The success that Snapchat has seen over the last year – with their predominantly millennial audience – has inspired a new approach to video that has taken the social media sphere by storm. The vertical videos made up of short, infographic-styled ‘snippet’ clips first embraced by brands on Snapchat Discover have now become the standard format for Instagram Stories templates, and, most recently, Facebook Stories, and publishers like the Daily Mail have hired entire teams dedicated to Snapchat-styled video creation. As North American CEO Jon Steinberg told Digiday, “It’s a different canvas. Every snap is custom animation, custom experience, custom design. It’s the only platform where we have dedicated staffers.”
We’re excited to announce the launch of Wibbitz Snippets, our new Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram Stories templates – and the first tool for publishers and brands to automatically create vertical videos for these channels. Check out AdWeek’s coverage of our new Snippet tool here!
The new Snippet tool automatically creates 10-second clips with heavy text and graphic elements – taking design cues from the content we’re seeing on millennials’ favorite platforms – and allows any one person to manage an entire day’s worth of social Stories production. These Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram Stories templates serve as an animated teaser or headline for a story, in order to entice audiences to further engage with content on social feeds and mobile sites.
How Snippet video automation works:
The Snippet is the newest addition to our Control Room platform’s selection of video types (other options include Voiceover, Caption, and Listicle). Each video type has its own distinctive features that work best for different types of stories, which is why its selection is the first step in our Control Room’s video creation process. Once a user chooses the Snippet video type and enters the text that the video will feature, a rough cut video is created within 10-15 seconds with relevant media footage and large, colorful text overlays. Then, users can edit their video’s text and transitions, choose a Theme, and click Publish. The entire process is completed in less than 5 minutes, and allows publishers of all sizes to produce broadcast-ready Snippet videos without allocating any additional time or resources.
Snippet video use cases:
Snapchat Discover & Instagram Stories templates for promoting news & driving traffic
A select group of our top-tier publishing partners have already begun using the Snippet tool in the Wibbitz Control Room platform. Here’s an example of a Snippet video that was featured in iHeart Radio’s Snapchat Discover channel:
And here’s a video that TMZ published using the Snippet tool as an Instagram Stories template:
Content Marketing on Facebook & Twitter
We’ve also found the Snippet video type to be beneficial to our own content marketing efforts. We ran a month-long test on Wibbitz’s Facebook and Twitter feeds to compare posts promoting five blog articles – one post, with an embedded Snippet video, and one with an embedded image. We found that, on average, the Snippet videos generated 65% more reach, 437% more clicks, and 72% more engagement on Facebook, and 133% more engagement on Twitter. Whether you’re using the Wibbitz Snippet as a new way to package content or as a teaser for content promotion, our new vertical video format is a clear winner for any brand with a social media account.
Check out this Snippet video that generated 138% more reach, 1600% more clicks, and 200% more engagement on Facebook, and 243% more engagement on Twitter, than an image post promoting the same blog: