Videos have slowly but surely grown to dominate the social media landscape, and for good reason. Each and every year more and more viewers are watching more and more hours of video across various social media platforms, and that trend does not show any signs of dissipating anytime soon.
As much as more people are watching more videos on social media however, the number of videos that are being uploaded has increased as well. In short if you want to create social media videos you’ll be up against a lot of competition – which is why it is crucial that your videos are able to engage viewers effectively.
The good news is that creating engaging social media videos isn’t nearly as difficult as it sounds – and there are 7 easy ways that you can get started:
1. Give Viewers What They Want
It may sound obvious, but if you want to create engaging social media videos they need to be about topics that viewers want to know more about. The more your video topics are able to resonate with viewers, the easier it will be for you to engage them.
To put it simply, you need to find out as much as you can about your target demographic and what motivates them. Try to identify any problems they have, and see if your videos can help offer them a solution.
2. Come up with Short Videos
Generally the viewers on social media tend to have short attention spans, and aren’t going to sit through long videos. As a rule you should try to keep your videos within the 1 to 2 minute range at most – and you could even come up with videos that are as short as 15 seconds.
By coming up with short videos, you’re more likely to retain the majority of viewers all the way through to the end – which will definitely help your engagement levels.
3. Give Viewers a Reason to Watch – in 10 Seconds Or Less
Another fact to keep in mind is that most viewers will decide whether or not to stay and watch a video within the first 10 seconds, or less. Providing them with a compelling reason to stay and watch will ensure that the majority actually do so.
With that in mind it should be clear that you need to get to the point quickly and immediately let viewers know what your video is about and (more importantly) how it will benefit them. By letting viewers know how your video could help them, you are more likely to convince them to watch it.
4. Visually Deliver the Message
One of the main reasons why videos are so popular and tend to be engaging is because they are able to visually deliver information to viewers. No other type of content is able to match videos in this regard, but if you want to engage viewers it is important that you take advantage of that fact.
Try to find ways that you can visually deliver the information and message in your video as effectively as possible. Don’t rely too much on the voiceover, as an increasing number of viewers on social media are watching videos that are muted anyway.
5. Provoke an Emotional Response
In most cases when people decide to share a video or comment on it, they are being driven by emotions. Considering part of the aim of engaging videos is to encourage reactions, it should go without saying that you will want to try to foster that type of emotional response.
As a starting point you should try to plan your video so that it incorporates an emotional element of some kind. It could be humor, surprise, excitement, or anything else for that matter.
Another option is to provoke an emotional response with storytelling and using a character-driven narrative structure to make viewers feel more emotionally invested.
6. Take Your Videos Live
Recently social media platforms have started to introduce livestreaming, and it is a move that has proven to be extremely successful. More importantly live videos on social media are able to generate much higher levels of engagement than conventional videos – making it a trend that you should jump on board.
Creating live webinars, discussion panels, or Q&A sessions will provide you with videos that let you directly engage with viewers. Alternatively you could create other types of content such as workplace tours, event livestreams, and so on.
Part of the beauty of live videos is that viewers tend to enjoy its authenticity. In short planning, recording and streaming the video will generally require less logistics than conventional videos.
7. Learn from Every Video
Make no mistake creating truly engaging videos isn’t something that happens overnight, and instead you will need to gradually improve the videos that you publish on social media. To accomplish that you have to make it a point to learn as much as you can from every video, by tracking its performance and analyzing it.
As you publish more and more videos and experiment with different types of videos, topics, durations, and more – you’ll start to develop a better understanding of the type of videos that your viewers find engaging. Ultimately that will help you to create far more engaging videos in the future.
Conclusion
As you can see creating engaging videos for social media doesn’t need to be complicated – and it should be easy enough for you to get started using the methods outlined above. Before you publish any videos make sure their quality is top notch, and maybe use a movie converter such as Movavi Video Converter to convert the video format based on the recommended settings of the platform as well.
At the end of the day creating engaging social media videos is its own reward and not only will your videos be more effective, but their reach will be higher as well. In short – it is the key that will allow you to truly tap into the power of social media with videos.
Community manager at Visual Contenting. Jacqueline loves to talk about social media trends, new technology and how they help businesses accelerate their marketing efforts.
