Deconstructing the method of harvesting short video traffic on social platforms!

Report highlights

• Facebook videos have the highest average engagement of all native content.
• Currently, the optimal length for videos on Facebook is around two minutes.
• LADbible and UNILAD lead in video engagement on Facebook.
• Live video is a huge niche market.
• Compared to "angry", "love" is the most common reaction users give to the video.
• Twitter videos are shorter and easier to understand, with the average length of the top 100 popular videos being only 35 seconds.
• YouTube videos focus on film and television trailers and internet celebrity content, with occasional music-related content.

When it comes to Facebook traffic generation, which media outlet is the best?

From January 1 to April 30, 2019, aside from a dip in late March and a spike in mid-April, engagement with video on Facebook has plateaued, with interactions remaining around 250 million per week, the same as at the beginning of the year.

In terms of type, Photo is the type with the highest interaction volume on Facebook, reaching 6 billion times in four months; Link video is second, with 5 billion interactions; and Native Video ranks last.

However, it must be pointed out that the total number of native videos released is far lower than that of pictures and external link videos, so the above measurement criteria are slightly simple. When we shifted the metric to average engagement, native video jumped to the top with nearly 1,300 interactions.

Note: Native Video refers to video content that is directly posted on social networks and played on the platform, as opposed to external link videos. For example, on Facebook, a native video would be a video uploaded directly to Facebook, rather than a link shared from Youtube or Vimeo.

Viral videos still work

When looking at the accounts with the highest video engagement on Facebook, British media LADbible wins clearly. LADbible favors "viral videos", especially funny short videos related to cute babies and pets, which often gain huge traffic through viral spread on social media.

Note: A “viral video” is a video that spreads quickly by being shared online. Viral videos can be shared on social media sites, reposted on blogs, sent to emails, and garner millions of views. Most viral videos contain humorous content.

In addition to LADbible, media such as UNILAD, CBS New, and VT are also on the list. It is worth noting that although the low quality of "viral videos" is often criticized, data proves that media that are good at this can often attract traffic efficiently, as is the case with LADbible, UNILAD, VT and 9Gag, which are ranked at the top of the list.

Video traffic? Still metaphysics

When the report quantifies the proportion of video content in the total content and the contribution of video to the interaction volume, its role in traffic mining becomes clear.

The list includes media such as MetDannAnimals that rely almost entirely on video content, as well as media such as NTD Television, 9gag and 5-minute that take a neutral approach. As for the top players LADbible and UNILAD mentioned above, native videos account for nearly half of the content they publish.

Looking at the contribution rate of videos to interactions, MetDannAnimals' interactions are almost entirely driven by videos, while NTD Television and 9gag are less dependent on videos. It’s worth noting that although video accounts for less than half of the content published by LADbible and UNILAD, it generates nearly 80% of their interactions.

Users’ love and hate: interaction and attention are two different things

Page Likes, as one of the important indicators in Facebook, is closely related to the number of fans and has always attracted much attention. However, it turns out that there is no correlation between the amount of interaction under a video and the number of likes on the video poster's page.

For example, CBS News and MetDaanAnimals have relatively few fans, but have a fairly high level of interaction; while BuzzFeed Tasty has several times more fans than the former two, but its interaction volume is not as high as theirs.

Of course, likes and attention are not the only goals. Some media release videos to encourage comments, some hope to drive reposts, or for other purposes. Therefore, we separated comments and reposts into two separate indicators, hoping to gain some insights from them.

The report found that viral videos are the most effective way to drive forwarding, especially funny short videos. In addition, recipe videos can also significantly promote forwarding; and in terms of comments, the number of comments on the British talk podcast LBC is extremely high, perhaps because the content it publishes encourages viewers to express their opinions.

In addition, there are also regularities in the attitudes (anger, happiness, love) that users take towards different videos.

Comedy content is the most popular with users (Hahah), local news and music content perform well in attracting users' likes (Love), and political topics are the most infuriating (Angry). Every media on the "Angry List" has participated in political reporting to a greater or lesser extent.

What is the most popular video content on Facebook?

