3. Engagement
Engagement rate is how much of your video content people watched. In general, engagement is indicative of your content’s quality, relevance, and effectiveness, expressed in session or watch time:
- Average view duration – Facebook’s page insights has the Minutes Viewed and Views and 10-Second Views metrics to learn the audience’s preferred format and get unique insights on their viewing behaviour. The questions marketers should ask at this point are where are viewers dropping off and why are they not watching all the way through? Which parts of the video did they like and why?
- Average completion – If people watch the video all the way through, then it’s the best indication that the video was done right. If they press replay, then all the better! Facebook prioritises videos with high completion rates in their news feed.
Why does engagement matter? Engagement is probably the most important metric that should be monitored in every funnel. If a video has a high-engagement rate, it tells you where to focus your efforts to get leads, it signals the publishers to give you more exposure, and it guides advertisers to invest in you, and so on.
How to increase engagement? Video length matters. According to Wistia, it’s the 30-seconds to 2-minute long videos that get tons of engagement and that there’s a significant drop-off between the 2 and 3-minute mark. Does this say never make a long video? Not really, as Facebook Watch pages can attest to. Videos in Watch run for 4 to 20 minutes, much like a TV episode, but people go there knowing that they’ll watch longer than they do in their Feed.
Improving engagement is a tricky thing, so try experimenting and testing. Your data will guide you as to which works and which doesn’t. But for best practices:
- Keep your videos short and creative but clear.
- Put emphasis on quality and context. Sure, lively videos get a lot of engagement, but if it’s talking about sensitive issues like the holocaust, for example, the mood can’t be festive.
- Make sure your communication is targeted and on-point. That you’re talking to the right set of people at the correct point in their customer journey. That the headline, description, thumbnail, and message are aligned. If those are about laser beams, for example, make sure the content fulfils the expectations otherwise, your viewers will feel deceived and stop watching.
- Optimise for mobile as 98% or almost all millennials watch on their phones.