109. 3 Twitter Video Marketing Power Hacks
(with Keith Keller)
Keith Keller is one of the leading experts on Twitter marketing, especially Twitter video marketing. He has his own podcast series on iTunes called Crack the Twitter Code and now offers one-on-one consulting to clients all over the world via Zoom. In today’s episode, Keith will share three power hacks he has learned about Twitter video marketing.
Keith’s Story
Keith didn’t want to go to work on his 35th birthday. But he did because he had to. It ended up being the worst day of his life, but it made him realize he wanted to get out of there. He needed to get out of there.
Keith didn’t want to go to work on his 40th birthday. He was at a new company, with a new boss, but he didn’t want to be there. But he went because had to. And after that, after those five years, he realized he had to just take the risk.
Keith quit his job without a plan. “It was really scary. We bought a house, we owed money, but I couldn’t go to that job anymore,” Keith said. “I thought the only way I’m going to do this is if I just jump.”
After he quit, he booked an appointment with a career counselor, and she told him he would be great at what she did. So, he went back to university and studied to become a career counselor and eventually got a job helping kids with their careers.
Then he did a podcast on it, and while he was doing the podcast, he thought he would send it out to other places. One of those places was Twitter. When he did that, he discovered that Twitter was 10 times more efficient for the same effort than other social media platforms. People started asking him to teach him about “cracking the Twitter code,” and he became the Twitter dude. So, he flipped the switch and started a new company on Twitter.
Since then, Keith has been sharing his knowledge on how to use Twitter effectively, especially in videos.
3 Twitter Video Marketing Power Hacks
Keith gave us his three power hacks to market Twitter videos.
1. The 2 Minute Video
On Twitter, a video can only be two minutes and 20 seconds long. This time constraint may seem restricting, but it is actually a benefit. Since the video is shorter and quicker to watch, more people are willing to press play.
“By actually creating a video that’s two minutes and 20 seconds, you’re already distilling the wisdom of a longer video into a much shorter video. So the chances of that getting more views are exponential,” Keith said.
If we film an interview that’s 15 minutes long, we can extract the most important part and put it into a shorter video to make it easier for our consumers and save them time.
With a 10-minute or even a five-minute video, our audience has to commit to sitting down and spending their time watching our video. People become a bit more reluctant to watch a longer video since they aren’t sure if it will be worth their time. However, with a short, two-minute video our audience doesn’t have to commit too much and will be more likely to watch our content.
According to a Microsoft study, the average consumer has an attention span of only eight seconds, compared to 12 seconds in 2000 (Source: Forbes). With such a low attention span, think of how difficult it can be to get someone to watch a two-minute video, let alone a 10-minute video.
For example, Keith had a friend who interviewed him. The actual interview only got 202 views, but the short snippet on Twitter got more than 2000 views. It was the same content, but the extracted, shorter version did better because the audience only had to commit a little bit of time to watch it.
If we can capture the attention of our viewers with our short video, we can feed them to a longer story. If they watch the short clip and find that they enjoyed it, they will be more willing to commit to spending more of their time watching our content. We can provide them with a longer video on other platforms such as YouTube.
“You can make a really lovely story, and put a little bit of theme music or a little bit of a graphic at the front, a little bit of a graphic at the back, and two minutes in total in the middle, and you’ve got this lovely little sequence. Now, in itself, [the short video] will go well, but more importantly, it will feed people to the longer story,” Keith said.
2. Repurposing Content
Repurposing content saves time and resources. We can put the same video on every social media channel but alter it to fit the needs of the audience on that channel.
For example, a viewer on YouTube will be more willing to watch a 20-minute video compared to someone on Facebook. A viewer on Facebook will be more willing to watch a five-minute video than someone on Instagram. And on Instagram, a viewer will be more willing to watch a one-minute video than on Tik Tok. Once we understand the needs of the consumers on different channels, we will be able to effectively repurpose content.
We also need to understand the limits of each channel. On Instagram, a video can range from 3 seconds to 60 minutes. A video posted on the feed can be up to 60 seconds, a story video can be up to 15 seconds, and a live video and an IGTV can be up to 60 minutes.
On Facebook, videos must be less than 240 minutes or 10 GB. On YouTube, videos must be less than 12 hours or 128 GB. On LinkedIn, videos can’t be more than 10 minutes or 5 GB. And on Tik Tok, videos can’t be longer than 60 seconds, however, they previously couldn’t be longer than 15 seconds. Often the length restrictions of the social media platforms correlate to the attention span of the users.
Once we have our Twitter video, we can start to look at more sharing options. “You can create a really rich story out of your videos and then put them on LinkedIn, which is an additional market of [about] 719 million users,” Keith said. The more platforms our video is on, the more reach it will have. We can even take our initial Twitter video, and take a quote from it, and turn it into a photograph to post, or we could write a blog post about it.
The last thing we want to do when repurposing content is simply taking the exact same video and posting it on every social media channel. Each channel has a different audience and different formats or requirements, so it is essential to alter the content to fit each channel. Make it a little bit different every time.
3. The Less Than 60 Second Video
If our video is less than 60 seconds on Twitter, our views will most likely go up. Kieth explained that our number one takeaway from his interview should be to create videos that are under 60 seconds. When a video is less than 60 seconds on Twitter, it loops. Immediately after our consumer finishes our video, it plays again, capturing their attention for just a bit longer. And in this world, every single second count.
“Since I started introducing the 60-second rule, my video views were just going through the roof, because what I’m pondering is the fact that people are busy,” Keith said. “Make [your video] less than 60 seconds and your video views will go up.” By shortening a longer clip into 60 seconds, we are respecting and honoring our viewers’ time.
Key Takeaways
Thank you so much Keith for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:
1. Often the shorter the video, the more people are willing to press play.
2. The human attention span decreases every year so our videos need to be more and more interesting and captivating.
3. If we can capture the attention of our viewers with our short video, we can feed them to a longer story.
4. Repurposing content saves time and resources.
5. To effectively repurpose content, we need to understand the needs of the consumers on different channels.
6. The length restrictions of the social media platforms correlate to the attention span of the users.
7. If our video is less than 60 seconds on Twitter, our views will most likely go up.
Connect with Keith
If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Keith, connect with him on his Twitter or website, globalsocialmediacoaching.com.
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