Did you know that by 2020, 75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video? And that over the course of last year, time spent watching video on Instagram increased by 80% and the use of Facebook Live has quadrupled?

The message is clear! Video is by far the best way to target your audience. But why is this so? Because videos can be short, easily viewed at anytime, anywhere and convey tons of information with ease. Plus, videos are fun, stimulating and easier to digest than other methods of communication and arguably have the greatest ability to create an immediate impact. Speaking of anytime, anywhere, a report released by Facebook in the US shows the following video consumption patterns for Mobile Video and Instagram Mobile Video at different locations.

Online videos also help to create a sense of community and belonging with 41% of Facebook mobile users saying that online videos helped them feel more connected to friends and family, while 39% said that the videos they consumed gave them something to talk about with others. Research also indicates that social video has greater emotional attraction that traditional television, likely due to the perception of increased social interaction around such content. In fact, when asked if they were inspired after watching video content on TV and Instagram, 44% of Instagram users said yes, while only 18% of traditional TV viewers felt that they had been inspired.

Social media provides a wide variety of types, settings and durations for video content starting with the shortest of GIFs, slightly longer Ads in Instagram Stories and Facebook Live all the way to entire audience networks. So, whether marketers and content creators are going for shorter attention spans and simple messages or longer attention spans and more complex messages, there’s space for all types of content.

When creating great videos for social media there are a few tricks to keep in mind. The main goal of a social video should be to grab attention quickly. To do this, it’s essential to capture the viewer’s attention immediately and deliver your message in 15s or less. The next consideration is audio, 85% of Facebook videos are watched with sound off, and so it’s important to create your video to look great without sound, using subtitles if necessary. Framing is also important, frame your visual story and build vertically giving your audience something to talk about and establishing relevance for your product or cause.

Video customization in regard to the platform is also an important factor. For example, most of Facebook’s users are consuming via mobile so posting a 16:9 video, while great on the desktop, may not be so great on mobile. But a square video will look great on mobile and will, therefore, be more likely to be watched. Instagram video on the other hand allows 3 to 60 second long videos at 1080p and 30fps but the file size is capped at 15mb and YouTube prefers 16:9 video with few time and size limitations. So, knowing your platform well is a key requirement to be able to aptly customize videos.

These tables illustrate some of the general specifications of the major social platforms to provide a clear idea of what the specifications of your video should be, depending on the platform(s) that you will use.

The length of your video will also affect its success because the longer your ad or content is the smaller your view completion rate will be. A 20 second ad has a 4% higher completion rate than a 30 second one and a 15 second ad has a 3% higher completion rate than a 20 second one. Ads and videos that are 0 – 15 seconds long enjoy an 80% completion rate on Facebook, so it will serve marketers well to keep ads and videos short and to the point.

Video content marketing can also take many forms and need not be overtly promotional in nature. There are five basic types of video content marketing which are demonstration videos, user generated content, animation videos, product reviews and live streams. So there’s plenty of room to be creative and even involve your fans.

While the potency of video content marketing is clear and while it’s probably the best tool marketers have at the moment to reach out to their audiences, there is no ‘fit-all’ solution. Customization is important, content is important and ultimately the ideal placement of your ad or video as per your use case is heavily dependent on the behaviour of your target audience as well as your advertising strategy and end-goals.