How to make social media videos that engage your customers

Did you know that more than 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook every day? If you’re not using social media videos to promote your business then you’re missing out on a huge slice of brand awareness.

But posting any old video isn’t enough. It needs to stand out to generate leads.

Here are some tips for creating engaging videos that translate viewers into customers.

Say more with less

The best social media videos get to the point quickly. People don’t hang around while they’re scrolling through their feed.

Did you know that the average attention span is now eight seconds – that’s less than a goldfish! And data from Facebook says people watch two seconds of a video before deciding whether or not to scroll by.

This means your videos need a super tight script and eye-catching clips to capture your audience’s attention fast and get your message across faster.

Use captions

People don’t watch social media videos in the same way they watch TV. 

They’re on the move or flicking through their smartphone in a spare minute. A lot of the time the sound will be off, so captions are a must.

Read our tips on using text overlay to keep people engaged with your videos.

Keep transitions simple

Remember when flashy transitions were a thing in PowerPoint presentations? It wore thin quickly, right? The same is true of transitions in videos.

Just because you can make clips bounce, slide and super zoom doesn’t mean you have to. This makes social media videos difficult to watch. And no one wants to waste their eight seconds of attention on something that’s hurting their eyes.

Size it right

Social media platforms are sizeist. They prefer showing people videos that fit their feeds.

This means to get the best engagement you need to get the dimensions and file size right for each social media platform. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you achieve this. 

But who has time to cut one video for Instagram and a slightly different version for LinkedIn? 

Here’s our tip: use the following specifications to edit your video so it’s a good fit for the main feed on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn:

• Dimensions: 1:1, square
• Pixels: 1080 x 1080 pixels
• Format: MP4 
• Max file size: 200MB 

You can then resize this to 720 x 720 pixels for Twitter.

Have a call to action

Finally, if you want to engage people and spark a reaction, your social media video must have a call to action. 

This could be a question during your video, but crucially there must be an action for people to take. This can be at the end but you should also include it earlier on in case people click away before the finale. 

Make sure your audience knows why they should watch, how they will benefit and what they should do next.

If you plan to make more videos for your business you might also like to read our guide to filming video on your smartphone, why video is good for SEO and how to get more views on your YouTube channel.

Need help making social media videos that engage your audience? Amplify PR’s team offers social media services and video marketing.