With Snapchat taking the world by storm in 2013 with its innovative “story” format, other social media platforms have jumped on board to produce their own versions. Instagram launched their Instagram Stories in August 2016 with Facebook following close behind in March 2017 with its own feature. So with all the recent developments, can you even remember what your social media platforms used to look like without these instant bite-sized pieces of content? In our 2018 Digital Marketing Report, we found that the top emerging trend was video content development (alongside content marketing), which came as no surprise to us. Video is much more immersive and interactive than their still counterparts, and we’re seeing a huge trend in the use of video from businesses all over the globe. Here’s why we predict to see shorter video content continue to dominate the social media world and how you can leverage it to your business’ advantage.

How can you take advantage of this format with only 10 seconds to impress?

When Snapchat and Instagram Stories were first released, the only option was to send videos to people that were recorded right then and there. Luckily for all you perfectionists out there, they have since opened it up to allow you to share videos from your camera roll that have already been edited.This is important because this allows you to record a 2 - 5 minute video, which people would otherwise ignore on social media due to the “long” length, and chop it up into bite-sized pieces for the masses. This also means you can create up to 30 different pieces of content from one video!Not only that, but these bite-sized pieces can be posted to all your social media channels, not just Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook Stories.

But how do you know these bite-sized videos are for you?

Let’s have a quick look at a study done by Fastory.io in 2017: They found that, on Snapchat, businesses in the travel, entertainment, other consumer services, beauty, other consumer goods, retailer, and advertising industries shared more than 50% of their content via video. On Instagram, they found that the fitness, fashion, and retail industry shared more than 50% of the content via video.But with the increasing popularity of video content, we expect to see more industries following suit within the next year as they start to see a boost in their social media strategy.

What's our opinion?

There’s no doubt that there’s a rise in video content as the improved way to interact with potential clients and customers.Even if you don’t plan on uploading to this story format, these shorter videos will always perform better on your socials as they’re quick and easy to absorb and won’t disrupt your viewer’s flow of screen scrolling on their phone. Strengthen your social strategy by having a chat to the team at Bang Digital and find out how we can help you create immersive video content for your brand.