my video be?
When it comes to social media video sizes, the size of the video depends on the platform you're posting on. Typically, if you post on LinkedIn you should go with 1:1 and 4:5. For Facebook aim for 1:1 or 4:5. For Youtube, go with 16:9. And finally, for TikTok, 9:16 is your go to.
What narrative formats work best?
We’re not talking 16:9 here – how can you frame your story in a way that stops the scroll and gets viewers hooked on what you’re about to say? Put yourself in their shoes, think about what their needs are, and work from there. Once you know what your audience wants, create formats or templates for your videos – that way, you can optimize for performance and save time, too, telling stories again and again, without starting from scratch.
Trailers for articles
Using videos as trailers for articles can tell a whole story without telling the whole story, to inspire your audience to want to read more. Create teases of the articles with a clear and direct angle, and you’ll get more clicks.
Listicles
It’s an oldie but a goldie – and it works well, as your audience knows how much of their time you’ll take upfront (known as a cognitive placeholder). The content itself doesn’t have to feel samey – it can be as lighthearted or serious as you like, from sharing how-to guides to sharing the funniest customer reviews.
Telling employee stories
If you want to feature employees who are camera-shy, you can do this with Storykit: use images and slides to tell their story in an engaging way, without needing much video at all. That’s the power of templates.
Events
Rather than pushing webinars with a simple static, try using video templates and narrative arcs that you know work to compel your audience to truly want to attend. Always provide value: never take your audience’s attention for granted.
How do I go viral?
For most companies, viral successes are fun if they happen. But as Jonna says, “As a B2B company, it's not what we strive to do every day. We need to get so much information and education out, and if we want all of those things to become viral successes, we will be so disappointed because it's not going to happen!”.
“If you start with the wrong goal, you’ll produce the wrong content” says Jonna. So focus on the impact of your content: do you want to increase sign-ups, web traffic or educate about a specific topic or feature?
Virality can be great for increasing your reach. So keep your tone on brand and get the timing right – trying and failing is better than not trying at all, and you’ll be reinforcing your stance as a relatable innovator in your niche.
How should I measure my videos’ success?
How do you know that your video is a good one? Tie it back to the goals of your content. For example, if you want webinar signups, you might not even care if viewers watched the whole video: it’s not the point of the content.
The golden rule is to usually measure retention: how many people are still there when the video ends? Facebook shows you this, and it’s a harsh truth you should be paying attention to.
Says Jonna, “One of the mistakes that we often see people make is creating a video to do something, and then worrying about the number of likes. We all like the hearts and the smileys and the laughs. But if that's not the goal, maybe you shouldn't care that much, because you’ll start optimizing your video for the wrong thing”.
What we see is that when we share something on LinkedIn, we see that people reached out to us on the back of the content. So you can also look to the qualitative signals, especially for podcasts, but also for videos. You need to dig a bit deeper than the vanity metrics.
Of course you need the clickthrough and the retention. But also are we seeing the right signals from people who are actually consuming our content and are those the right people? Well, that's a sign that you’re doing something right.
Got a question for Storykit on your video content? Drop us an email and we might feature it in a future episode of Storykit Talks!
