Do you plan to join the club of social media influencers? Posting viral social media videos will make you or your band popular quickly. Many people worldwide are earning by creating and uploading videos on social platforms. 

Videos are becoming quite popular on social media. Even for those who run businesses or marketers, video content is the future of marketing. About 85% of social media users want to watch more brand videos before buying. On the YouTube platform, more than 3.7M new videos are posted daily. And on average, each person coming to the internet spends about 100 minutes watching videos daily. However, due to huge competition for viewers, posting quality and valuable videos is key to attracting the audience.

But the big question is, where do you begin with video content for your social media? Getting a camera, shooting, and posting isn’t enough. You need to come up with attention-grabbing and high-quality videos to succeed, and below are tricks on how to do it.

Effective Ways to Create Engaging Social Media Videos

1. Figure Out Your Strategy and Audience First

Do you know whom you are targeting with your videos? How do you intend to execute your video creation process? Social media users differ in age, economic status, location, religion, and preferences. Knowing whom you want to reach with your videos helps to create compelling videos.

So, begin by researching your audience to find out what they want. Check your competitors and see what difference your content will offer to the audiences. From there, you can develop a suitable budget, task allocation, and content scheduling. When you have a strategy and a clear understanding of the audience, you develop the most engaging content for your social media.

2. Pay Attention to the Quality of the Footage and Editing Process

Millions of videos are posted every day on social platforms. How do you make your video unique to compete with what is already there? Audiences are looking for high-quality content that offers value. Therefore, you need to pay attention to the quality of your video, from shooting to editing. Even some social media platforms like Instagram deprioritize blurry reels.

Quality content requires investment in equipment like a camera to capture good footage. When done collecting video clips, you can use a quick video editor to cut the footage into a short and polished video. With quality footage, the video editing process becomes easy and quick.

3. Capture the Audience’s Curiosity at the Start of a Video

Attention! Attention! Research indicates that an audience will lose concentration after watching about 8 seconds of a video. So, what does that mean? For audiences to watch your video from start to end, ensure the content is attention-grabbing.

By nature, viewers desire to know what is next, why, when, where, and how. So create a social media video that makes the audience sense a gap in their knowledge. That makes them engage with your content from start to end since there is a payoff after watching.

You can grab the audience’s attention with your video in many ways. First, pick the most exciting bit of your video and synthesize those clips at the beginning- that way, you evoke interest in the viewers’ minds.

You can also start your video with thought-provoking questions, appealing music, or strong hooks. Furthermore, powerful visuals and inspiring quotes are a good way to provoke your audience to watch. The video’s intro needs to leave your audience curious about what happens next in your video, which hooks them to watch.

4. Focus on Storytelling in Your Video

Stories offer a unique way to connect with the audience. You can grab viewers’ attention at first. But making them watch the entire content might be a hard task. And that’s where storytelling comes in handy. A story makes your video sound, look and feel great, making your audience stick around until the end.

Ensure the video story is relevant, has wit, and offers your audience value. You will disengage your audience if your video doesn’t tell a compelling story. If you are creating social media videos for marketing, tell brand stories that resonate well with your audience. Creating a personal connection with the audience through a story helps to deliver a message that influences your audience to make a choice.

5. Add Music to Social Media Video

Videos with high-quality and relevant audio enjoy greater chances of success on social media. The music you add to your video grabs viewers’ attention. In addition, music exhibits the power to control the audience’s perception and creates the right mood to watch.

Ensure the music you add adds value and volume is well-regulated in your video. Extreme background music will discourage the audience from watching. In addition, you need to secure permission before using a patented song in your video. Consider using free music if using licensed tracks complicates your budget.

6. Incorporate Subtitles into Your Video If Talking in Involved

Social media platforms have users worldwide. When you post a video, your audience might be non-native speakers and can’t speak fluently. So, you should make things easy for them to understand your video. All you need is to add subtitles to the video.

Many social media users watch videos without putting sound on. That happens when they are on the job, traveling, in a meeting, or in the office. Therefore, including subtitles in a video helps to let the audiences get the message when your video is on mute.

7. Capture Natural Lighting When Shooting

Natural lighting brings beauty into a video. Do you intend to shoot your clips indoors? You can capture natural lights by shooting near doors or windows. On the other hand, proper timing is essential to get the best clips if you’ll be shooting outdoors.

Before the sun sets, you can capture clips with orange, red, and yellow colors. If you want your video lights to portray a sense of tranquillity and coolness, ensure you shoot during the blue hour. That means shooting your clips 20-30 minutes before sunrise or sunset. The sky is always deep blue during blue hour, and the background light appears bluish.

You can do light and color correction in your video when editing your footage. Remember, lighting will make or break your social media videos.

8. Include a Call-to-Action to Your Video

Have you ever watched a video and wondered what to do next when it ends? When creating social media videos, let your audience know the next action. Do you want them to click a link and visit your business website? Or do you want the audience to subscribe or call for more information? Don’t leave your viewers confused after watching. Adding a clear call-to-action to your video helps to accomplish your objective.

While a call to action is essential, don’t make it too sales-focused. Overselling in your call-to-action turns off viewers. Ensure the call to action is simple and clear.

9. Create a Short but Sweet Video

Short-form videos are more engaging on social media platforms. Many internet users have busy schedules. So, they want a form of content that can deliver information quickly. Very few social media users watch videos longer than 15-20 minutes. Therefore, keeping your video short makes them easy to consume. However, your video should offer value despite being short.

But what happens if your topic is complex or requires long-form video content? If that is the case, split your content into a series. That way, you will create several short videos covering different aspects of your bigger topic. No matter how short your video is, it should quickly capture attention and deliver the intended message.

Creating videos is interesting. And after capturing quality clips, you might be tempted to include everything captured in your video. However, social media videos need to be short. You can use a video editing tool to cut off your footage and remain with the essential portions.

10. Optimize Your Video for Different Platforms

When marketing your brand, posting videos to different platforms enhances and broadens your reach. Many social media users are on different platforms, and you can take your content to their faces by posting where they hang out.

Every social platform requires different content in terms of size and shape. So, you need to align your video to the requirements of each platform. Check the length limit of videos for each social platform, orientation, and dimensions to ensure your video performs better.

11. Create a Video that Appeals to Viewers’ Emotions

Creating social media videos that evoke emotional responses increases audience engagement. When thinking about video ideas, focus on videos that incite excitement, hope, and happiness. Videos with emotional appeals are more memorable and profoundly impact your audience. Your video could even go viral as the audience shares it. However, your content needs to make viewers feel good to get shares.

Conclusion

Video content offers a great way to reach a broader audience on social platforms. However, before creating any video, it’s essential to know the audience and develop a social media strategy. With strategy and information about the audience, it becomes easy to create compelling videos. If you are new to social media, the tips covered herein will help you succeed.