For many brands uploading videos to Facebook, increasing your videos watch time is one of the most important metrics to keep track of when it comes to measuring interest in your brand. Fortunately, Facebook seems to have figured out what gets more eyeballs on your video content by providing new audience demographics, in turn allowing publishers to analyze their “Audience and Engagement” cards and fine-tune their video content strategy overall. Of course, access to stellar insights is just one of the factors your brand can take into consideration when it comes to engaging your target audience with Facebook videos. There are a number of steps you can take to improve video engagement and increase your watch time.

Before I get into specific topics and techniques, I feel it is important to point out that these insights were written specifically for CTRLROOM, a collective of DJ’s, beat-makers and dance music influencers in Toronto. So, some of the most obvious ways to boost your video watch time have been left out of the list below; suggestions like encouraging video sharing, doing live videos, shooting video in HD and choosing the best times to upload video content are not discussed in this blog post at all as these were not relevant to CTRLROOM, given these strategies are already part of their Facebook video marketing efforts. That said, fine-tuning the way you approach Facebook videos will increase the number of views your content generates and also deliver longer viewing sessions, boosting your watch time ROI.

Here are 10 different ways you can increase the average watch time on your video content.

Upload Your Videos To Facebook

This might seem pretty obvious but, in an effort to save time for their social media teams, some brands feel they can create only one video and simply share a YouTube or Vimeo link with their audience via a Facebook post. Cross-posting videos might save you time, but it will certainly hurt your engagement and shares. In fact, a 2017 study discovered that videos uploaded to Facebook via the native uploader get 10 times more shares than videos uploaded to YouTube. What this statistic tells us is that your videos are far less likely to be shared or receive comments on Facebook, which is counter-productive to the goal of increasing your watch time. If you are not uploading your videos to Facebook natively, this will be the first step to take in order to boost your watch time ROI.

Embed Your Facebook Videos

If you want more people watching your videos, then consider putting them in other places viewers are likely to watch them. Embedding videos you have uploaded to Facebook on blog posts, your website and landing pages is another simple yet great way to get more video views and increase your total watch time by displaying your Facebook video to the visitors of your site who might not be followers of your brands Facebook page. The brilliance of Facebook’s video player allows users to share embedded videos without leaving your website, potentially increasing your overall watch time.

Hook the Viewer Within the First 3 Seconds

When a viewer starts watching your video, they’re wondering, “Is this video worth my time?” This makes it essential to create videos that address your viewers curiosity at the very beginning. This starts by customizing your brand’s video thumbnail, capturing your audience’s attention as they scroll their feeds. Consider an image with compelling camera angles, colours or text that touches the heart of your message and shows off relevant aspects of your video. The next thing to consider is the first 3 seconds of your video. After all, it is no secret that Facebook considers 3 seconds into a user watching a video as a view. It’s essential to make the beginning of your video captivating, thoughtful, and inspiring and above all eye-catching as some users may have turned their video sound setting off. A final word: videos showing people in the first moments are twice as likely to be viewed.

Add Overlay Text, Subtitles or Captions

Prior to Facebook making auto-play sound the default setting for video, 85 percent of Facebook videos were watched without sound. I have doubts this number has changed much considering 80% of Facebook users reacted negatively after sound for video ads was turned on specifically. When you are producing and uploading videos to Facebook, it is best to plan ahead and create content with silence in mind. Adding subtitles, captions or overlay text to your videos gets your message across to the viewer even though they haven’t heard anything. Using text, subtitles and captions optimize the user experience, making the viewer more likely to stick around and watch your video to the end and increases the likelihood of getting the video shared with others.

Optimize Your Copy

Whenever uploading videos to Facebook, pay attention to your audiences preference when writing your preview text, description and title of your videos. This might take some experimenting while figuring out what kind of text works best for your audience on Facebook, but as a general rule of thumb, keep your video titles brief, descriptive and searchable, your preview text should summarize the video topic, and your description should include some additional information or details about what they can expect to see in the video. While there is no cookie-cutter approach to the amount of information you enter in the video description, one can expect more click-throughs with shorter copy, and higher engagement rates with longer copy.

Add Calls-to-Action

Every single video upload should have a strong call-to-action, telling the viewer what to do next. This can be placed in the video itself or as mentioned above, in the video description. One call-to-action I find extremely useful and often necessary is asking the viewer to follow your Facebook brand page. More often than not, video viewers aren’t page followers, so a great way to get more people following and engaging with your brand is to ask them to visit your brands Facebook page. Your video could be reaching an audience that is not following your page so always ask people to follow your page. While most content producers place the call to action near the end of a video, according to research by Wistia, mid-roll calls-to-action have the highest average conversion rates. While the audience can vary, generating a reaction from your video viewers can lead to higher watch-times and overall engagement.

Use a Featured Video and a Cover Video

One of Facebook’s great tools allows page admins to specify a featured video. Featured videos display at the very top in the videos section and span the width of the menu. They also auto-play which means any Facebook users that do click on the videos tab will see it, increasing your views and overall watch-time on this content. In addition to featured videos, some brands can replace their Facebook page cover image with a video. If you happen to be one of those brands, here is another opportunity to grow your watch time as visiting users will see the video play as they arrive on your Facebook page. Cover and featured videos can keep users on your page longer, leading to both a growth in watch-time and possibly engagement.

Create Playlists

Whenever you upload videos to Facebook, these are saved under the videos tab for users to access later. If you upload videos regularly or have been uploading videos for a long time, the videos section can become very cumbersome. This can potentially decrease an interest in your content as users find it difficult to find what they are looking for. Playlists help you curate several videos together in one place making the video discovery process much easier for your audience. Additionally, playlists encourage your viewers to watch a set, rather than just a single video, increasing the likelihood of them sticking around to watch more of your content. Obviously, you will want to curate content that fits together naturally but organizing your videos section in playlists will only help improve your watch time overall.

Make Your Videos Square

You are spending a lot of resources on stellar video production so you are probably ready to ask why should you be making videos in a 1:1 ratio? According to research by Buffer, square video outperformed landscape video in views, engagement and completion ratios. The need for square videos is simple: it is linked to the shift of user behaviour from desktop to mobile. Square videos are better suited to the mobile format as they occupy up to 78% more space than landscape videos on mobile devices. This improvement in video viewing experience means more users are likely to interact with this content. Regardless of the video topic, the square format as opposed to the landscape format has a monumental impact on the number of views, comments and shares your Facebook videos can achieve. Consider creating square and landscape videos for a little while and monitor each format’s performance.

Establish The Best Video Duration

Finally, we come to the final way for improving the watch-time on your Facebook videos. That is to determine what is the best video duration. Before coming to any conclusions about short or long videos, consider reviewing your Audience and Engagement card. This report provides every detail necessary when trying to determine what the best video length is for your audience. Here, you can learn about average view duration, how many users viewed the entire video but also how many users viewed your videos to specific percentage markers, such as 25%, 50% or 75%. Using this behavioural data is essential to planning your Facebook video strategy going forward in order to produce videos that lead to higher watch-times and engagement rates. More so, if you find that a majority of your users only watch about a third of the length of your videos, this will help you better position any in-video calls-to-action or key brand messages in your videos moving forward.

Final Thoughts

Videos are hard enough to produce so don’t let poor optimization sabotage you. While this list, unfortunately, creates more work for you in the near-term, in the long run, following these techniques and suggestions takes full advantage of what Facebook’s video platform has to offer by providing your audience with quality and well-optimized video content.

Since we have been talking a lot about Facebook don’t forget to stop by RBL Communications page and say hello.