How Long Real Estate Videos for Social Media Should Be?

There is no set-in-stone rule for general marketing videos but videos depending on the purpose can be less than two minutes.

Academy Content Team October 22, 2021Last Updated: April 8, 2022

5 minutes read

Everyone knows that videos are vital to their marketing game. For example, tweets with videos deliver up to 10x more engagement. Videos are every real estate agent’s greatest and most valuable marketing asset but is there a sweet spot for your marketing videos’ length? How long a Real Estate video for social media should be? To begin, the long-lasting 2-minutes videos is a decent guideline but let’s dig in deeper and discover why longer videos may actually have no effect on your conversion and waste your time and money.

If you think about the old days of the internet, you surely remember that in the beginning, marketing messages were not as many as they are now. Very few marketing messages would actually reach people through the internet. However, that has changed and thanks to social media, people are bombarded by thousands of marketing messages every day.

We Simply Do Not Have Time for All

That has desensitized us to most of the messages we see. In fact, our attention span is getting shorter and shorter every day. Our brains simply can not allocate enough time for all those messages and also give a very short time to those who make it into our attention to see if they are worth the time.

People’s attention span has decreased to 8.25 seconds.

The Rise of 15-second Videos

15-second videos have been used in major social media where users can share short videos. That has been reduced from one-minute videos which were first introduced. Although 1-minute and longer videos are still in the game, the emphasis on shorter videos goes to show that marketers have also found out people do not watch longer videos, or at least they won’t wait until the end of the video to find out what it is about.

Video Length for Real Estate Best Practices

We typically get bored fast with a video unless it says something really important, in which case we stick around for a long time. But what about real estate when it comes to marketing videos? The long and the short of it is to cater to your audience’s short attention spans by getting to the point fast. Given the number of marketing messages your audience is bombarded with and also the hectic life most of them run, video content is accepted as long as you don’t waste people’s time.

The Golden Window to Deliver The Message

Therefore, most of us will not spend a lot of time going through everything we see on the net. Images are easy to see but videos require some time to deliver the messages. This, in turn, has rendered long marketing videos useless. Longer marketing videos will not be watched to the end and if the messaging does not occur in the begging part of the video, chances are they will never be seen.

One to Two minutes

The general rule of thumb for marketing videos seems to be between one and two minutes. One to two minutes is short enough to keep your audience watching to the end of the video but also long enough not to bore them. If you pay close attention you will see that product overview videos are generally about this long. If you have a big announcement, like an upcoming open house, aim for somewhere in the middle — two minutes is a safe bet. Here is why 1-2 minutes of marketing videos are best for real estate:

According to Hubspot, there are best optimal times for different platforms:

Hubspot discovered that Instagram videos that received the most comments averaged 26 seconds.
Twitter users are used to short videos and videos averaging 43 seconds deliver the best engagement.
Hubspot’s audience on Facebook engages the most with 1-minute videos.
On YouTube, Hubspot sees the most engagement on videos that are about 2 minutes.

Here are some interesting stats from Wistia:

~2-minute videos can generate great engagement. If you are capable of keeping your video under 120 seconds you will keep your viewers captivated.
From minute 2 till 3, there is an obvious drop in terms of engagement.

However, another study by HubSpot found that audience engagement actually decreases after about one minute. So, for the time being, 1-2 minutes is a good bet.

After one minute, 5% of viewers stop watching videos, but after two minutes, that number jumps to 60% of viewers who stop watching.

roomvu Data

The optimal length of videos is between 70 and 90 seconds for effective engagement and impression. Agents, however, prefer longer videos.

Figure 1: The best performing Real Estate video length vs. what agents actually use.

roomvu Surve

The majority of agents in our survey said they prefer videos under 1 minute (see graph below), while they tend to post 90-second to 120-second videos (see graph above). However, when producing a video, agents need to keep in mind that videos longer than the optimal length of 70–90 seconds, may not result in the best engagement.

Figure 2: How long agents like the videos

It seems clear that shorter videos are most welcome on social media and get the best engagement. The reason behind this is that the attention span of the typical social media users is getting shorter and shorter because of their exposure to thousands of marketing messages and pieces of content. To make the most out of their time, users tend to like the videos which convey the message in a short but sweet manner.

If you want to know more about social media read our article about real estate social media marketing

Why are Short Videos More Effective?

Because short videos usually have higher retention rates, which leads to better performance in terms of engagement. Shorter videos have a better chance of being watched to the end and will make sure the message is thoroughly delivered. In other words, it is safe to say, fewer people will stop watching in the middle.

On the other hand, algorithms on social media like Instagram are tweaked to favor videos with more engagement and longer watching time. Your short videos have a better chance of meeting the criteria in this regard, hence increasing your content’s chance of appearing on explorer and recommended content for other users.

Of course, it does not necessarily mean that very short videos will do you any good. Making the video too short can backfire and lower your chances of engagement and content approval from social media engines. But keeping the videos between 1-2 minutes is a sure way to increase your content chances of standing out from the crows as long as the content itself is engaging enough and offers value.

Although different social media platforms have their own best practices, one thing seems to be common across all: quick videos work everywhere. That means you can save a lot of time and money by creating short videos around 1 to 2 minutes and using them everywhere across different platforms whereas longer videos may limit your option or even force you to make edits to the videos.