Social media is continuously changing how we communicate and consume content. If you’ve been using any social media platform lately, you might have noticed that videos are dominating your timeline. The growing dominance of videos on social media aligns with Cisco’s prediction that videos will account for 82% of all internet traffic by 2022.

While text content still has its place for specific situations (e.g., blog posts and e-books), videos are generally more attractive for marketers. Over 70% of marketers state that videos have contributed more to their conversion rate than any other content. 

Among many factors that make social media videos great for marketers is that they also generate 1200% more engagement than text and image content combined.

But that’s not all; here are five reasons why videos are that much better on social media than any other type of content.

Videos are inherently visual content, which takes up more screen real estate than text content. Including videos on your social media posts will help them stand out among other posts by essentially posting something that occupies most of the viewer’s screen.

Social media is also shifting towards building a platform for video content consumption. Facebook, for example, has its feature called “Facebook Watch,” which has a 140 million global daily user base. 

Even Instagram, which started as a photo-sharing app, turns into a vertical video-sharing platform with its Stories and Reels feature. 

Twitter, famous for its text-based and real-time interaction, also experiences an upwards trend of 2 billion daily video views, a 67% increase from 2019.

While videos are a versatile type of content that both brands and personal accounts can use, a survey shows that 64% of consumers purchase a product after watching branded videos on social media. Most social media platforms also offer a thumbnail customization feature that allows you to use an appealing cover for your video to catch even more attention.

Videos are naturally easier to consume than text and images, mainly because they don’t demand as much concentration to be enjoyable.

As many as 7 out of 10 people watch YouTube videos on mobile devices. They watch videos on the go or while doing another task. Many platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, also support picture-in-picture playback, which allows for easier video content consumption.

While uploading video tutorials straight to your website is still a great way to bump up your brand’s authority (which you should do), sharing insightful videos with your followers will increase the engagement rate. The average engagement rate of a video post on Facebook is 73% higher than the overall engagement rate on the platform. It’s a testament to how easy it is to watch and engage with video content on the platform than it is on a web browser. 

Video content is visually more engaging than a block of text, which stimulates viewers to keep watching for at least 6-10 seconds before scrolling away. You can use social media videos to increase your brand retention by including all the crucial elements of your product in that window. The average Facebook users are 23% more likely to remember the brand behind advertising if it appears within the first 3 seconds of the video.

Creating a video for your social media pages helps you engage your audience using a signature visual, which will be associated with your brand. Video also allows you to tell a captivating story in which your product stands out as the hero. There are many types of videos that you can use to generate brand awareness, including:

• Live videos: The best way to engage your audience organically; 82% of people prefer watching live videos to reading a text post.
• Explainer videos: Break down how your product works; 96% of people use these videos to find out more about a product.

• Vlogs: Build a personal connection between you as a brand and your social media followers. Great to build a brand image as well as awareness.
• Tutorials: An excellent type of content to generate authority, but you could leverage tutorial videos to increase brand awareness if the topic is broad enough.

While videos are visually engaging and enticing to watch, it also has a longer ‘active’ date than other content types.

A YouTube video, for example, could resurface on your new subscriber’s timeline even months after you published it. An even more excellent example is a TikTok video, which could re-surface another user’s For You Page for weeks or even months.

Video sharing platforms rarely reveal the algorithm they use to recommend a video to users, but more often than not, it involves a high engagement rate. The longer your video stays up, the more engagement it gets, and therefore more users are recommended to watch it. If you can generate an initial momentum of engagements, it’s likely to snowball and put your video on many new users’ timelines without you having to do anything about it.

A picture tells a thousand words, but a video is worth at least a thousand sentences. 93% of marketing pros claimed that videos have helped them land new clients through social media. 

Videos are a creative medium, which you can shape and build however you like it. You can use various storytelling methods to put your product in the spotlight, which increases viewers’ buying intent.

You can promote your product so well using a video that even Google agrees and launches a platform to create shoppable videos called Shoploop. While other platforms have their shoppable posts (e.g., Instagram Shopping and Facebook Catalogs), the reign of video content will surely be a consideration for a sales tool.

While videos are generally an excellent all-rounder tool for your business, each platform has a very specific preference for video content.

We’ve included an infographic to help you navigate through the jungle of social media videos with all the essential stats, video specifications, and tips to make yours stand out. Take a glance at the infographic here, or feel free to save it to your device to read later.