March 10, 2022
Last update
3.10.2022
10 MIN.
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
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.
Twitter users like visuals, and video is the best way to engage, immerse, and entertain them. Take a quick look at data from Twitter -
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.
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.
MP4, MOV, or GIF
16:9 (landscape or portrait)
1:1 (square)
H.264 baseline, main, or high profile compression
AAC audio LC (low complexity) audio compression at 128 kbps
Recommended Frame Rate: 30 FPS
Maximum Frame Rate: 60FPS
1280x720 (landscape)
720x1280 (portrait)
720x720 (square)
Optional but recommended
Optional but recommended
Minimum video length: 0.5 seconds
Maximum video length: 140 seconds
Under 1 GB
Minimum resolution: 32x32
Maximum resolution: 1920x1000 and 1200x1900
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.
280 character limit
MP4 or MOV
1 GB max. For optimal performance, keep files <30 MB
Recommended: 15 seconds or less
Maximum: 2:20
*Some advertisers can request up to 10 minutes
Recommended: Use a logo in the upper left-hand corner
Prominent product placement
Mandatory: Closed captioning or text overlays
6,000 - 10,000k (recommended 6,000k) for 1080p
5,000k - 8,000k (recommended 5,000k) for 720p.
29.97FPS or 30FPS - 60FPS
AAC LC (low complexity)
H264, Baseline, Main, or High Profile with a 4:2:0 color space.
Supported files: PNG or JPEG
Aspect ratio: Same as video
Max size: 5MB
Videos under 60 seconds can loop.
For more specifics for each ad type, check out Twitter’s guidelines.
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.
H.264/AVC
Recommended: 30 FPS
Maximum: 60FPS
AA-LC 128bps
Recommended: 1280x720
Maximum: 1920x1080
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 -
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.
You can also conduct a competitor and hashtag analysis to gather more information.
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 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.
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.
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.
A lot goes into making great video content, but for social, you want to focus on two things primarily—quality and sound.
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:
Even if you’re on a budget, standard microphones can capture great audio. Or, you can add non-copyrighted music to your video.
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.
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.
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.
Bright colors, scroll-stopping visuals, and fast motion are great ways to make your visuals stand out.
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!
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:
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
You can filter influencers by niche, location, number of followers, and engagement score and quickly find the most relevant one.
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.
Rachel Bowland is the content manager at Social Marketing Writing and Creatiwitt - she likes to write about marketing and design.
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