Sam Makad
Sam Makad is a business consultant. He helps small & medium enterprises to grow their businesses and overall ROI. You can follow Sam on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.
Fabricating videos can be more formidable than writing a blog post or designing an image. But it isn’t as difficult as you might have imagined. Engulfing video marketing into your marketing strategy will significantly help drive traffic to your site.
The video makes it so much easier for you to get your message across to prospective customers on social media. The social media posts usually don't say much since there is a limit to the word count.
However, video lets you squeeze in all you want to say in less than 2 minutes. You'll have to make your video interesting so that people don't click away halfway while watching it. The following are 13 tips for creating an engaging social media video.
1. Determine the Video Topic
Firstly, you must decide what video you want to make. You can go to your website analytics stats and check the article that gets the most views in the past six months.
You can also check the social media stats and find out things like keywords people use in searching in your social profile and posts with the most comments and likes. Compare the two stats to see what type of video works best.
2. Prepare a Storyboard
You should prepare a storyboard on how the video story is to be. The storyboard consists of a series of visuals on the video storyline. You don't need to be a professional artist to draw the visuals.
With a storyboard, you will know what you need to film. Once you have the storyboard, you can write a rough script for the voiceover narration.
3. Write a Script
Before creating the script, you must first determine what platform you want to publish the video. Every platform is different; for example, on Twitter, 4 minutes of videos perform the best.
On Instagram, the 60 seconds of videos have the best performance. If you plan to have another person narrating from the script, you can have him edit the script to his style so that it sounds more natural.
4. Use a Video Template
You can use a ready video template if you are not a professional. The video template contains placeholders for putting images and text. There are a variety of templates with color themes and font styles that fit your brand.
Using the ready template the online video editor provides to make your video can save you a lot of time. It works best for people who make videos for a living for their clients. The client has a lot of demand and will want you to make a lot of changes.
If you use the template, it will be easy to make modifications. It prevents you from having to start from scratch. The template is highly customizable, and you can make it unique with just a little creativity.
5. Get Straight to the Point
To save time, you need to get straight to the point right from the beginning of the video, as all professionals who do video editing for social media for a living can tell you. This means you should not waste time unnecessarily talking about things that increase the video length.
Instead, start with an opener that tells the audience what the video is about and what the audience will receive after watching it. Explain each point using short, clear sentences. Keep recapping the points you just discussed so the viewers would remember what you said at the end.
Recommended: How to Improve Your Blog Posts With YouTube Videos
6. Create a Custom Video Thumbnail
Usually, people stumble across the video while scrolling through social media posts. You want to capture their attention so that they will stop scrolling to watch your video. To capture their attention, you need to use an attractive thumbnail.
For example, you can use a thumbnail showing the person's eyes making contact with the audience. It can also be a thumbnail of someone showing a strong emotion, like anger.
A video thumbnail with a bright-colored background can also capture people's attention. You can add some text on the thumbnail to inspire people to click and watch your video.
You can choose an image that relates to the video content. You can put a logo in the bottom left/right corner if you want to add a logo. Adding a logo to your thumbnails can create consistency in the videos.
7. Optimize the Video to be Soundless
You should optimize your video for watching without sound. Many people turn off the sound when they watch videos for various reasons. So, you should add subtitles to the video to enable people to understand what the speaker is talking about.
It is best to transcribe the narration yourself, as it is more accurate. If you let YouTube auto-transcribe what the speaker says, there are often mistakes in the captions.
8. Optimize the Video for Watching on a Mobile Device
Many people will prefer to watch the video on a mobile device. The text appears large when you watch the video on full screen on the desktop. However, when you watch the video on your mobile device, you find the text is small and hard to read.
Therefore, consider making the text larger so your audience can see it without straining their eyes on the mobile device. Besides, you'll want to optimize your video to a square or vertical shape since people usually don't view it on full screen on mobile devices.
9. Add Animation in Video
Social media videos must have some animation movement to capture people's attention. Animations are kid-friendly and can perk up one's mood. They are cute and make people want to click through to learn more about them.
A good example of animation is Google Doodles. Animation can show how a product works - you can create different characters that talk and move in the animation video. You can source the animations from stock footage libraries like Envato , Videezy and Videvo. Alternatively, a graphic designer can create the animation for you.
10. Add Call to Action in Video
A call to action should be included at the right time in the video. The easiest way is to put a screen at the beginning or end that tells the viewers what to do. If possible, you can also include an auditory request on the CTA screen.
The second method is to add bubble annotation notes in the video's appropriate places. CTA works best if you have an active YouTube channel. You can use it to link to other videos on YouTube.
11. Brand Your Video
You should brand your video since you are distributing it on social media. Branding the video allows people to get familiar with your brand. The next time they see the logo, they know what company create the video and what brand of product it is advertising. It also prevents people from stealing your video and putting their watermark over it.
You can do this by creating a branded introduction or putting a logo watermark in the top corner of the video. If you choose to put a logo watermark, ensure it is not too big as it will block viewing the video content, especially for people who watch the video on their mobile phones.
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