Whether you post on Instagram for fun or as a strategy to grow your brand, you'd want your videos to get as many engagements as possible. There's no point in spending hours creating videos that no one ever sees.

While there are a lot of factors that affect how much engagement your videos receive on Instagram, the length of your videos has a role to play. So what's the right video length to post on Instagram?

Why Instagram Video Length Is Important

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Image Credit: Meta

Until 2016, Instagram was mostly a chronological feed of square photos and videos. As a result, post items were shown to users in the order they were created, basically on a "first come, first served" basis. Although things were simpler, using a chronological feed meant users mostly saw the most recent items, while older, sometimes more valuable ones, rarely got noticed.

Just like most major social networks, Instagram introduced content suggestion algorithms to better rank and tailor content to suit each user's interest. Consequently, video items were no more shown solely based on their creation time, but based on an algorithmic prediction of a user's interest. To calculate this interest, video length is both directly and indirectly weighed by Instagram's algorithms.

In order words, the length of your videos influences how much visibility your content receives. Because Instagram has different algorithms for Reels, Stories, and Feed videos, depending on the type of video content, your video length will have varying degrees of influence on how many people get to see it.

Although Instagram still shows users non-chronological posts by default, as of 2022, it now gives them the option to view posts in chronological order.

What Is the Best Length for Instagram Videos?

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Instagram is designed to cater to a shorter attention span. This means a short burst of entertaining, wholesome video content is the ideal video format for Instagram.

Normally, Instagram Stories have a maximum limit of 15 seconds while in-feed videos are pegged at 60 minutes. Similarly, Instagram Reels are pegged at 90 seconds in video length. However, even when considering this limit, you should ideally keep your videos as reasonably short as possible.

For Instagram Reels, the algorithm is heavily reliant on social proof and engagement. It weighs video completion rates and how many times a video is re-watched. A 25-second Reel is significantly more likely to be completed and re-watched than a 90-second Reel. Every completion and re-watch from each user that interacts with your Reels counts towards wider visibility for that video.

Wondered why you're seeing mostly short Reels on Instagram? It's not because people aren't creating longer ones. It's because the shorter ones typically outperform the longer ones. This is partly why IGTV's long-form video content didn't work out.

For Feed videos, the algorithm considers slightly different signals to boost your videos. However, video length still plays a role. There's no magical length, like maybe 35 or 45 seconds, that does the trick. However, like almost everywhere on Instagram, shorter is typically better.

This is why so many so-called Instagram experts recommend a 26-second video. 26 seconds sometimes work not because 26 is the magic number, but because it is brief enough for a short attention span yet long enough to convey a complete idea. This is why 27, 28, 30, or 35 seconds might work as well.

Although your Instagram Stories might be suggested to people that do not follow you, length is currently not a significant deciding factor. The visibility of Story videos is much less influenced by video length than it is by Reels and in-feed videos.

Learn to Strike a Balance

To achieve a wider reach for your videos, length alone does not run the show. Prioritize value over length, but keep things as compressed as possible.

Ultimately, the concept of social proof (how many people interact with your content and in what manner) will decide whether your video is valuable to the wider Instagram community. If it's deemed worthy, a shorter length will always help it get the audience it deserves.