Creating compelling, impactful video content is now an essential skill for nearly all businesses. Visual storytelling has far more influence than most people realize, whether it’s done through marketing, entertainment, or across social media platforms.
Achieving success with video content creation requires a blend of technical proficiency, creative vision, and marketing strategy. Viewers must be engaged to give their attention, and the content needs to be convincing to get people to take action.
How to Create Impactful Video Content
Next time you create video content for your brand, use the following tips to maximize engagement and make your content more impactful.
1. Know your audience
Before you start, it’s crucial to define who you’re creating content for and what you’re aiming to achieve. For instance, do you want sales, signups, traffic, or just views? Understanding your market’s desires, needs, aversions, preferences, pain points, and viewing habits should be the driving factor behind every decision you make when creating content.
If you haven’t yet narrowed down your business’ target marketing, now is the time. You’ll never be able to craft compelling content – copy or video – if you don’t know who you’re trying to reach. That’s because the most compelling content is created to address a market’s specific desires, goals, and pain points.
You can’t reach people at a deep level with general content. For example, telling your audience, “We sell the highest quality socks in the world,” won’t do much to inspire sales. However, if you target athletes by saying, “Our socks wick moisture away from your feet to keep you dry and prevent blisters,” you’ll get some attention (and sales).
Keep this in mind when creating video content to drive traffic to your website. Traffic is a vanity metric unless it’s targeted. The only traffic that matters is from your ideal customer. When you know who your market is, you can tailor your video content to reach them, and you’ll get higher-quality visitors who are more likely to buy from you.
2. Use screen recording software
A good screen recorder should be at the top of your list of video content tools. When you create content that needs nuanced demonstrations or explanations, it can help to insert clips taken from a screen recorder. For example, if you’re trying to explain how customers can use the member’s area of your website with ease, it’s easier to record yourself taking those steps compared to trying to explain it all verbally. Most people will understand better with a visual example.
Video recording software is also excellent for adding information and instructions to webinars, presentations, and any other content designed to enhance understanding.
3. Capture attention within the first 5 seconds
The amount of time you have to capture a user’s attention will vary depending on the platform, so it’s best to aim for around five seconds. This will help your videos do well no matter where you publish them. Most people are going to be using a smartphone when they view your content, and if it’s posted to social media, they’ll be scrolling. If you can’t capture attention in five seconds, people will just keep scrolling.
There are some exceptions. For example, desktop users are sitting down at their computers and might be scrolling like mobile users, but they’re going to have a bit more patience. There’s also a chance that some desktop users will be more willing to engage with your video for a little longer to see what it’s all about.
Capturing attention can be as simple as using an attention-grabbing opening statement, an interesting visual, or asking a question that makes users want to keep watching.
4. Prioritize audio quality
Nothing will kill your video content efforts like poor audio. When people can’t hear what you’re saying, or if there are too many pops and muffled sounds, they’ll bounce. Fortunately, you can get a good microphone for a couple hundred bucks. It’s best to avoid mics under $50 because they won’t give you a crisp, clear sound. If they start off that way, it’s only a matter of time before they break.
If you’ve never invested in a good microphone before, start by learning the difference between a lavalier mic and a condenser mic. You may want to use both for different purposes, depending on where you record.
A side note about audio that can’t be stressed enough is having multiple microphones recording at the same time. This way, if your main microphone fails, you’ll have a secondary source of audio.
5. Master the art of pacing
The pace of your video content matters. While it may have been fine to just casually speak in front of the camera years ago, that’s not a good marketing strategy. You need to learn how to keep your content dynamic and pace it to hold attention. This requires varying your visuals, camera angles, and speaking tempo. If you go too slow for too long, you risk losing viewer interest. If your content is too fast, it can be overwhelming. Experiment to find the rhythm that best supports your core message.
6. Tell a good story
Every effective video will have a compelling story, including educational or instructional videos. Facts tell while stories sell. Even if you’re selling an educational product, you can still use stories to explain how it works and what results people can expect. Stories are how people connect emotionally to the world, and the better storyteller you are, the more success you’ll achieve.
7. Optimize video content for each platform
Each platform where you publish video content will have a different audience with unique needs. People don’t behave the exact same way everywhere online, and it’s critical to make video content that reflects this difference. For example, people expect short, concise video content on TikTok, but you can get away with posting longer videos on Facebook. Twitter’s algorithm doesn’t favor external links, and YouTube is ideal for publishing long-form video content.
Of course, if you’re using video content on your website or sales pages, you’ll want to optimize each video for your intended audience.
8. Create a clear call-to-action
Once you get people to watch your videos, you need to give clear instructions regarding what you want them to do next. This is done through a call-to-action (CTA) that tells viewers to do something, like subscribe, visit a website, make a purchase, or try something your video is suggesting.
Your CTA should be natural, clear, and direct. Don’t leave any room for confusion. Tell your audience exactly what action you want them to perform.
9. Invest in editing
Let’s face it: if you’re like most people, you probably don’t like editing your own video content. Whether it’s too tedious, time-consuming, or you don’t feel like you’re good at it, there are a ton of reasons why you’d shy away from editing. However, the process of editing content is important. You can remove bloopers, seamlessly cut out (some) mistakes, and give your videos an overall polished look and feel.
10. Add closed captions
Most video content lacks closed captions, and this would be a huge mistake to skip. Closed captions make videos accessible to people with hearing difficulties, and if you skip them, you’ll lose viewers. Ultimately, losing viewers means losing sales.
11. Make use of video shorts
Most video platforms have an option to publish short-form videos, sometimes referred to as “stories.” This includes Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, among others. The short videos are typically displayed in a different area than regular videos. However, while these short videos remain accessible on YouTube, they disappear from Instagram and Facebook.
Once you have a decent audience, start publishing video shorts, even if you know they’ll just disappear. It’s a great way to engage your audience with short content that will leave them with a good impression of your brand. You can also use shorts to promote other content, sales, and products.
Even though hashtags seem like they’re just trendy ways to state what your content is about, or make it searchable, they actually help video content rank. The algorithms on social media sites, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are designed to incorporate hashtags into ranking factors. There’s no hard rule about how many hashtags you should create per post, but don’t go overboard because too many tags might confuse the algorithm and make your content seem more generic. Keep your hashtags concise and related to your niche and target audience for the best results.
Transform your vision into engaging video content
Creating impactful video content is an ongoing process, and you’ll need to refine your tactics and methods as you learn what works best for your brand. If you’re new to video, remember that even the most successful content creators had to start from scratch.
Whether you’re making video content directly for an audience, or you’re using it for marketing purposes, when you apply the principles in this article, you’ll create videos that resonate with your intended audience.
