If a picture says a thousand words, just imagine how much more you can convey using a Facebook cover video. The 20 - 90 second window frame you get in these videos is perfect for creating a memorable and immersive experience for your audience. In this seemingly modest timeframe, you can:
- Communicate your brand’s personality
- Show what your business has to offer
- Establish a more personal connection
- And more!
Ready to create an effective Facebook cover video for your business? Awesome! This guide will discuss everything you need to know. We’ll talk about the following:
- What is a Facebook cover video?
- Ideas for your Facebook cover video
- Steps on creating and publishing your Facebook cover video
Let’s begin!
What is a Facebook Cover Video?
Facebook cover videos appear on the top section of your Facebook page. It is one of the first elements that a customer or would-be customer will see when viewing a brand’s Facebook page. These videos can play on both desktop and mobile environments.
Users have the option to watch the Facebook cover video with or without sound. These videos are intended to be short, lasting only 20 to 90 seconds long.
As we will discuss later, the length of the video is just one of a number of specs to consider when uploading a Facebook cover video.
Ideas for Your Facebook Cover Video
1. Showcase Your Products
If your business sells products, a cover video showing them, along with their key advantages or specs, is a great way to maximize your Facebook cover videos. Instead of customers and potential customers needing to scroll through your page or look for your website, they get a lot of information just by viewing your Facebook cover video.
Here are a few things to keep in mind showcasing products on your Facebook cover video:
- Add the descriptions as overlay text since some may prefer to mute the video.
- Keep the descriptions short and allow for a speed at which customers can read them comfortably.
- The best way to ensure that the speed is optimum is to ask people (who aren’t involved in making the video) to view it and read the text in a relaxed way. If fresh eyes can view the video with comfort, you’re definitely on the right track!
2. Make It Into Your Portfolio
As for businesses like interior design services, tattoo shops, photography services, makeup artists, hairstylists, sketch artists, and the like, the Facebook cover video can be a great way to show the crème de la crème of their work.
After all, no other portfolio is as easy to find as the one on the business’s Facebook page’s top section.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when using the Facebook cover video as a portfolio:
- Even if works/pieces/projects are focused on aesthetics, descriptions can still be added to emphasize what makes the artist/artwork so unique.
- Descriptions can also be used to categorize different works.
- You can opt to have a slideshow of photos. These can be put side-by-side (2-3 per scene) in order to make the most of your 20-90 seconds.
3. Take Customers Behind the Scenes
Taking a customer behind the scenes is not just a fun gimmick. It can be far more meaningful when done right. This practice builds trust while also humanizing your brand.
As an example, if you have a restaurant, you can use Facebook cover videos to show what extra care you take when it comes to the freshness of ingredients and overall sanitation. The same can be done for breweries, distilleries, organic farms, organic beauty products, and so on.
4. Immerse Customers in An Experience
If your business has had a recent grand event, you can use your Facebook cover video to tell customers all about it and make them feel like they’ve been a part of it.
Moreover, if your business is all about selling an experience, then Facebook cover videos will be a perennial tool you can use. A few examples of such businesses include theme parks, skydiving, cruising, scuba diving, sight-seeing, tours, butterfly gardens, and so on.
By now, you’re probably brimming with ideas on how to use Facebook video covers for your business. So let’s talk about the steps involved!
Steps on Creating Your Facebook Cover Video
1. Planning Your Facebook Cover Video
Though a Facebook cover video seems like a small production, it deserves its own storyboard too. This way, you can create organized and memorable scenes that customers are sure to remember.
Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while planning your video:
- Stick to one theme or goal. This makes the video more streamlined, less confusing, and easier to make.
- Though it may be tempting to show a lot of scenes within the 20-90 seconds (by making the video play faster through editing), this may be disorienting to some people.
And as promised earlier, here are the specs that you need to know about when planning your Facebook cover videos:
- Size: at least 1250 x 312 pixels
- Aspect ratio: 16:9 widescreen
- Resolution: 1080p
2. Shooting The Video or Taking Photos
Once you have your storyboard, shooting the video or taking photos for the video is a breeze.
Shooting the video
When filming the video, some of the settings regarding size, resolution, and aspect ratio can be set on the camera itself. If you don’t have these settings on your camera, these can be fixed during editing; however, it would be best to get close to the aforementioned specs as best as possible.
Taking photos
Alternatively, you can also have a slideshow of photos for your Facebook cover video. It would be great to keep the aforementioned specs in mind. However, most of that can be fixed during editing.
3. Editing the Video
There is numerous editing software available for editing your Facebook cover video. Some software, such as the following, have specific features for making Facebook cover videos quickly and easily.
4. Publishing the Video
Now that you have your Facebook video cover, it’s time to show it to the world! Follow these steps:
- Go to your Facebook business page
- On the top left of your Facebook cover, select “change cover.”
- Select “upload video/image”
- Then, choose the video from your files
- Next, select “publish”
And presto! You have your very own Facebook cover video.
Social Media Marketing Made Easy
As you’ve seen in this guide, even a short Facebook cover video needs storyboarding skills, videography/photography skills, video editing skills, and time. The same goes for most social media marketing efforts.
So if you want to polish all your social media assets for better brand building and for increasing brand awareness through social media, we recommend putting your trust in a team of experienced social media marketing experts who live and breathe social media.
The best part is your business gets long-term social media success without lifting a finger.
If you would like to learn more about what we can do for you, feel free to contact us!