How to create engaging Facebook videos

On The Properti Pods premiere episode we are touching on a vital part of real estate marketing that so many agents seem to miss;

Creating engaging Facebook videos.

We know this is where our target audience is, so why don’t we create and optimise content especially for this social platform?

Learn what size videos should be made and what the most engaging content is – all in 5 minutes!

Craig Davison:

Welcome to your podcast for all things real estate marketing. I’m Craig [Davison 00:00:12], and this is the Property Pod.

Gerard Doyle:

While many people might try to convince you that Facebook’s user base is disappearing, the reality is that there’s never been more users on Facebook than ever before. So if you want to reach your target market, maybe it’s people looking to sell, maybe it’s people looking to buy property, Facebook is your number one path to reach those people at a time when they’re willing to watch your videos.

Videos are key. Videos are the deep, rich engagement that someone can take passively just from their mobile device. But what type of video should you be producing for Facebook? That’s the question I’m going to answer here today for you. The reality is that most videographers like to record all their videos in landscape format. That’s where the video is wider than it is tall. That’s the same way we see things at the cinema or on our TV. But in a mobile-led world, it’s a very different place.

We want to think about two different types of videos here. We’ve got one, the organic Facebook video. This is the post that you put up on your social feed. Then you’ve got the paid ads. Now, the cold, hard reality is most of your organic posts aren’t seen by your prospective customers. They’re seen by your wife, your mom, your sister, and your friends. Most real estate buyers aren’t following real estate agents. Definitely people who are looking to sell aren’t sitting following real estate agents. Most of us have annoyed our customer base so much we don’t get any reach.

That’s why our recommendation here today is going to be to focus on the paid video formats and what we need to produce. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use them organically. It just means when we’re making these, we’re first and foremost going to think about if we’re going to put money behind this so that this video is seen by our target market of buyers and sellers, what format do we want? Right, let’s get down to tick tacks.

You want to upload the highest resolution video you possibly can. The minimum resolution we’re recommending is 1080 pixels by 1080 pixels. That’s a square video. Now, if you wanted to, you can do a nine by 16 or a 16 by nine landscape and a portrait ratio. But if you want to get there quickly, if you want to get there cheaply, if you want one video that does the job, square is your bet. It covers all your bases.

Okay, what format do you want it in? The two recommendations are .MP4 and .M-O-V, or .MOV. That’s the Apple format. The maximum file size is a huge four gigabytes, so you don’t need to tone this down. If you so wanted, you could produce a video that’s 240 minutes in length. Although we’ll cover this in another podcast, you do not want to get anywhere near that kind of length here.

That’s our podcast for today on Facebook video specs. If you want your one takeaway, it’s that brief your videographer that you want your videos in a square format, minimum 1080 by 1080 in as high resolution as possible, and get them to cut it up into bite-size chunks that are going to be less than two minutes. If you do that, you’re going to get the maximum bang for your buck when it comes to paid ads on Facebook, which let’s face, is how most people are going to consume your videos. Best of luck.

Craig Deveson:

Thanks for listening. To stay up to date on all things real estate marketing, follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Property App. For a free demo or any business inquiries, head over to property.ai or click the link below in the show notes.