Tweet like a pro

March 10, 2022

Last update

3.10.2022

10 MIN.

The Complete Guide to Twitter Video Marketing

With an audience of 353 million and a 72% increase in video watch time YoY, if Twitter video marketing isn’t on your radar, think again.

Rachel Bowland

Rachel Bowland

The Complete Guide to Twitter Video Marketing
Summary

The #1 reason people log on to Twitter is to discover something new and interesting. So with an audience of 353 million and a 72% increase in video watch time YoY, if Twitter video marketing isn’t on your radar, think again. 

Twitter’s internal data suggests that videos are the best way to generate interest and impact. And it makes sense. Video tweets take up more real estate on your audience’s feed, so they easily stand out. Couple that with the right hashtags and a tried-and-tested strategy, you have a winning campaign on your hands. 

Why should you use more Twitter videos in your marketing?

Twitter users like visuals, and video is the best way to engage, immerse, and entertain them. Take a quick look at data from Twitter - 

  • Generates over 2 billion video views on Twitter every day
  • Tweets with video attract 10x more engagements than tweets without video
  • Twitter optimized videos can drive a 33% increase in emotional engagement
  • Video ads can save over 50% on cost-per-engagement
  • Tweets with videos get 6X more retweets than photos and 3X more than GIFs

Twitter video sizes and specs: Mobile and web

While creating Twitter videos, always optimize for both mobile devices and the web, as 93% of video views come from Twitter app users. We’ll go through all the available video formats and the right specs below.

Organic timeline videos

Twitter timeline videos are available on both the desktop and mobile app. These appear on the timeline of users that follow a brand or a hashtag. If there’s good engagement, it can also show up in top tweets.

For example, look at this video from Asana, the project management tool. 

File Type

MP4, MOV, or GIF

Aspect Ratio

16:9 (landscape or portrait)

 1:1 (square)

Video Codec

H.264 baseline, main, or high profile compression

Audio Codec

AAC audio LC (low complexity) audio compression at 128 kbps

Frame Rates 

Recommended Frame Rate: 30 FPS  

Maximum Frame Rate: 60FPS

Resolution

1280x720 (landscape)

720x1280 (portrait)

720x720 (square)

Video Captions

Optional but recommended

Video Sound

Optional but recommended

Video Length

Minimum video length: 0.5 seconds 

Maximum video length: 140 seconds

Video File Size

Under 1 GB

Video resolution

Minimum resolution: 32x32

Maximum resolution: 1920x1000 and 1200x1900

Twitter Video Ads

Video ads let you boost your content’s discoverability. For example, take this ad from Salesforce. It talks about a tech event without making it too technical. 

Let’s take a look at some of the universal specs.

Tweet copy

280 character limit

File Type

MP4 or MOV

File size

1 GB max. For optimal performance, keep files <30 MB

Video Length*

Recommended: 15 seconds or less

Maximum: 2:20

*Some advertisers can request up to 10 minutes

Branding

Recommended: Use a logo in the upper left-hand corner

Prominent product placement

Captions

Mandatory: Closed captioning or text overlays

Video bitrate

6,000 - 10,000k (recommended 6,000k) for 1080p

5,000k - 8,000k (recommended 5,000k) for 720p.

Frame rate

29.97FPS or 30FPS - 60FPS

Audio codec

AAC LC (low complexity)

Video codec 

 H264, Baseline, Main, or High Profile with a 4:2:0 color space.

Thumbnail

Supported files: PNG or JPEG

Aspect ratio: Same as video

Max size: 5MB

Looping

Videos under 60 seconds can loop. 

For more specifics for each ad type, check out Twitter’s guidelines.

Twitter Live 

As with other social media, you can go live on Twitter to connect with your audience and take them behind the scenes, educate them about your product, or host a Q&A with an influencer

You can also download Twitter videos using any Twitter video downloader once you’ve uploaded them to your account. But for live videos, you need an Android app like Snagscope that lets you download your video so you can repurpose it. 

If you have an iPhone, you can also screen record your Live and save videos directly on your phone.  

Here are the specs for live Twitter videos.

Twitter Live
Source: The Verge

Video codec

H.264/AVC

Frame Rate

Recommended: 30 FPS 

Maximum: 60FPS 

Audio codec

AA-LC 128bps

Resolution

Recommended: 1280x720

Maximum: 1920x1080

A step-by-step guide to getting started with Twitter video marketing

In the battle for attention on Twitter, you have to be strategic to land right in front of your potential buyers. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started - 

Find out what your audience wants to see

Audience research is the first step to any successful marketing campaign. Conduct an audit of your existing content on Twitter. Focus on what performed best and check out topics that interest your target audience the most. 

You could also reach out to your audience directly with tweets that ask questions and polls. If you want to go a step further, you can create detailed surveys to learn even more details about your audience and their biggest challenges. You can use a tool like SurveyAnyPlace to help with this. It lets you create basic surveys to fun quizzes. 

Find out what your audience wants to see


You can also conduct a competitor and hashtag analysis to gather more information. 

Choose goals and KPIs

After you know what your audience wants to see, set SMART goals. Goals could include; improving customer education, brand awareness, online engagement, leads generated, conversion rates, revenue, and site traffic. 

Next, focus on the metrics for success—KPIs

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times a user sees your video tweet in their timeline or search results. Use Twitter Analytics to see which videos have the most impressions. This can influence your content in the future. 

Engagement

The number of times a user interacts with your tweet is defined as engagement. It includes clicks anywhere on the tweet, retweets, replies, follows, likes, username and hashtag searches, tweet expansion, and link clicks. 

Video completion rate

The rate at which Twitter users watch your videos from start to finish is known as the video completion rate. If your audience is abandoning your content mid-video, consider altering your content to mirror videos that perform well. 

