5 Tips to Make Effective and Engaging Social Media Videos
- Written by Lilly Miller
Now that we have smartphones and other devices that can support high-quality videos in any format, length, and resolution, marketers and small businesses alike are taking advantage of the trend. Add to that, people are busier by the day, with little time or patience for anything slow or passive.
Instead, we immediately reach for the stories on social media, checking out the latest videos of our favourite brands, and we are much more likely to click on video-based ads. Visuals are quickly taking over as the main format across all platforms, making it easier for people to get the information they want more quickly and efficiently.
The information given in video format is much more digestible, it’s more stimulating, and it’s much more relatable than pure text. Knowing that, you can leverage this simple human preference for visuals and create videos on social media that will grab your followers’ attention and get them to engage with you.
Determine your videos’ goals
Posting a video of a cute puppy is easy enough on your personal profile. When you’re running a social media page, however, for a brand or a professional (even for yourself), you need more than “cute” for people to pay attention, let alone show repeat interest in your page.
Much like any other piece of content, your videos need to be purposeful. Determine exactly why you want to post a video and what you want to accomplish.
Do you want people to click on an embedded link and make a purchase, letting your video work as part of your sales strategy? Would you like your video to boost your SEO? Or would you like to announce a new product launch? Maybe you’d want to showcase important data and research from your industry. Anything is possible with videos, but you need to create a specific strategy tied to your goals in order to create the right type of video content.
Understand what your audience likes
You’ve determined your brand values and UVP based on what the market needs. Similarly, you need to consider how your audience perceives videos. While the general rule of thumb is creating short and sweet videos to keep your followers’ attention high throughout, some videos do need to be lengthier to fulfill their purpose, especially if your audience requires that much value.
Check out your audience’s current digital footprint to understand what types of videos they interact with the most – their content type, purpose, duration, if they have music, captions, the works. This knowledge will help you define precisely how you should create videos for each platform.
Create impactful video intros
The success of every video depends on its powerful beginning. The intro alone can make or break your video campaign, as it’s meant to capture your audience’s attention and immediately “glue” them to the screen. To simplify the process, you can use an online intro maker that allows you to create impactful intros to every video, for every purpose and platform.
Such a tool helps you produce more videos in less time, and since they’re often free, you can preserve your budget, too. Access to existing templates and high levels of customization allows you to set up an intro quickly without sacrificing any of its quality.
Don’t forget a clear CTA
Much like the intro serves to grab your audience’s attention, you cannot end on a mellow note without any particular goal in mind. Remember the purpose from the beginning of the article? That purpose should be woven into the entire length of the video, but it should be particularly clear at the very end, with the help of a punchy call to action.
Whenever you want to promote your business through digital marketing, a clear, effective CTA is the final piece of the puzzle that will get people to take action, not just enjoy this fine piece of content you’ve created. A single click or tap should be enough to take them to where you want them: in your web store, on your social media page, to download a free resource, or sign up for your email newsletter.
Analyse, rinse, improve, repeat
You don’t need a one-hit wonder among your videos, nor can you expect all videos to perform the same. What you can and should do is learn from every video you create. Chances are, they’re hiding invaluable information about what your audience responds to and likes the most, so that you can give them more of what they want.
Make sure to leverage the necessary analytics tools and keep refining the videos. Some will be more successful than others, and then it’s up to you to recognize what makes your audience tick and what sets apart the videos that succeed from those that fail.
As effective and trendy as videos currently are, they don’t come with an inherent guarantee that they will make your audience tremble with joy every time you post a new Instagram story. You need a strategy to help generate videos with purpose and make sure that your knowledge of your audience fuels your every decision in the production process. Only then will you be able to create videos that spark interest in your followers and put your brand on the map.
