It’s difficult to think of an organization who isn’t leveraging social media to accomplish their goals in 2025.
Whether the tone is serious or playful, whether the intent is awareness, information, or activation: social media profiles have become entirely standard practice – if not completely necessary – for connecting with audiences.
Video can inform and activate audiences to act: from healthcare to purchasing. See more of our work with American Kidney Fund here.
Despite the commonplace practice, we still see teams struggling to perform well on socials. Marketing that stands out from the crowd takes strategy, clarity, and the right format.
The past few years have ushered in a new gold standard across major platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts. Vertical video is now the preferred format for short-form social media content that audiences are likely to be viewing on the go. Whether you’re promoting a service, sharing a nonprofit success story, or educating customers, tailoring your videos to the platform’s preferred format can significantly boost visibility and engagement.
This guide is your one-stop shop for better understanding how to optimize video for social media: what formats work best where, ideal video lengths, how to make a horizontal video vertical, and smart ways to maximize your existing video content across platforms.
Let’s dive in.
Why Vertical Video Dominates Social Media
If you’ve ever tried to watch a horizontal video on your phone and found yourself rotating your device or squinting at tiny details, congratulations: you’ve passed Vertical Video 101.
Vertical video – or 9:16 aspect ratio – fits the way we naturally hold our phones. It takes up more screen space, grabs attention faster, and performs better in mobile-first environments.
What is the best video orientation for social media?
We can’t truly recommend a one-size fits all strategy for every organization. Depending on our client goals, we create comprehensive packages that include a variety of formats.
That being said, the current social media environment favors a vertical orientation for videos. In fact, if your videos aren’t vertically optimized, it’s possible you could be missing out on a huge chunk of your audience. Platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok are designed around vertical video formats, and their algorithms prioritize such content, enhancing visibility and engagement.
Here are some other facts from across the web that support the implementation of a 9:16 aspect ratio for your best performing content:
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94% of smartphone users hold their phones vertically, making vertical video the natural choice for mobile viewing. [Make The Turn]
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Vertical videos on Facebook receive up to 4 times more engagement than square videos, and on X (formerly Twitter), they perform 2.5 times better. [Packsia.com]
How to Make a Horizontal Video Vertical
Converting a horizontal video to vertical isn’t as simple as cropping the edges. Reformatting for the vertical environment means thinking the focal point. What part of the scene is most important? What needs to be visible in the vertical frame?
Making these calls takes a combination of animation skills and communication savvy. Fortunately, you have options for making your horizontal video content vertical:
Maximize Your Investment with Expert Video Formatting
The best way to maximize an investment in video content is to start with format flexibility from the get-go. The animations and videos we create can easily be reformatted to horizontal, vertical, square, or anything in between.
Why does this matter? You enhance the impact of your video content investment when you can reuse assets across channels without creating new videos from scratch. You’ll maintain brand consistency across every platform, maximize reach, and still be saving time and budget.
A popular option amongst our clients for horizontal video reformatting is adding background bars. By adding branded backgrounds to your traditional explainer video, you enhance the look of your animation while stabilizing it for a 9:16 environment.
With custom reformatting, our team animates your completed horizontal video to fit the vertical video format. We share more on how to do that yourself below.
Simple Reformatting
Use simple reformatting when you want the fastest and most affordable route to bringing your video to reels, TikTok, and shorts.
Custom Reformatting
Use custom reformatting to replace and re-space important elements of your animation, retaining visibility on platforms that cut content off with buttons and captions.
Expert Tips for Reformatting Your Horizontal Content
Whether you DIY your reformatting or team up with professionals, it’s going to be crucial to carefully optimize the content for the vertical environment by attending to the following changes:
Designing for a new frame means rethinking calls to action and rescaling text to respect the unique borders and overlay on different platforms (consider the ever-present caption and user profile information displayed across the bottom of the screen when watching Reels.) Because you don’t want any of that to cover your content, it’s necessary to arrange any animated elements into the correct frame space.
It’s also sometimes necessary to redevelop your message for shorter attention spans. Instagram video length TikTok video length should always be less than one minute, and even under thirty seconds if possible.
Why? Vertical content thrives when it’s quick and punchy. But that doesn’t mean your long-form video is wasted. In fact, it just means you could segment it and create more.
At a special discount for three videos or more, our studio can support you turning one horizontal video into multiple vertical clips, each tailored to a specific moment, audience, or call-to-action.
How Can I Make My Vertical Video Look Better?
The rise of short-form video content has changed everything, and some teams are still catching up. From our expert position as an animation studio, here’s how to position yourself on vertical video (literally and creatively!)
Physically Positioning Yourself on Vertical Video
Physical and creative positioning matter in reel-shaped content. Notice how our client advisor Cassandra engages the viewer with gestures and questions.
Make Your Vertical Videos Accessible
Accessibility is often overlooked. Taking the time to ensure accessibility means more people can engage with your content. Consider the following for vertical video accessibility:
For this project, we developed animations in multiple languages with subtitles to increase the reach – and ultimately, the voter turnout! Click here to learn more about our translation services.
Tips for Better Video Performance
Regardless of platform, these tips will help your videos look better and perform better:
Don’t Just Reformat…Reimagine!
Optimizing for vertical video isn’t about squeezing a horizontal video into a tall frame—it’s about reimagining how your content can thrive in the palm of your viewer’s hand.
Whether you’re launching a campaign, educating your community, or onboarding a new team, adapting to the right formats makes your message clearer, more engaging, and more widely seen.
At our studio, we specialize in creating and reformatting content for the scroll-friendly, story-driven world of social media. From scratch or from existing assets, we help organizations of all kinds build visual content that’s optimized for impact.
Whether it’s reformatting your explainer video for social media or building a comprehensive, cross-platform campaign, we’ll help you get the most out of every frame.