Create the content

A lot goes into making great video content, but for social, you want to focus on two things primarily—quality and sound. 

Quality

Video quality is only one part of the equation. The main driver is the quality of the content. Are you trying to entertain? Tell your brand’s story? Drum up interest for a new product? 

Check out this 6-second video from Sun-Maid, a snack company, that throws light on its healthy alternative snacks. 


Twitter recommends the following best practices to make your video stand out:

  • Hook the audience with an intriguing setup.
  • Add your brand’s logo to drive the brand’s association.
  • Use humans. Including people in the first few frames increases view rates and drives 2x higher retention.
  • Tell a story. Your video’s purpose is to make it easy for users to follow along from start to finish. 
  • Include captions and alt text in your videos. 

Sound 

Even if you’re on a budget, standard microphones can capture great audio. Or, you can add non-copyrighted music to your video. 

Assemble with a good video editor

Whether you prefer editing on your desktop or mobile, you’ve got many options for a video editor. These range from simple ones that let anyone create videos to more sophisticated ones that require a good understanding of video creation and editing. 

But you don’t have to go overboard with the effects. Check out this simple video from Glossybox UK, a monthly beauty box subscription company.

The raw video has been combined with simple text overlays and catchy music to produce a minimalist video. 

While videos autoplay on Twitter by default, you have the option to create and upload a custom thumbnail. 

A popular video editor you might want to check out is InVideo

Assemble with a good video editor


It’s got Twitter video templates, a drag-and-drop video editor, and an audio and video library that make it easy for anyone to create professional-quality videos from scratch. 

Optimize the video for Twitter

Don’t say bye to your video editor just yet. Twitter suggests short videos of less than 15 seconds for the best results. But when you only have a short span to capture attention, the first couple of seconds are crucial. In fact, Twitter found that when you convey the key in the first three seconds, you can experience a 13% boost in overall breakthrough metrics.  

Here are some top tips for optimizing your videos for Twitter.

Feature striking visuals

Bright colors, scroll-stopping visuals, and fast motion are great ways to make your visuals stand out.

Write short captions

Your copy shouldn’t overshadow your video. According to internal Twitter data, videos with minimal captions have 13% higher brand and message recall and overall view time.  

A case in point is this ad from Glossier:

The 4-word caption speaks volumes!

Use the first 3 seconds to show your brand or product

The first 3 seconds are crucial. Show off your logo or product right away. This video from Boden is a prime example of how to do it right: 

Take advantage of conversion scent

Conversion scent is the relationship between the ad or piece of content and the page it is promoting.

‍When the design style of the video is similar to the design style of the website, the conversion scent will be higher. People who watch your video and then visit your website will feel a sense of familiarity. They will be more likely to sign up for your list or buy from you. 

So, use the same font, colors, and other elements you have on your website in your videos. For an idea, check out this video from DoFasting.

‍It contains colors like blue and pink. These are the same colors present on DoFasting’s website. The font is also the same. 

Take advantage of conversion scent

This shows a strong conversion scent between the video tweet and the website it leads to. You too should formulate a social media brand aesthetic that matches your website’s design and reflect it in the videos and photos you post on all your social media channels. 

Don’t dilute the focus with too many CTAs

One CTA per video is ideal. Too much information mashed together is not a good tactic in videos, especially when you only have 15 seconds to grab your audience’s attention. 

Scale with ads

Scale your organic efforts by turning your video content into ads. For example, you can promote a video tweet that you’ve already shared. Twitter’s internal data suggests promoted video tweets can save you 50% on cost-per-engagement

You can program video ads with website buttons to help your audience to learn more or to complete an action. This format delivers a 2x higher CTR than standard mobile video ads and boosts user retention by more than 60%. 

Apart from native video, you can also place your video ads at the beginning of a video from one of Twitter’s content partners that align with your brand. This type of ad, known as Amplify Pre-roll, has a positive effect on the audience. Based on Nielsen Brand Effect data, people that see Amplify Pre-roll on Twitter are 70% more likely to recall the brand’s ad and have a 6% higher purchase intent

Pay attention to insights

Make friends with Twitter analytics. Twitter’s Media Studio has a built-in analytics dashboard that lets you understand how a video is performing and what your audience does on Twitter so you can target them better. 

The dashboard gives you access to metrics such as organic and promoted views, average watch time, demographics, CTA clicks, and a list of top tweets. 

But if you’d like to dig in, you’ll need more than that to tweak your strategy. Advanced insights that tools like Iconosquare let you track competitors, hashtags, and analyze your community. It also simplifies running campaigns and social media listening.

Promote to influencers

Like other social media, 49% of people on Twitter rely on recommendations from influencers. Partner up with influencers—popular and niche—to get your content in front of the right audience. 

The ideal influencer knows your industry and audience, is already following you, or is using the same hashtags you are. You can find Twitter influencers through an influencer marketplace like Shoutcart

Promote to influencers

You can filter influencers by niche, location, number of followers, and engagement score and quickly find the most relevant one. 

Now get creative with your Twitter video marketing

Being data-driven with your marketing doesn’t mean you have to stifle your creativity. On the contrary, the best campaigns are all about engaging creatives driven by data. To better understand this concept, let’s take a look at some recent campaigns -

Help Scout’s teaser


Slack’s love of GIFs


Wistia's BTS

Shopify’s TikTok video


The common denominator in these campaigns is that the brands understand their audience and deliver exactly what they need by balancing creativity with data.

And now that you know exactly how to replicate their success, go out there and start creating video content for Twitter. Remember to keep it short, striking, and stimulating.

About
the writer
Rachel Bowland

Rachel Bowland

Contributor @iconosquare

Rachel Bowland is the content manager at Social Marketing Writing and Creatiwitt - she likes to write about marketing and design.

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