Contents (tl;dr)
Keep it short < you are here
2. Keep it short
Don’t waste your audience’s time. They will appreciate it if you’re quick and efficient.
No one has time to read blocks of text
You need to keep your content short because:
The shorter you keep you content, the higher the chance it’ll be noticed, skimmed, and actually understood.
Or, to cut a long story short:
Shorter content cuts through.
Hashtags speak (almost) a thousand words
Use hashtags to reduce the amount of text you use.
Here’s a LinkedIn post from Airservices Australia:
We think Air Traffic Controllers have the best job in the world, but don’t take our word for it! We asked some of our staff “What aspect of your role do you enjoy the most?” and this is what they had to say...
#CivilAir #IDATC #AirservicesAustralia #AirTrafficControl #NowRecruiting #aviation #AvGeek
<video in which their air traffic controllers tell us what they love about their jobs>
And here’s how I would’ve rewritten it:
What do we love about OUR jobs, you ask?
#AirTrafficController #BestJobInTheWorld #NowRecruiting #IDATC #aviation #AvGeek
<video in which their air traffic controllers tell us what they love about their jobs>
I got rid of the first sentence (it was small talk) and I front-loaded the post with the most important point (what people like about their jobs). The rest of those two sentences I replaced with two hashtags: #AirTrafficController and #BestJobInTheWorld.
Get to the point or people will go away
People online are like sharks: they have to keep moving or they die. [1]
First sentence isn’t interesting? Skip.
Headings don’t make sense? Skip.
Big blocks of text? Skip.
Have to expand the Instagram post text to figure out what this photo of people standing in a line is about? Skip.
Can’t tell in 3 seconds what the video is going to be about? Skip.
Need to raise my phone’s volume to watch a video because there are no captions? Skip.
Make your point in under 30 seconds
Getting to your point quickly is particularly important with videos.
Over 2018 and 2019 we had posted several videos on our Facebook page. When I looked carefully at the stats on these videos, the results were confronting:
Only 29% of people who saw a post with a video in it actually watched the video itself
Only 6% of those viewers watch beyond 30 seconds of the video
Unfortunately, this is typical of videos posted by businesses on social media. The lessons we learned from these stats were:
Really give people a reason to engage with your content (ie watch the video)
Don’t expect people to watch more than 30 seconds of most of your videos
What we did next was create several new videos of different lengths and on different topics. We then posted these as paid posts on Facebook (ie as Facebook ads). With paid posts you get detailed stats on how your videos performed.
Here’s what the stats on those videos said:
Our analysis told us:
Most of our videos (the grey lines in the chart above) didn’t perform well. At most 15% of people watched for more than 3 seconds – which is about the time it takes to scroll to the next post in your feed.
A bunch of videos did perform significantly better (the three coloured lines in the chart above). These were shorter; covered more interesting topics; and, importantly, had very striking visuals in the first three seconds.
The lessons we learned:
Start your videos strongly (striking visuals, arresting music)
Say something engaging incredibly quickly, otherwise people will stop watching
Get to your point in less than 30 seconds; ideally in less than 15 seconds
Do you watch movie trailers online? Have you noticed how trailers now begin with what I call a ‘3-second pre-trailer trailer’? That’s the single, dramatic flash – both visual and auditory – that you see before the actual trailer starts. This is to catch people’s interest in the three seconds it takes to scroll by a post on your social media feed.
If movie studios are doing this with their videos, you should take a page out of their book and do the same: make the initial three seconds of your videos incredibly eye catching. Because, if you don’t, people will scroll on by.
(We’re now even better at videos at my workplace, by the way: 90-95% of viewers watch till the end of our top performing videos.)
Keep it short: recap
Let’s recap how you can save your audience’s time:
Keep your content incredibly short: no one has time to read blocks of text
Use hashtags to summarise your text: hashtags speak (almost) a thousand words
People will use any excuse to skip past your content: get to the point or people will go away
Start your videos off with a bang and keep them super short: make your point within 30 seconds
Next in the series
On to ‘Use photos and videos’…
Footnotes
[1] Yes, I know that not all sharks have to keep swimming or they die. #NotAllSharks