It’s Sunday night, the week starts again tomorrow and the film you spent 30-minutes choosing on Netflix is dragging just like the reviews on Google suggested it would. You pick up your phone and instinctively open Facebook, then Twitter, then Instagram. Not much has changed… no one you know is skydiving at 8pm on their Sunday night. But something has changed. In fact, everything has changed. Video. Everywhere. Right now. Right there. Oh, and here!
It’s subtle but it’s integrated well and it’s so easy to watch. Didn’t know you had that obsession with wood turning/5 minute cooking hacks/antique restoration/pimple popping did you? Maybe that’s just mine but I am sure anyone can relate.
In writing this post I scrolled through 20 posts on 3 of the most used apps on the app store. Facebook showed 11 videos in 20 posts, including a custom post promoting click through to their relatively new ‘Reels and Short Videos’ section. Twitter showed 13 videos in 20 posts. Instagram showed me 9 videos in 20 posts, a custom suggestion to go and watch ‘Reels’ and 12413531 adverts to buy something … but that’s just Instagram, the photo sharing app…
The takeaway? Video is wearing the crown on social media platforms. But why… and why is that important?
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One of the largest drivers for change has been a response to consumer data, and, the rather large Chinese elephant in the room, TikTok. Much akin to every platform offering ‘stories’ in their app after Snapchat (the then most popular app of the time) integrated it into theirs, everyone is scrambling to keep up with TikTok.
According to Wallaroo, TikTok has grown to 1 billion active users a month, with an average user spending 95 minutes watching video content a day on the app - crazy considering the average video length on the app is 21 seconds. One case study of TikTok’s power right now was when Jennifer Lopez recently posted the same video on Twitter and TikTok. On Twitter she has 45 million followers, on TikTok just 5 million. However, the Twitter video got 2 millions views and the TikTok video got 71 million.
This sort of data is huge for an app that didn’t exist on most people’s radars until 3 years ago. It’s why Facebook, Instagram and YouTube all have ‘Shorts’ or ‘Reels’ functionality in their apps now… it’s all a battle to keep users on their apps - and the ammunition is video content.
So why is this important? Well, if you are planning content for a business online you can’t not be posting video content. In fact, according to Electriq, the social platform algorithm prioritises video content over static and text posts as it keeps users engaged with their platforms for longer. So whether you agree or disagree if that is right or not, there is no doubt, video is king.
