I’m yelling at my TV a lot right now. Between Severance, The White Lotus, Love Is Blind, and Pixar’s Win Or Lose (which is low-key my favorite of the four), I’m emotions every day of the week…well, not Sundays, because uh… this White Lotus season is…slow…

But we’re here to talk social, so how about we hit on:

• The ideal Instagram Reels length

• A free talk I’m giving on the creator economy

• 3 essays from other smart writers on creators, branded content, and algorithms

—Jack Appleby

Join my FREE digi talk on the Creator Economy!

I've led million $$$ creator campaigns, I'm a creator myself, and I'm giving a FREE digital talk on the future of the creator economy for brands!

My pals at Bazaarvoice asked me to kick off Day 2 of their FREE digital conference this year (you're gonna hear me say free a lot because I genuinely love when companies offer free educational resources).

My talk's on the future of creator partnerships, so I’ll hit on:

• How to get more effectiveness from creator x brand deals

• Why you need to start making long-term deals

• Why you may even wanna bring a creator in-house

But honestly, the whole agenda's pretty cool—you don't really see free two-day digital conferences very often? Plus, you'll look smart when you tell your boss you're educating yourself (take notes and send them around your team for bonus points).

Click right here to register, and I’ll see ya then!

Instagram Reels: what’s the ideal length?

It’s funny. In a lot of ways, I’m glad Instagram Head Adam Mosseri makes bunches of content clarifying algorithm & content questions on his personal IG—he’s debunked plenty of forever myths that’ve haunted the industry. But sometimes, I wonder if opening pandora’s box caused marketers to worry even more about nitty gritty algorithmic optimizations when they should reallyyy just be focusing on fundamentals.

Either way, our man Mosseri dropped an important answer last week to a question that’s kept social pros up at night.

Let’s chat about how long your Instagram Reels should be, and which metrics you should watch to judge your own success.

What’s the ideal Instagram Reel length?

There isn’t one! There is no perfect length for Instagram Reels. Mosseri even says so!

The real answer: the ideal length is however many seconds you need to tell the story you’re trying to tell, and if your storytelling is strong enough to keep a viewer engaged.

If your idea is best told in a 10 second video, make a 10 second video.

If your idea is best told in a 3 minute video, make a 3 minute video.

I always hear brands saying they’re “experimenting with different video lengths,” which really isn’t the way to think about content. You should generate ideas that you believe will be most compelling to your audience while serving your brand’s purpose & products, then produce content of whatever length makes sense for said ideas.

…okay, that’s the honest to god answer, but I can see you’re still gonna fixate ‘til you hear some silver bullet number, so we’ll move on to view metrics.

What matters more: watch % or overall watch time?

While I can preach “do what’s right for your story” thinking til I’m blue in the face, we certainly need a way to judge success for our content. For videos, the most commonly debated metrics are watch time % and overall watch time.

Lucky for us, Mosseri answered the question in a recent IG Reel:

This actually is a bit of news. Many brands & creators I know fully optimized for completion rate, even if it meant making videos shorter than they wanted. Thankfully, it supports my original answer: make the video as long as you can keep it compelling.

But maybe you should max out video length…

I chatted with Justin Flom towards the end of last year—he’s the #1 YouTube Shorts creator, notching up a 1.7 billion view video in 2024. He’s got a strategy I’d never heard back then, but that’s now supported by Mosseri’s clarification.

When I asked him about his short-form vertical strategy, he said “if a platform gives you an amount of time, take all of it. That’ll greater your chances of higher watch time.”

Now, he said that prior to Instagram expanding max Reel length from 90 seconds to 3 minutes, but it’s an interesting provocation and a strategy that’s certainly worked for Flom. I actually agree with the thinking, with one extremely important caveat—the same one I’ve hit this whole article. You’ve gotta be a good enough storyteller and understand the mechanical storytelling differences between 6 second content and 3 minute content if you wanna max our your video length.

How to get better at longer content

The reality: it’s gonna be easier for marketers and marketing creatives to keep making the shortest of short form because that’s where their experience is.

But, if you wanna get better at long-form, learn from creators.

Take MrBeast, who, yes, is an overused example, but he’s also the best at this stuff. I broke down 25 storytelling and retention tactics he used in a 14 minute video to create one of the fastest YouTube successes in his career (and no, they’re not just celeb cameos).

So maybe just make the videos you’re good at.

If your team’s better at short-form, make short-form. If your team has the chops to make… longer short-form? What do we call 3 minute videos in the modern social ecosystem? Mid-form? I don’t know, but if you’ve got the chops, go for it!

Just do what’s right for the story.

Social Cues

There are so many social big thinkers out there, writing all kinds of amazing strategies, analysis, and breakdowns. All ships rise with the tide, so here are a few reads from other places I think you could learn from.

What is Branded Content? (Jordan Rogers)

Jordan’s one of my fav marketing video creators—an ex-Nike guy who’s sharing all the insider thinking of sports marketing. I love this newsletter he dropped on the value of bigger storytelling plays for brands.

The Rise of The TikTok Oracle (Nikita Walia)

Loveee this piece. Nikita analyzes how Cultural Critics are often more Content Creator than in-depth researcher or journalist thanks to the algorithmic era. I hope it doesn’t discourage people from trying their hand at sharing their thoughts, but do hope it inspires more depth.

Are influencers now becoming interchangeable? (Laurent Francois)

A great read on whether things are getting a bit homogenous on our feeds, and who’s really to blame. Microtrends? Algorithms? Risk-averse brands? You tell us.