You may think that video is video no matter what social network you use it on. But it isn’t. The social networks all have slightly different ways that they handle video. What information we can access about our video’s success of lack of is different across networks too. The different social networks even have different technical rules for video. Today I want to take a look at Twitter. I want to examine the technical aspects of video on Twitter but also how video propagates. We will look at how we can use video effectively and what information we can access to empower us as video marketers.
[bctt tweet=”I want to look at how we can use video effectively and what information we can access to empower us” username=”yellbusiness”]
How Does Video Work On Twitter?
As with all social media video can either be displayed on Twitter as a link to a host site or it can be uploaded natively. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of these choices later. The current size limits allow a video up to two minutes and twenty seconds in length with a maximum file size of 512Mb. Your video link (even if it links to another site and is none Twitter native) does NOT count towards the 140 Character limit for a tweet. That’s useful as it allows you to more fully engage with people rather than just posting a link.
Another useful feature for native Twitter video is that you can set the autoplay features. I’ve always maintained that autoplay of video is a good thing unless you choose to autoplay with audio. Twitter allows you to make the choice.
Video Propagation On Twitter
As with all tweets your video will rely on people watching and retweeting. This will come down to how engaging your video is and how much people want to share it. We find ourselves back at the basics of marketing videos. If we know our customers we can design videos they will find engaging with our film makers. There are some tips that Twitter themselves have let slip when discussing the effectiveness of video. It seems that video that is native to Twitter is better than a tweeted link. Twitter claimed back in 2015 that a native video is retweeted 2.8 times more and favourited 1.9 times more and replied to 2.5 times more often than a shared link. How reliable is that data? You may think this is Twitter trying to encourage native video uploading but the data was probably pretty solid.
Using Video Effectively On Twitter
Twitter is a very fast moving network. We need to appreciate that and key into the feel of the network to be effective. So my first tip to be effective when using video on Twitter is to link into trending topics. If you are an accountant then the Oscars Mix up was a perfect time to upload a short video about how accurate you are. In a similar vein if you are having a live event then make a video and upload it then back that up with live tweets from your event.
If you get replies to your video make sure and engage with those customers. Use this engagement to build your reputation. It will encourage more people to watch your video. The flip side of this is that you can use video to reply to those who tweet your business. This can be especially effective if you are replying to public complaints. A video of you personally dealing with a complaint shows people that you care and that you take customer service seriously.
How Can Twitter Empower Us?
Twitter has an excellent dashboard that gives information about the engagement created by tweets. It can help you ascertain how many people were engaged whether they felt strongly enough to retweet and tell you about the people who did engage. Who are they? What demographic groups do they fill? But this is where I want to hark back to what I said above the pros and cons of using video natively. When measuring the effectiveness of our marketing videos we need good information about who engages, who shares, who goes on to make contact with us. To get this information we need access to good analytics.
If we keep our video hosted on a single site then all of the analytical data we need will be available there. If, however we upload our video to many sites using their native video systems we then have to retrieve and collate our data from all of those sites.
For me personally I like the analytics available from YouTube but that doesn’t mean I don’t also upload natively to other networks. You have to decide how you want to balance the time you spend measuring the success of your marketing versus the ease with which it reaches potential customers. Leading on from this debate, in my next article I’ll be looking closely at YouTube analytics and just what you can learn from them.
