In January of 2017, Facebook announced an algorithm update, including changes to the way they rank videos in the News Feed. As a social media management tool that makes it easy for social media marketers to schedule and manage posts across social networks in one place, it’s important for Buffer to always stay current with the latest social marketing trends and best practices that are critical to their customers' success. As a result, they wanted to dive in to find out what types of videos perform best within the new algorithm, and share their findings with their customers and others looking to stand out on social media.

Buffer already has research that shows that videos get 3X more engagement than any other type of content on social media. But Brian Peters, Digital Strategist at Buffer, says they wanted to do new research to “get to the bottom of what makes certain videos successful on social media.” He created an Animoto account and set out to do some tests and answer the question, “Where does video perform best and in what format?”