These days, social video marketing has become a no-brainer for most brands as videos are engaging internet users like nothing else. If you want to be where your customers are, video content should be an important part of your marketing strategy.

Social Media Management supports video post creation, customization, and performance tracking. This article covers all the Social Media Management features available for creating video posts.

Creating a Video Post

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok all support video posts, and Instagram supports reel posts. Social Media Management enables you to create these types of posts in roughly the same way for each of the networks:

1. In the Publish module, click Create Post in the top left.
2. Choose the network and channels you want to publish your video post to.
3. Add your preferred post text to the text box.
4. You have the option to add your video asset beneath the text box. There are three ways to add it:
   • Drag and drop your video file to the file area.
   • Click the file area to open a local file browser. Choose the file to add from there.
   • While hovering over the file area, click the Cloud link to open a file picker popup. You can access various cloud storages such as Google Drive and Dropbox.
   • While hovering over the file area, click the Content Pool link to select files stored in the Content Pool.
   
5. For Facebook and LinkedIn video posts, add a title for the video.
6. Consider any additional options such as adding captions or a custom video thumbnail.
7. Once you're happy with your post, click the Publish, Schedule, or Send for Approval.

If you'd like to learn more about which file types and properties are supported by each network, we recommend checking our media attachments guide.

Adding or Selecting a Video Thumbnail Image

A thumbnail for your video post will be provided automatically, though you can also choose to edit the thumbnail on your Facebook or Instagram video posts. 

There are two ways to adjust a thumbnail: For both Facebook and Instagram, you can select a frame from the video to be used as the thumbnail. For Facebook only, you can upload your own image file as a thumbnail. 

Selecting a video frame as a thumbnail

1. Create a Facebook or Instagram video post.

2. Once you've added your video to Publish, Social Media Management will automatically select 10 frames from your video that can be used as a thumbnail. Hover over the video thumbnail under the file area and use the right/left arrows to cycle through the pre-selected thumbnails to select the one you want.

   

Uploading an custom image as thumbnail

Uploading a custom thumbnail is currently only available for Facebook video posts.

1. Create a Facebook video post.

2. Once you've added your video to Publish, hover over the file area and click the Custom button which will appear.

   
3. Select your thumbnail file in the file picker popup to add it to your post.

You can find our recommendations for the thumbnail file type and properties in our media attachments guide.

Adding Captions

About 85% of videos on Facebook are watched without sound. Facebook algorithms also penalize videos without captions, making captions vital for achieving reach.

To help you with captions, Social Media Management supports the SubRip (SRT) file format. SubRip files are plain text files that contain all subtitle information. They can be created with any professional video editing software.

Facebook recommends naming your SRT file in the following way: filename.[language code]_[country code].srt. (Download an example file).

Here's how you can add captions in Social Media Management:

1. Create a Facebook video post.
2. Once you've added your video to Publish, click the Add Captions button underneath your uploaded video.
3. Add your SRT file and click Apply.

Repeat the above steps if you'd like to add captions in more languages.

If you experience any issues adding captions, consult Facebook's troubleshooting guide.