When you create social media videos one of the most important goals that you should have is to make them as engaging as possible. Videos that are engaging will be able to retain more viewers and end up with more comments, likes, shares and other types of reactions.

In short – an engaging video is one that has an impact on viewers and that they connect with on some level.

All that may sound like a tall order, but the fact of the matter is that it isn’t nearly as difficult or complicated as it seems to start creating more engaging videos. In fact, these five tips should give you exactly what you need to start:

Try to keep the duration short 

People no longer have the patience to sit through long and drawn-out videos that meander around without getting to the point. Instead what they want is to quickly watch a video and finish it while getting what they need out of it in the process.

Because of that trend, you should try to keep the duration of your videos short – normally no more than 2 minutes at most. The optimum duration for videos does vary somewhat, however, depending on the audience as well as the platform you’re publishing it on.

By keeping the duration short, your videos will be better able to retain viewers – which will definitely help boost its engagement.

Place a hook in the first 8 to 10 seconds

Have you ever started to watch a video but quickly decided that it wasn’t something that you’re interested in? That happens fairly often, and most people make the decision whether or not to keep watching within the first 8 to 10 seconds of the video.

To try to persuade people to keep watching, you need to fit in a hook of some kind within that timeframe that will convince them to stay and continue watching your video. A good way to do that is to let them know what benefit they’ll gain by watching the video, i.e. provide them a reason to stay.

Trigger viewers’ emotions

It is safe to say that you’ve probably noticed how videos that are funny, surprising, or trigger some other emotion get shared – and that’s not a coincidence. Essentially emotions drive action and are a key aspect of engagement due to the fact that viewers feel compelled to share, comment or react to the video in other ways.

While it isn’t easy to trigger emotions effectively, you should try to incorporate it in your videos in some way. One way in which you could attempt to trigger emotions is by structuring your video as a story, so viewers feel more invested in the subject and the outcome of the video.

Make no mistake there are lots of other ways to trigger emotions, and you can try to experiment and see what suits your videos best.

Show and don’t tell

Arguably “show and don’t tell” is one of the most often-quoted pieces of advice when it comes to creating engaging videos – and for good reason. The main reason videos have the potential to be so engaging in the first place is because they are able to convey information visually in a manner that no other type of content can match.

Seeing as that is the case, you need to leverage the visuals of your video and try to use them to deliver the message wherever possible. Finding ways to visually put your message across may not be easy and will require some creativity – but it is well worth it.

Add in some subtitles

Considering the previous point was to try to use visuals to convey the message, this may seem counterintuitive – but it is actually a very useful way to increase engagement. One of the more recent trends involving videos is for viewers to watch them on mute, either by choice or because of some browsers automatically mute videos that autoplay.

In any case, adding subtitles will allow you to deliver a message that may otherwise be lost on viewers. Keep in mind that the subtitles you add don’t need to be the ‘standard’ white text, but can be creatively designed captions that accentuate the content of your video.

At the end of the day adding subtitles can’t hurt – and it could provide a considerable boost to engagement levels.

Contrary to popular belief, the type of video that you create doesn’t matter nearly as much as the tips listed above. While it is true some types of videos are more engaging to certain audience demographics, applying the tips listed above to any type of video is likely to increase its engagement.

For example, you could record a short video call interview with an expert using Movavi screen recorder and use the tips listed above to improve its engagement. By trimming the fat, adding a hook, and maybe injecting some humor – you’ll have a better chance of engaging viewers.

Just remember that it is always a good idea to track and analyze the performance of the videos that you publish, so you can see how engaging they really are. More importantly that data will allow you to find out what your target demographic of viewers are responding to, and improve any videos that you create in the future so that they are all the more engaging.

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