Among the top 10,000 most popular videos, there are 9,745 non-live native videos, accounting for 97%. Of course, live video has not completely disappeared, it is just not popular at this stage; and among the only 213 live videos, breaking news reports accounted for the majority. External link videos are even less popular, with only 42 of them.

An interesting phenomenon is that the most popular videos are often not posted by the media with the highest interaction volume. Among the top ten videos, only the tenth one was posted by LADbible, while the first two were from Blossom. Blossom won with “how-to” content, occupying four seats in the list, with a total interaction volume of 2.5 million.

Live streaming has huge potential

At present, the interaction volume of live videos is not high, but judging from the number of comments, the average number of comments for live videos is 2.5 times that of native videos, which is a niche market with huge potential.

From another perspective, NEWS WHIP compares users’ reactions to the video as a whole and to the live video, and it paints two completely different pictures. In all videos, users' interaction methods are like, share, like, comment, joy and others; if the live video is taken as a single subject, users' interaction methods become like, comment, like, share, sadness and others.

In other words, live streaming may be able to stimulate users' desire to express themselves, which may be a direction that can be explored.

What is the optimal length for a video?

What is the optimal length for a video?

132s.

NEWS WHIP collected the top 100 most popular videos since 2019, made a calculation, and found that their average duration was 132 seconds; at the same time, the sample was expanded to calculate the average duration of the top 10,000 videos, and the result was 116 seconds.

That said, keeping your videos to around two minutes is the best option.

Of course, if the video content is interesting enough or you have a very loyal audience, then there is no limit to the length of the video. The longest video among Facebook's top 10,000 trending videos so far is from WWE - a replay of a boxing match that lasted nearly 35 minutes and received more than 3.5 million views.

In addition to length, Emoji once again becomes the key to the success of a video . After all, even in a visual medium, descriptive language is still important. Good descriptive language is like the best soundtrack in a movie, affecting the way we feel a video, and many media use emojis to enhance descriptive language.

The report found that media outlets are particularly fond of including emojis in the captions and descriptions of viral videos, especially when the content is funny or cute. Of the top 100 most popular videos on Facebook, 58% used emoji as a description.

Love and hate on YouTube

In addition to Facebook, the report also studied short video strategies on YouTube and Twitter platforms.

Influencer videos remain the most popular type on YouTube, followed by movie and TV trailers and entertainment content. In addition, fashion and music are also traffic-level players on YouTube.

Perhaps because internet celebrities and entertainment stars have a dramatic physique, an interesting phenomenon has emerged: several videos appear on both the "most favorite YouTube videos" and "most hated YouTube videos" lists, including James Charles' No more Lies, TATI's Bye Sisters, and Ed Sheeran's I don't care. Of course, they are also among the most viewed videos.

Twitter is not the same as others

The video situation on Twitter is a little different than on several other platforms.

Due to the real-time nature of Twitter, the report only monitors data for one week (March 14 to March 21, 2019).

From the content point of view, Twitter short videos focus more on meme-content and "in-jokes" within the circle. There are usually no subtitles to indicate the content of the video. Even if there are subtitles or descriptions, they often focus more on the blogger himself rather than the video content.

For example, the video of the Korean pop group BTS received the most reposts last week. The video content was simple, with one of the members shouting "Let's go to concert" to the camera, and received nearly 500,000 reposts. This also proves once again that on Twitter, a solid fan base is crucial to the success of a video.

In terms of duration, the average duration of Twitter videos is much lower than that of other platforms, at only 35 seconds, which is one-fourth of the average duration of Facebook videos. The longest video in the top 300 on Twitter in the past week came from Billboard, a video celebrating the release of BTS's first album last year.

Facebook has a variety of ways to create short videos, YouTube is fond of internet celebrities, Twitter focuses on being short and concise... Each major social platform has its own focus on short videos, and they are determined to dig out the "hot gene" of social videos. The upcoming "traffic war" is bound to be more intense. Let us wait and see what traffic harvesting methods each company can dig up.

Related reading:

1. 8 tips for creating a popular account through short video operation!

2. How to attract new users and retain customers through short video operations?

Author: Tencent Media

Source : Quanmeipai