It’s no secret that mobile devices have taken over the world. Your own day-to-day experiences should be enough to prove this point to you, but if that doesn’t hammer it home every possible metric in the world tracking this data will.
Despite the knowledge that mobile is king, many marketers are still not thinking about a clear strategy in regards to video for mobile viewers. The shift away from desktops toward mobile devices is only going to accelerate in years to come. With that in mind, it’s more important than ever to think about creating video for mobile above all else.
Mobile is King
To ensure that it’s clear why you need a strategy to optimize your video for mobile, it’s important to set the stage first. According to ComScore’s 2016 Report, mobile now accounts for 65% of all digital media usage. Put another way, 2 out of every 3 minutes of digital media consumption now take place on mobile devices. Desktops simply are not the way the majority of people consume digital media anymore.
That’s not to say that desktop is irrelevant. In the same survey, 76% of all US Adults say that they are multi-platform users, meaning they use both mobile devices and desktops. However, with an eye to the future, it’s important to note that among 18-34 year olds, a whopping 20% surveyed say that they’re mobile-only users.
As smartphone proliferation continues on a broad scale, and mobile natives grow up and become adults, these numbers are only going to tilt more dramatically in favor of mobile as the primary driver of digital media consumption.
Mobile vs. Social
The other all-important element to consider in this interplay is social media. While social certainly isn’t exclusive to mobile, all of the prominent social networking platforms are designed to be mobile first. We talk a lot about Facebook here as a distribution channel, and it’s important to remember the numbers. Facebook currently boasts 1.86 billion monthly active users. They also have an incredible 1.74 billion mobile monthly active users.
As you think about creating content for Facebook, you need to keep that staggering second number in mind. In all likelihood, if you’re creating content for social media, it will be viewed on a mobile device.
Video For Mobile – Where to Start
There are plenty of big brands focusing on creating video for mobile users. More specifically, they’re creating video for distracted mobile viewers. The Facebook page for NowThis has more than 10 million likes, and has mastered the art of the social video for mobile users.
They follow a few basic tenets that any marketer with any size following can apply:
- The use of big, bold captions ensures that users with the sound off can still understand the video
- The video is one-minute long – just long enough to be interesting, but plenty short enough to not be daunting to a viewer
- The replay of the most compelling visual moments – in this case a humorous one – to keep the audience engaged
- The use of relevant music for the tone and situation of the video
- The video is vertical, meaning it will take up more of the screen on a mobile device.
By no means do you have to follow all of these points, but it certainly gives you a good place to start from when considering what works for mobile viewers.
What Should You Do Today?
If you’re interested in this topic, it means you’re already ahead of the game in that video is part of your marketing toolkit. But you can still go a step further and make sure that you’re thinking about how your videos will work for mobile users.
Begin with some testing. Post some videos to your social accounts with some of the lessons learned above and compare them to your regular content. Hopefully, the results will speak for themselves, specifically around engagement.
If you need help getting started with video completely, or need some help brainstorming what type of content would be best for your marketing machine, just give us a call! We love kicking around ideas with companies on the cutting edge.
