Maximizing ‘golden minute’ key to social media video success: MIC

Keeping videos to under a minute are the best way to appeal to social media users in Taiwan, the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC) said Monday as it unveiled the results of its latest survey on how social media content is consumed locally.

MIC senior industrial analyst Rosa Chang (???) said content creators should abide by the "golden minute" rule when making videos for Taiwanese audiences because it fits their preferences.

According to the MIC survey of 1,200 people, when respondents were asked to select their preferred video length, 52.6 percent gave a time of under one minute.

Some 26.1 percent of all respondents preferred videos lasting 30 seconds to a minute, 20.3 percent opted for 10-30 second videos, and 6.2 percent liked 3-10 second videos.

Content of over a minute also has an audience, Chang said, as long as the creator does not overshoot the "golden minute" by too much. About a third of respondents (33.8 percent) cited a preference for videos lasting 1-5 minutes.

There was little appetite, however, for videos of beyond five minutes, the survey found. Only 9.3 percent of respondents preferred videos lasting 6-15 minutes, and only 4.2 percent cited a preference for anything longer than 15 minutes.

Those results dovetailed with the top type of social media content preferred by Taiwanese -- Instagram and Facebook stories -- which are produced as one or more 15 second videos and have gone mainstream among social media users, Chang said.

Asked about their preferred types of social media content, stories on Facebook and Instagram were chosen by 37.5 percent of respondents, followed by recorded videos (36.6 percent), live streaming (31.7 percent), infographics (26.9 percent) and pure text posts (26.9 percent).

In terms of written content, 49.7 percent of respondents favored texts 140 to 280 words long, followed by 24.9 percent who preferred to-the-point updates of 10 words or less.

The survey also found that Taiwanese users tend to browse through personal updates before scrolling through the news.

Over half, or 55.3 percent, of those surveyed said the first thing they do in the morning is to check Line. Other morning habits are scrolling through Facebook (41.6 percent), and checking online news (26 percent), Instagram (18.1 percent), and Line Today News (17.9 percent).

Those numbers indicate that the internet has taken over traditional media as the way people want to receive their news, according to MIC.

Among younger netizens, Instagram seems to be the most popular app, beating out Line as the preferred social media platform to browse among those aged 18 to 19 and ranking among the top three apps in the 18 to 29 age group.

Younger users also have a higher acceptance of online learning and are more adept at getting consumer information and deals online, Chang said, and she suggested that businesses should pay attention to the preferences of younger consumers when designing social media marketing strategies.

The online survey, conducted in the second quarter, had 1,200 valid responses with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel