We’ve spoken before about the power of video on social media.

If you’re using it within your business, whether it’s for advertising or pushing out some useful and interesting content, then our tip this week is to make sure that the way you shoot your videos is done in the most user-friendly way.

Because if the video’s not easy to watch – guess what?...

It won’t be watched.

More than 80% of all social media video viewers (SmartInsights.com)  (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok…) browse these platforms on their phones. Because of this, vertical video is now the standard.

If you’re trying to get your videos in front of as many eyes as possible you should tailor your content to be mobile-friendly.

Before smartphones, widescreen videos were always the way to go.

Widescreen videos with a 16:9 aspect ratio took up the largest amount of space on computers, TV’s and laptops but this has all changed with our new mobile culture.

As we all know, smartphones have vertical dimensions, with a 9:16 ratio and because of that, we need to adapt our videos to take up the most amount of space on the screen possible.

Vertical video content takes up 78% more real estate on someone’s phone than a widescreen video does and that makes a massive difference when it comes to capturing someone’s attention vs losing them. 

Since Snapchat launched in 2011, and the massive surge in TikTok users in recent years, all the big social media platforms have embraced vertical content and adapted their platforms to favour it. 

It’s all because of how much easier it is to watch, as people just can’t be bothered to turn the screen to watch a landscape video.

A study by Animoto showed 187% more people watched at least half of a video on social media when shot in portrait instead of landscape.

So the main lesson for this week’s tip is whether you’re doing a reel for Instagram, a post or ad on Facebook, or even a TikTok, make sure the video is shot in portrait as it’ll massively increase the chances of it being watched.

The added benefit of doing posts and reels that get seen on Instagram, is that the algorithms will then show other content of yours to the same people on Facebook (as Instagram is owned by Facebook).

So give it a go and see what happens.

And if you’d like some ideas on the sort of content to post or advertise then give us a call.