How Long Should Your Videos Be on Social Media?

Social videos are a proven and engaging method for reaching your target audience on social media. However, small details like video length can ultimately impact the performance of your video.

You may be asking yourself, “how long should my videos be on social media?” The answer depends on which social platforms you use. 

In this post, you’ll learn about the ideal video lengths for each major social media platform, as well as receive quality examples of suitable videos for each platform.

How Long Should Your Social Videos Be?

Instagram (Feed)

Recommended Time: 30 seconds

Maximum Upload Time: 1 minute

Home to over a billion users worldwide, Instagram is a prominent social media platform for both photos and videos. Much like Facebook, Instagram users don’t spend much time looking at single posts.

This means that you have a small window to make a lasting impression on your target audience. 30 seconds is the recommended time for Instagram videos, mainly because users on this platform will instinctively scroll down their feed, even if you have a great video. 

However, be careful to not exceed 45 seconds while recording a social video. Doing this will make it more likely that your viewers will scroll past your video before your call-to-action has been presented. Also, remember that these video lengths are only for Instagram Feed. 

But of course, Instagram is much more than just a standard newsfeed now. Below we share what you need to know about video lengths for IG Stories as well as IGTV.

Instagram Stories

Recommended Time: 1 minute (15 seconds x 4)

Maximum Upload Time: 15 seconds

Allow us to explain this one. As you may know, Instagram Stories only allows you to upload 15 minutes video clips at a time. However, there seems to be no limit on how many clips you can upload. So you could potentially post a 1-hour video to your Stories as long as your video is broken up into 15-second clips consecutively.

We don’t necessarily recommend this. To make it easier on yourself, you can now upload a 1-minute video, and Instagram will slice it up into four separate clips for you. So take advantage of this feature!

IGTV

Recommended Time: 6 minutes

Maximum Upload Time: 60 minutes

IGTV currently allows you to upload up to 60 minutes of video content from your desktop, however, if you are uploading directly from mobile, you will be limited to just 15 minutes. Either way, you need to keep in mind that IGTV is still an extension of Instagram, which tends to favor content for shorter attention spans. That’s why we recommend sticking to around 6 minutes for your video lengths. 

Twitter

Recommended Time: 45 seconds

Maximum Upload Time: 2 minutes & 20 seconds

Conciseness is Twitter’s trademark. Similar to how you’re only limited to 280 characters when typing a tweet, your video shouldn’t take too long to get your point across. Twitter users are accustomed to very short updates.

Although users on this platform don’t usually scroll quickly, they aren’t going to wait too long either. 45 seconds is the perfect time to create a video that engages your audience, but any video that gets to be longer than one minute is far too long.

The small difference in seconds between these lengths certainly matters because people notoriously have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.

Here's an example of an exceptionally short Twitter video that's eye-catching, informative, and easily digestable:

Facebook

Recommended Time: 3 Minutes

Maximum Time: 20 minutes 

Facebook allows videos to be up 20 minutes long. Though, the average length of Facebook videos is approximately 147 seconds long. Long-form Facebook videos are becoming more popular, but that doesn’t always mean that you have to spend 15 minutes recording a video.

Three minutes is the perfect time to spread your message in a captivating manner without using much effort. If you have the bandwidth to create longer videos, do so by any means. However, remember that some audiences prefer longer videos, while others want to quickly watch your video and scroll when they’re done.

After all, Facebook isn’t YouTube. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out this great video ad from Juicing Vegetables that garnered over 11 million views on Facebook.

LinkedIn

Recommended Time: 3 minutes

Maximum Upload Time: 10 minutes

Business leaders and professionals use LinkedIn to connect with like-minded individuals, find new opportunities, and get inspired. While LinkedIn videos can be up to 10 minutes, a spokesperson from the company believes that all videos on the platform should be between 30 seconds and five minutes.

To give you a precise recommended recording time, strive to keep your videos at 3 minutes. Since storytelling is a critical component of any LinkedIn video, this amount of time should give you plenty of opportunities to tell your story and encourage your audience to take action.

YouTube

Recommended Time: 10 minutes

Maximum Upload Time: 15 minutes (for unverified accounts), 

Sure, thousands of YouTubers who record extremely lengthy videos that perform extremely well. However, if your videos aren’t funny cat compilations or pranks, then it’s best for them around 10 minutes.

Doing so will keep your audience engaged and more likely to binge more videos on your channel. 15 minutes should be the maximum length of your YouTube videos. Recording your videos past this length can cause your audience to ultimately tune you out and that can also make them ignore the rest of your videos.

Take a look at how HubSpot created valuable video content around the 10-minute mark below.

Get started with videos on social media

You may have an idea for a great video in your head, but do you want to know how you can increase its reach and engagement?

Video captions can do the trick for your video marketing campaign in a variety of proven ways that you can learn about by clicking here.

If you’re ready to start making incredible videos today, click here to sign up!