How to Market Within Facebook’s Three Second Rule

If you’re gearing up with video content marketing, you know how lightning-fast things are leaping forward. The leaps are anything but selective – each change impacts everything from conventional broadcast commercials to direct response advertising.

 

Seizing the emerging opportunities, brands are grabbing as much video action as they can stuff into their marketing programs. And right now, one of the prime destinations for video content marketing is Facebook. Only a short while back, the social media mainstay had but two simple focal points — message-posting and networking. Then perceptive developers saw Facebook’s raw, untapped potential. And they transformed the social media hot spot from message outpost to video stage, seemingly overnight.

 

Trend-savvy to the hilt, Facebook (and many of its competitors) is focusing its video efforts on the mobile zone. Hardly a surprise considering the raging popularity of smartphones and tablets. Also not surprising is Facebook’s willingness to accommodate mobile user needs. Yes, Facebook folk have paid attention. As a result, the social media mainstay has won widespread brand support and become an indispensable component of the video marketing world.

 

Facebook, of course, was always built for speed. Fast posts. Fast exchanges. Naturally, this get-things-done-yesterday tendency plays a huge role in shaping its core video philosophy. Which is why Facebook favors the rapid-fire when it comes to video delivery. This thinking accords with one of the cardinal rules of online video marketing – brands have split-seconds to grab viewers. On TV, a commercial has about ten seconds to reel in an audience. That’s an eternity compared with online mobile videos, which get about three seconds to hook time-squeezed viewers. Facebook routinely advises clients to stick to the three-second limit. It’s either lock them in quick or lose them.

 

If you have any questions or comments about Facebook video marketing, or about any other brand-related topic, feel free to send them our way!