The general rule of thumb, is that Instagram video content should be short.
Why?
Instagram users are often young, multitasking and often travelling, so have much shorter attention spans and are looking for short form content that will excite them. They are also used to scrolling quite quickly through the feed, therefore stopping for a long period of time for a video may feel unnatural.
To capture your audience's attention and stop them from scrolling past your post, your content needs to be short in length, have a good story and be visually exciting.
In-feed videos can be up to 1 minute, as that is the upper limit the platform will support, but we suggest keeping it much shorter.
Snapchat may have pioneered the short-form, temporary video content, but Instagram has taken it a step further and made it an enormous success. The feature has skyrocketed in popularity, showing a 300% growth rate in under three years and is not slowing down any time soon. Instagram Stories are a great way to grow brand awareness, show the behind-the-scenes and humanise your company. Convinced Stories are great for marketing? Good! Now, how long should they be? Videos on Stories are capped at 15 seconds, but you can post as many 15 second stories as you want or post a longer video over multiple 15 second scenes. Facebook recommends using stories with 3 15 second parts as this is the most engaging. When it comes to advertising, however, you are limited to the 15 second video length. So make sure your video is visually exciting, breaks through the organic content and captures your audience's attention. Instagram stories video length (organic): 15 seconds (x3) Instagram stories video length (paid advert): 15 seconds
Unlike Facebook Live which gives you up to 4 hours air time, the maximum length on Instagram Live is 60 minutes. You can start another live broadcast immediately after if you need longer, however you run the risk of losing viewers. Much like Facebook Live, longer is better. Shoot for at least 10 minutes to allow enough time to attract viewers and avoid running over the 60 minute cap, unless it is carefully orchestrated and communicated to viewers. Instagram Live video length: 10 to 60 minutes
IGTV (short for Instagram TV) is designed to be long form content, so generally your video should be as long as it needs to be to get your point across. Generally, your videos can be up to 10 minutes long, however larger and verified accounts can have up to 60 minutes as long as it is uploaded from a computer. IGTV video length: 15 seconds to 10 minutes (60 minutes for larger accounts)
Instagram launched it's new feature "Reels" in August 2020 to rival the ever-growing TikTok. It is the newest feature to the platform and as a result has not been utilised by many businesses yet.
Reels allows you to record and edit short videos up to 15 seconds in the app. You can record one or multiple 15 second clips to make longer or shorter videos.
Not much research has been done yet into the optimum length of a reel, but much like TikTok, as long as your videos are fun and engaging they can be as long as necessary.
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