12 Tips for Creating Captivating Social Media Videos

While social media is constantly evolving, there’s one thing that continues to hold up - video. From live videos to short clips, stories and feed videos, video is a popular format to engage audiences and tell your brand’s story.

Videos can form a valuable part of your social media strategy, with more than 50% of marketers saying that video is the most valuable content type for achieving social media marketing goals. Despite this, videos are underused on some of the main social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Making the most of video content could help your business reach its goals and connect with your audience. Take a look at our 12 tips for creating captivating social media videos and take your content to the next level.

2. Spend time watching videos to see what’s popular

If you want to see what’s popular in social media, exploring different platforms is a great place to start. You can see what short-form video trends are worth exploring while researching how different brands use video to get attention. 

New video trends are constantly emerging, and some ongoing research can help you stay up-to-date on what’s popular in the world of social media.

3. Invest in some basic kit to enhance the quality of your video

Thanks to the quality of today’s smartphone cameras, it’s easier than ever to film high-quality videos for social media. With the help of some basic tools and accessories, you can enhance the quality of your videos even further, adding light and clear sound that will give your videos a little polish.

Mobile phone filming accessories are very affordable but can make a big difference to the end result. Invest in a mobile phone video kit to help you take your videos to the next level and make it easier to create professional-looking videos.  

4. Grab the viewer’s attention within the first few seconds

We live in the generation of scrollers, where social media users scroll their feeds for sometimes hours on end in the hope of finding content that appeals to them. With so much content out there, you need to make sure that your content grabs the viewer’s attention within the first few seconds, helping them to stick around for the rest of the video.

An on-screen headline like ‘5 creative ways to wrap a Christmas gift’, can help people see exactly what your video is about, providing the hook that will draw them in.

8. Use faces to build connections

There are a lot of good reasons to use faces in your social media videos, but here are three of the major ones:

1. Faces help command attention, more so than images of landscapes and more generic shots.

2. Using real people can help you build trust and connections with your audience. This can help develop some brand familiarity and build a community around your business.

3. Having a face behind your videos helps to show off your brand’s personality. Having names and faces will resonate with your audience more than generic videos might, encouraging engagement through comments, questions and reactions.

Introduce some faces who can represent your brand, these could even be influencers you choose to work with or customers and clients sharing their real-life experiences.

9. Consider different requirements for different platforms

Creating videos for social media isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ process. Each platform has its own guidelines for content length and dimensions, with different dimensions for stories, etc. 

Understanding the different social media video specs can help you plan your content for each platform. It’s important to plan for each platform individually, so you can publish videos that work. Some videos may be easily repurposed across channels, but this is something you’ll need to consider carefully during the filming and editing process.

10. Have fun with it

There is a lot of doom and gloom to be found on the internet, so why not do something to brighten your audience’s day and have some fun instead? People love to share videos that make them feel some kind of emotion, and what better emotion than happiness? Some fun, light-hearted videos could be just what you need to brighten up your feeds and give your audiences something to laugh or smile about.

11. Include a clear call to action

The call to action is one of the most important elements of your video. While you can create fun and informative videos, there should always be a call to action that helps meet your marketing strategy’s goals. Whether that’s to encourage people to share or comment on your content, click a link to your website or sign up as a subscriber, there should be a clear action for what you want people to do after watching your video.

Include your call to action in the video itself, but also make use of your captions to reinforce your video’s key messages, and encourage viewers to take an action.

12. Work with experienced social media video producers

Creating social media videos can be a valuable way to promote your business and connect with customers or clients. But for many businesses, creating your own social media videos can be a challenge due to a lack of resources, equipment and skills. Working with experienced, professional social media video producers can help you create captivating social media videos that help tell your story, delivering the best results for your business.

Social media video producers are experts at producing videos for different platforms, taking your objectives and ideas to deliver creative and engaging videos. This can be a key asset for your marketing campaigns, helping you meet your objectives.