Making Highly Watchable Videos: A 4-Step System.

Discover a four-step system for creating videos people will click on, watch, and share.

#1: Hook Viewers in the First 3-5 Seconds of Your Video

The first step to making a highly watchable and shareable video is the hook. In the first 3-5 seconds of your video, you need to grab people’s attention as they’re scrolling through the news feed. You can do this either by placing your best footage at the beginning or using a strong headline.

This is a case where you don’t want to save your best for last. When you’re making videos for social media, you need to frontload your best stuff. The first few seconds are when all of the magic happens.

#2: Generate Empathy

Empathy is a key element of any successful video. Empathy is the only reason anyone clicks a link, watches a video, or buys a product or service online. It’s also a crucial factor in getting people to share your video, which will help you get the most visibility for your content.

Right from the hook, people need to start feeling an emotional connection to what they’re watching. Create an experience where people see themselves in your content. People want a mirror so give it to them.

#3: Motivate Viewers to Take Action

The emotional response that people have to watching your video is also important. You want people not only to consume the content but also be compelled to take action and share it.

Empathy does a lot of this work but you need to take it a step further. Your video needs to elicit an emotional response that drives people to want to share it, almost as if they’re performing some sort of public service. You can also ask them to share it with other people at the end of the video.

#4: Over-Deliver on Value

There’s so much video content online that chances are the video you’re making is very similar to something that’s been made before. So to differentiate your content from the competition, you need to over-deliver.

That could mean taking an extra 5 minutes to add a little more information and context to show viewers you’ve gone the extra mile. Do whatever it takes to provide value and make your video feel different from what people have seen before.

Conclusion

When you’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into putting a video out into the world, it can be disheartening when it falls flat. The good news is that this four-part system will help you create highly watchable videos that people will want to click on, watch, and share on their social media channels.

This approach works for any video online but particularly for videos in a social news feed—LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And you can also adapt it to get more views on TikTok.

What do you think? Are you inspired to try this approach for your next social media video? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

7 Tips to Increase Social Engagement

with Video.

Video is a visually rich communication tool that can be tailored to suit any audience and share any message on multitude of social media platforms. Whether your goal is to drive more traffic, increase leads, educate a buyer into making a purchase decision, or improve conversion rates, video is one of the fastest and easiest ways to communicate with your audience.

It’s easy to churn out a video on social media nowadays. All you need is an idea, an online video maker and ta-da, you’re ready to post videos on your social channels. The hard part is creating video content that will actually engage your audience and benefit your business.

We’ve put together seven tips that will help transform your video engagement rates across social media and help you reach your business goals.

1. Optimize for attention

Firstly, you’ll need to customize your video thumbnail to encourage clicks. If the image captures the audience’s attention, they’re more likely to press play. Secondly, you’ll need to make sure that your video title clearly communicates what the video is about. Both of these steps are easy wins to implement and likely to increase your play rate.

2. Keep it simple

No matter the topic or message of your video, keep it short, snappy, and to the point. A good rule of thumb is to think of your video as a summary — you don’t need to include every single detail. Before you start production on your video, write down the top three points you want to include. This practice is an excellent way to make you really think about and condense your content into a shorter, concise message. Social media videos don’t need to be overly produced, high-concept movies. You’re not trying to recreate a Scorsese classic here. Keep it simple, easy to understand, and watch your engagement rates start to soar.

3. Optimize for each channel

Sadly, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all video format. Every social media channel has different parameters for the size, format, and style of video that works best.

Facebook

The social media titan allows users to post video in a variety of formats. Below, we’ve listed the specs for the most commonly uploaded video type: a shared post.

• Video length max is 120 minutes
• 1280 x 720 dimensions for both landscape and portrait uploads
• Landscape aspect ratio: 16:9
• Portrait aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size is 4GB
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV

Instagram

Instagram gives users the ability to share four types of videos. Each one has a specific length and limit that must be respected to ensure that your video is shared professionally.

• Instagram Story: 15 seconds
• Instagram Feed: 3 seconds - 1 minute
• IGTV Video: 15 seconds - 10 minutes
• Instagram Live Video: Up to 1 hour

For the most common type of video posting, an in-feed video, below are all the dimensions you need: 

• Video length max: 60 seconds
• Minimum resolution:
  • Landscape 600 x 315
  • Square 600 x 600
  • Vertical video 600 x 750
• Landscape aspect ratio: 16:9
• Square aspect ratio: 1:1
• Vertical aspect ratio: 4:5
• Max file size is 4GB
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV

Twitter

Not always the first channel you think of when sharing video content, but statistics show that there are 2 billion videos watched on Twitter every single day. Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of your Twitter video.

• Video length max: 140 seconds
• Minimum dimensions: 32 x 32
• Maximum dimensions: 1280 x 1024
• Aspect ratios are between 1:2.39 to 2.39:1
• Max file size is 512MB
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a valuable platform to share tips, how to’s, and promotional videos — as long as you follow these general guidelines. 

• Video length max: 10 minutes (we recommend keeping videos under 5 minutes to maximize engagement)
• Max file size is 5GB
• Accepted video formats are .ASF, .AVI, .FLV, .MOV, .MPEG-1, .MPEG-4, .MKV, and .WebM

4. Make your video accessible

Chances are your audience is scrolling through their social media feeds on a mobile device, meaning it’s likely that the sound is off. DigiDay found that an astonishing 85% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound. This signals a huge opportunity to include closed captions on your video to boost engagement rates.