BEST PRACTICES FOR CONTENT PERFORMANCE
Creating great content is only step one. We’ve done that ✅ Now let’s make sure we put it to work on your social media so that it performs well. I have some best practices I like to share for your consideration. I’ll start with the most important stuff and then move through things that make the algorithms happy.
INSTAGRAM FAQs
Reels and Stories use 9:16 ratios. Reels and Stories can be up to 60 seconds long. However, in general people have a 7-15 second attention span on social media, so consider that. Less is often more, keep them hungry for more. People also invest in episodic content, so you’ll nab more followers that way.
FILES I DELIVER
In general I try to deliver content in a way that gives you a variety of ways to put it to use, as well as include your own creative vision in how the content is presented. I’ll often have one file that contains all of the different shots so that you can pick which clips you want to post. I’ll also include files that could be ready to post right to a story or reel. If we’ve discussed a specific deliverable need, that will be included too.
DOWNLOADING CONTENT
I use Google Drive for delivery of content. I generally host as long as I have space in Google Drive. However, I recommend you download all of your content soon after delivery to ensure you have it. It’s not super intuitive how to download from Drive, the prompt you’re looking for is “Send a Copy” then “Save.”
TIMMING VIDEO
If you want to cut up the video files to use bits in different posts, I HIGHLY recommend that you do the trimming right in your phones Photos app. Trimming files within Instagram degrades the quality. You should have an option to “Save as a New Video” do that so that your original file remains intact. Trimming in your Photo app ensures that maximum quality is retained.
GENERAL POST PERFORMANCE
The ever powerful algorithm decides the fate of your post. Play the game right and your content can go before a million pairs of eyes overnight. In general, here are some of the recommendations I have found to factor in the most to post performance. Understand though that this is an ever moving target.
Trending music track. You know when you see a ton of reels with the same song? Whether you hate it or love it, catching a song trend wave is going to give you an order of magnitude higher view count. You may have that niche song you loved in the 90s that you think would go well with the video, and while I respect the nostalgia, it’s likely not going to perform as well. I didn’t make the rules.
Shorter clips. I’d say the average viral reel is around 10 seconds. Same goes for Stories, keep segments short and interesting.
Caption should include important keywords (I’d say DON’T use hashtags for broad categories, no one likes to see hashtag spam). The algorithm is smart enough to use captions words.
Tag People, Companies. This is social media after all! Think of it as a networking and cross promoting tool. Collaborations work well too. The more impressions you get early on dictate how much you’re shown in people’s feeds.
(This is a work in progress. I’ll have some specific recommendations for YouTube posts versus Instagram posts, cross promotion, timing, and more!)