What 201 Facebook reels taught me about short hiking videos
I pulled the numbers on all 201 reels on my Facebook Page. One real moment beat montages, map reels won, and 43 shorts in two days backfired.
I make long films about hiking alone, mostly for YouTube, and have for about ten years. This year I started turning them into short vertical videos for every platform. On October 9 I had Claude, the AI I work with, pull the numbers on every reel I've ever posted there and tell me what works.
Why Facebook, in my own words
Facebook wasn't really that important to me before this year. I completely disregarded it for years, and I kind of regret that, because it's a really powerful place to post, and I think the community there is actually pretty good. It goes along with this idea of making one piece of content and then sharing it in lots of different places. I did all of the hard work but just didn't do the easy step of distributing it to all these places, like Facebook. And Facebook is already making me money and growing in a way that YouTube and Instagram really aren't. So it's interesting to see. I really like Facebook, and posting reels there just makes total sense.
Why look at the numbers now
- Facebook is a discovery channel for me. 92 to 94% of the watch time on my reels comes from Facebook recommending them to strangers. Each reel lives or dies on its first seconds.
- A Facebook creator challenge rewards posting reels often. Before posting a lot more, I wanted to know which reels to post.
How the analysis worked
Claude matched three read-only Business Suite reports into one row per reel, 201 in all: my Page's whole history. Each short got a format, a length, whether the caption says "alone" or "solo", and how many shorts went up that day. Then it compared the median views of each group, so one viral hit can't skew it. KraigOS, the system Claude and I built to run my work, keeps the clip library the results feed into.
All views below are Facebook-only lifetime views as of October 9.
One real moment beats a montage
My most-viewed short isn't a trip summary. It's 58 seconds of one night alone in the Three Fingers fire lookout: 435K views and 2,854 saves, and people watched 20 seconds of it on average. It's cut from my film about that trip, and the route is in my Three Fingers guide.
Reels built on one moment had a median of 28.9K views, the best of any big group. A rainstorm on the Ak-Suu Traverse in Kyrgyzstan got 104K, with people staying almost 18 of its 47 seconds. (My Ak-Suu guide.)
Clips titled with just a place, like "Hiking in the Azores", did worst: a median of 10.7K. The exception made a claim. Best Hike on the Island of Madeira got 185K. "Best" gives a stranger a reason to watch. (My Madeira guide.)
The split-map route reel is the strongest new format
Split-map reels draw my route across a map on half the screen while my footage plays on the other. Only two have gone up, so this is early, but both did well:
- Hornstrandir, Iceland: 158K Facebook views in its first ten days and the second most saves of any short. (The guide, the film.)
- K2 Base Camp, with my AI voice narrating: 39K after two days. (The guide.)
A 15-second montage of the Alta Via 1 made from the same kind of footage got 31K, and people watched 2.6 seconds of it.
"Alone" in the caption
Shorts whose caption says "alone" or "solo" had a median of 20K views; the rest had 12.6K. Seven of my top ten say it, including Hiking the Italian Alps alone (399K), 80 miles alone on the Skye Trail (171K) and 6 days hiking 85 miles solo in the Lofoten Islands (104K). It's true of almost every trip I film, so now it goes in wherever it fits. (Guides: Alta Via 1, Skye Trail, Lofoten.)
Posting in bulk hurt, and repeating a topic hurt more
On February 9 and 10 I put up 43 shorts in two days. Shorts posted on days with five or more got about half the median views of shorts posted on days with one to four.
Same-topic reels hurt the most. Three Azores reels went up within three minutes: the first got 119K, the second 8.4K and the third 7.1K. A Salkantay Trek montage posted a minute after another Peru reel got 2.2K, my lowest short. Nine of my ten weakest shorts came from those two days.
Still, the lookout and Madeira reels both went up on February 10. A strong moment survives bad timing. A generic one doesn't. (Azores guide, Salkantay Trek guide.)
30 to 45 seconds, and seconds watched matter most
Shorts of 31 to 45 seconds had the best median. Views went up with the number of seconds people watched more than with the percent they finished, so a very short clip has a ceiling even if most people finish it.
Long films posted as reels drew the most views
Facebook calls every Page video a reel, including full films. In February I uploaded my YouTube back catalog there, and those 115 films drew more views in total than all 86 shorts. It's top-heavy: my 17-minute Alta Via 1 film has 1.04 million views and the 14-minute K2 film 778K, but the typical long film did less than the typical short. Hut-to-hut and expedition films do best.
Sponsored reels reach people but don't hold them
A sponsored reel from my Dents du Midi trip got 147K views, but people watched 2.9 seconds of it on average, and only 2 shared it. Across all 18 sponsored shorts, the share rate was about a tenth of everything else's.
Two tips for reading Business Suite numbers
- The "Views" column includes Instagram. For a reel crossposted from Instagram, Business Suite adds the Instagram views in: my Hornstrandir reel shows 270,956 there but 157,995 on Facebook alone. To judge Facebook, use the post export's Facebook-only number.
- Follows aren't a Facebook signal. Facebook reported 0 follows on every native reel that had a follows number; follows only showed up on Instagram crossposts. So we don't judge a Facebook reel by follows.
What we changed
What surprised me is how large the hiking community is there. There are a lot of people looking for advice on where to travel and how to hike, so the community is pretty good.
I'm doing research on formats and trying to learn how people make photo posts, carousels, reels and long form, and what that looks like on Facebook, because I'm used to the other platforms. So I'm watching a little on Facebook just to understand what works there, how people share and what people expect. The short vertical videos, the reels, do really well on Facebook. I think that's natural, because people are probably watching on their phones. And like I said, I'm making a ton of vertical shorts that can be posted in lots of different places. So why not?
Here's what changed after the analysis:
- Every short is ranked. Claude scored all 67 clips in my library best to worst using these findings, and re-ranks as new numbers come in. The best go up first.
- One or two a day, never a dump. No route repeats within about three days.
- Map-route and one-moment reels come first. Place-name montages go last.
- Weak ones get re-cut. Most map reels run 55 to 71 seconds, so their next version is a 30 to 45 second cut.
- "Alone" goes in the caption when it's true.
What's next
More map reels for the routes in my guides, the 30 to 45 second cuts, and a weekly re-rank. In a few weeks there'll be enough new reels to check whether these patterns hold.
FAQ
How often should I post reels on Facebook?
On my Page, reels posted on days with one to four shorts got about twice the median views of reels posted on days with five or more. Several reels on the same topic within minutes hurt the most. I now post one or two a day.
What's the best length for a Facebook reel?
For my hiking shorts, 31 to 45 seconds had the best median views. What matters more is how many seconds people actually watch.
Does the Views number in Meta Business Suite include Instagram?
For reels crossposted from Instagram, yes. Use the post export's Facebook-only views to judge Facebook.
Should I post my long YouTube videos as Facebook reels?
They drew more views in total than all my shorts, but a few big films carry that total. Films about long hut-to-hut and expedition trips did best.
Do sponsored reels do worse on Facebook?
Mine reached plenty of people but held them for about 3 seconds and were rarely shared: about a tenth of the share rate of my other shorts.
How did you analyze your Facebook reels?
Claude downloaded read-only exports from Meta Business Suite, matched them into one table with a row per reel, labelled each short, and compared median views for each group.