In a video-dominated world, many publishers and content creators are wondering how to improve video engagement. As they’ve realized, it’s not enough to just post a video and expect the best. They need to spend hours working on a video to get people to watch it. Luckily, internet users love videos. Indeed, 85% of all internet users in the United States watched online video content every month in 2018. You can get them to play your videos if you produce engaging and relevant content!
Video is the most popular content type in marketing, and it seems it will continue to dominate the industry for years to come. With this in mind, it’s crucial that you post videos that create an impact. Consumer expectations have risen over the years, especially because they encounter video content on every platform nowadays. They’ve come to expect tailored experiences that speak to their needs and wants.
What’s more, video marketing is the most effective way to increase engagement on social media platforms. In fact, video is a consumer’s favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media. It drives communication between businesses and their customers. It’s no surprise, then, that 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool today.
Given the number, it’s obvious that you need to compete for customer’s attention. We’re here to tell you how to improve video engagement and get your content to become the talk of the town!
How to Improve Video Engagement
As we previously said, relying on videos to increase brand awareness and generate more leads requires more than just publishing them on the internet. That’s right, you need to make engaging videos that encourage viewers to press play and watch until the very end.
After all, you can’t achieve your marketing goals if no one is checking out your videos. In this blog post, we’ll give our opinion on how to improve video engagement. Let’s see what you should follow to get noticed on the internet!
Focus on Quality
As most marketers would tell you, quality is the number one thing you should focus on. This means that you need to work with a great script that mainly tries to answer your customers’ questions, e.g. why they should use your company instead of your competitors. Before developing the script, it’s important to decide which consumer’s burning issue you’ll address. After that, start writing the lines!
Aside from the script, you should ensure that your content has high audio and video quality. Customers are more likely to abandon the video if they can’t hear you or if the image is blurry. Avoid this by purchasing equipment like microphones to make sure your video is to the viewer’s standard. And that’s how to improve video engagement!
Furthermore, while we’re discussing quality, we should mention that you should create valuable and engaging content for your audience. This will surely increase engagement. Consider what your customers want to see and hear, then work on including that in your content.
Hook Your Viewers
Want your audience to continue watching your video until the end? Then you need to hook them! There needs to be some information that catches their attention and encourages them to see what you have to say. But, how can you hook your viewers?
Well, you can start the video with a fascinating fact they haven’t heard before. This will arouse their curiosity and keep them around. That’s right, piquing your customers’ curiosity is definitely a sure-fire way of grabbing their attention. Then, another option is to present a problem and offer a solution. Customers want to know how your brand can help them with the issue at hand. Tell them that in your video!
There’s one tip on how to improve video engagement that has helped publishers before.
Namely, video marketers tend to open their videos with a question. You can try this out as well! In the video, ask users to answer the question in the comments section. As a result, your engagement will skyrocket! You can also display the question in the video itself — add it in a text.
Elicit Emotions
Video is a helpful tool to have in today’s world. You can convey as much complex information as you want in just a few minutes, enabling your viewers to understand what your business does and how you can solve their issues. Present your brand using different types of videos, but don’t forget to ensure your audience feels a particular emotion while watching them!
Humans are emotional beings above anything else. So you should use this to your advantage if you want to increase engagement. If you spend half of the video stating facts and data, it’s highly likely that viewers are going to abandon the video because they don’t care enough about what you’re presenting. However, if you manage to tell them how those facts and data relate to their lives, they’re going to stick around!
In video content marketing, it’s all about evoking emotions and a response from your viewers!
Apart from eliciting emotions, there are other ways you can attract the attention of your customers. Here’s how to improve video engagement with visuals!
Include Visual Cues
Another sure-fire way of getting your audience to watch your videos is to add as many visual cues as you can. We are visual creatures. Indeed, 90% of all information that is transmitted to the brain is visual. Additionally, visual content is processed by our brains 60,000 times faster than text-based content. So, use visual cues to draw attention throughout the video!
We also suggest including calls-to-action (CTA) if you want your viewers to take a particular action. You can encourage them to subscribe to your newsletter, comment on your video, follow you on social networks, or anything else you want! Using CTAs will enable you to tell the audience what you wish them to do.
Keep It Short
When asked how to improve video engagement, some marketers state that you should keep your videos short. There is no need to produce a 15-minute video about your company if you can convey the same message in two minutes. It’s quality over quantity in the video marketing world! Trust us, short-form videos will increase your engagement rate!
What’s more, two minutes seems to be the perfect length for videos on the internet. It’s short enough to keep the audience watching, and long enough to allow you to present the most important pieces of information. With a two-minute video, you can provide three or four tips or new ideas, and then summarize everything and include a CTA.
Optimize Your Video
Do you want people to find your video on the internet? Then you need to optimize it! By optimizing the video, you ensure it has the right keywords and information for search engines to index it. You can also optimize your subtitles, captions, or any other text related to the video. Applying the basic SEO principles to your description and title will increase your chances to get more views and video engagement.
Furthermore, conducting keyword research is an important part of marketing. You should always find relevant words on the internet for any product or service you want to market. This will help you reach potential customers and expose your brand to more people. After having done the keyword research, use those keywords as much as possible! When you optimize your video, you improve its chances to get seen!
Create an Eye-Catching Video Thumbnail
Still wondering how to improve video engagement? Well, one of the most effective ways is to create a custom thumbnail. You want the video to look as engaging as possible! By adding a thumbnail, you can entice people to click play!
In fact, some experts would say that it’s all about the thumbnail image. This is the first thing people see from your video. So make sure it’s as engaging as possible. The best video thumbnails have two things:
- A person’s face
- Some text relating to the video
Let’s see our last tip on how to improve video engagement!
Promote Your Video
The last step is to promote your video! Thankfully, there are many places to post your videos on the internet. Social media platforms are quite popular nowadays, numbering millions of users. We suggest that you start from them! If your video is relevant to social media users, they’re likely to share it with their friends and family which will increase the number of views.
Of course, you can also include your video in your newsletter. By adding a video to your email, you can increase open rates by 19%! Alternatively, there is always the option to run paid ads to expand the reach of your video.
The more you promote your video, the better your video engagement will be. As you probably know, social media algorithms push videos with higher engagement, showing them in users’ feeds or Explore sections.
Closing Thoughts
Video is a great marketing medium to build an audience and increase brand awareness. Although the industry is brimming with video content, you can still stand out by creating relevant and engaging videos for your consumers. Just remember to follow the tips we’ve mentioned in this article!
