The Case for Facebook Cover Videos
It’s no secret that social media has well and truly reached the age of video. And rightfully so, given that video encourages a great deal more engagement than photo or text content.
Lately we’ve seen a truckload of leading brands incorporate videos into their Facebook covers. This is a simple, effective tactic for grabbing the attention of page visitors and conveying your brand story. Here’s how it’s done.
Brilliant Facebook Cover Videos
This cover video mixes still text with an animated product demonstration to communicate what Easil does. It's simple, it's effective, and it looks pretty darn cool.
Over the past couple of months, Tourism Australia has been using their Facebook cover to showcase beautiful drone footage of Australia's landscapes. It's visually stunning, and it immediately sells the reasons to visit Australia. Win win!
In this cover video, Walt Disney World uses a cinemagraph (a subtle animation of a still image) to bring its Pandora promotion to life. This effect adds a touch of magic that has become synonymous with Disney, making this cover video a perfect example of kicking brand goals.
How to Create a Cover Video
There are plenty of apps that can help you quickly and easily create a GIF, a cinemagraph, a video with animated text or a video from scratch. If you don’t have much time on your hands, and you’re happy to spend a few dollars on the premium version of an app, check out Plotaverse, Ripl, Adobe Spark Video and Google's Motion Stills.
When we created our Facebook cover video, we put a high-quality photo into Photoshop and used YouTube tutorials like this one and this one to create a cinemagraph. This is definitely a more time-consuming approach, but it allowed us to create a very subtle animation effect. And using Photoshop, we could maintain the high resolution of the photo. There’s nothing worse than blurry content on social media.
Uploading Your Video
Making your Facebook cover a video can be done in exactly the same way as adding a photo, you just need to select your video file instead. But before you do that, make sure it meets Facebook’s technical requirements. Your video will need to be at least 820 pixels wide and 312 pixels long. It also needs to be between 20 and 90 seconds. So if you have a short animation, loop it in a program like iMovie before you upload it.
We Jumped on the Bandwagon
Last week, we uploaded a cinemagraph as our Facebook cover video. As well as producing an eye-catching video, we decided to emphasise a core part of our branding.
Within our brand name and logo is a lance, symbolic of the tools and skills we possess as digital marketers, and a mountain to represent what we can achieve with these tools. So our finished cover video features animated rolling clouds against a mountainous landscape. We think the subtlest of brand references are the most effective. What about you?
Need Help With Your Video Content?
If creating a Facebook video is doing your head in, our video production experts can help. Our team has executed everything from social media video campaigns to television commercials, and can help with scripting, creative direction, talent scouting, shooting, editing and media buying. Get in touch with the Lance Montana team to get started.