In the past few years video has become the highest converting medium in the social media space. When it comes to content, video is the king of social media marketing. So a good question to ask ourselves, why does video convert more than any other form of social marketing? Simply stated, it’s more human than other versions of social marketing. The movement more closely represents life. If it’s a video with people in it, faces give off emotional cues we understand and can identify with.

As smartphones have become more easily accessible across the world, real human connection is decreasing in some ways. We need human interaction, so how do we fill the void? We do this through social media!

So now that you get a sense as to why video marketing is so important in this day and age, now it is time to learn how to measure the success of your videos posted to social media.

Here are the metrics that matter the most for video performance:

1. View-through Rate
This metric tells you how many people your video reaches and how many of those who were “reached” viewed the video. A video view is typically defined by watching the video for at least 3 seconds (though Facebook’s newer average watch time replaces that metric).

If 30 percent of your audience sees your video on average, then 30,000 of 100,000 fans are viewing your video. This would be considered a decent number in advertising. If fewer than 30 percent are watching your video, it means something may be wrong with the video itself.

It is important to engage with your audience right away when creating a video. You will want to connect emotionally or catch your audiences attention right out of the gate. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on the view-through rates.

2. 10 Second Video Views
The next metric you want to monitor is how many of your views turn into 10 second views. You want to be able to figure out how many quality views you are receiving for your video. A good way to measure this is by checking if viewers are bouncing after the first few seconds. This will help you determine if your audience actually enjoys the content you’re producing and posting, or if you’re just wasting your time.

3. Video Engagement
When it comes to your video content, positive engagement is very important. Studies show that on average, about 9 percent of your entire reach will be able to see your post. So if you have 200 fans, only 18 of them will see your video. If those fans give you some form of negative feedback on your video, it will compromise both the reach on your video and that of future content. Positive engagement usually consists of likes, comments and shares of the video.

4. Video Average Watch Time
We know that if people watch more than 3 seconds of your video, then it results in a “video view.” If they watch 10 seconds or more of that same video, that is considered to be a fairly high level of engagement. When the average view time gets up to this point, it indicates that people are consuming your content.

5. Video Length
Ideally, you want the length of your video to be somewhere around 20-90 seconds. Anything beyond that amount of time may suffer when it comes to keeping your fans engaged. Adding captions to your videos is a good idea, because these videos usually play on mute by default. If there is no caption, your fans will be less likely to view your content unless you let them know what the video is about beforehand.

Video has the potential to be the most powerful and effective marketing tool you use, especially if you produce highly engaging content. The feedback and data you get from Facebook videos should help move you in the right direction.