Essential guide to video lengths on TikTok, Reels, Shorts, Stories & more
A last week’s changes to the Facebook Feed illustrate short videos are the best (almost only) way to make sure that your message is seen. Michael Brandvold shares his super simple guide to video lengths and parameters for each big social media platform.
by Michael Brandvold of Michael Brandvold Marketing
Meta recently announced a pretty significant change to Facebook. The News feed is going away and actual news will no longer be a priority. The Home feed will now be very similar to TikTok, displaying Reels (video) and Stories. And the Home feed will be driven by a algorithm to show you content from sources you aren’t following, but would likely be interested in. You will now have a second feed that will contain the content posted by friends, pages and groups you are following. So the content of those you follow will actually be buried in a new tab, a tab that will not be the default tab. Facebook is now going all in on Reels and Stories. This means it will be very important for you to adjust the content you create and post to support Reels and Stories. This isn’t a demographic change, this is a total shift in the content being prioritized and how it is delivered.
So you now need to think about creating a video or story for every piece of content you want to post. Over the next few weeks I will be working on a list of content ideas that focus on Reels. But, for now lets go over the various video and story lengths on the various social networks. This list doesn’t just include Facebook, but also includes TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. All of these social networks prioritizing short-form, vertical video content.
SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEO and STORY LENGTHS
TikTok – 10 minutes
Instagram Reels – 90 seconds
Facebook Reels – 60 seconds
YouTube Short – 60 seconds
Facebook Story – 20 seconds
Instagram Story – 15 seconds
YouTube Story – 15 seconds
Note: TikTok is rolling out their own Story, but at this point, it is not available to everyone.
With these various video and story lengths in mind, you should begin rethinking all of the content you create. You may not see any immediate changes today, but Meta is quickly rolling out this new Facebook design and it will be impacting you quickly.
This is a video world we are living in and now you need to think about video with everything you do.
