How to create engaging videos for social media?

Are you a social media manager, marketing manager or business owner trying to improve engagement metrics of your online content? We gathered 15 ways to produce highly engaging videos.

Just to be clear there is no one magic way to create engaging videos. Each platform is different, each audience is different. This is not a recipe to get viral, but rather a guide to create engaging videos and grow your social media over time.

Over the years we spotted a number of patterns that generate engagement (using my own experience and observations of how businesses use video on social media).

Captions

What is the most basic factor in creating high performing videos? Neil Patel and his team analysed over 100k reels (102,394) on Instagram and surveyed 1681 people . From over 20 factors adding captions and a hook at the beginning of the video came up first the most often in top-performing videos.

There is no one perfect way to utilise captions. Big captions, often with some motion element you usually see on TikTok, was my main recommendation. However at the moment they are common and overused. Depending on your target audience and platform, experiment with new styles, or a more conservative approach.

Hooks in 3 seconds world

Hooks are the best way to capture attention at the beginning of the video. We live in the 3 seconds world, where social media are saturated with all types of content including video. 

Hook is basically the way you start a video. Hooks can be script-based or even better – visual. Do they work? However, they are common on platforms like TikTok and users are getting increasingly resilient to these same hooks being used again and again. So be creative!

Create and keep tension (curiosity gap)

Hooks are great to start a video however to keep the audience watching you actually need to make them curious throughout the whole video.

One way to do it (but not only way) is revealing the most important information at the very end. Additionally try to incorporate additional mini-hooks during the video. This will keep your audience engage through the entire video.

Show faces behind the business

You can spend hours creating professional looking graphics. You can post time consuming animations. But create a video showing faces and real people behind the business and you will see engagement.

Online audiences tend to engage and trust videos, with real people behind the business. 

Authenticity and passion

As trivial as it sounds, authenticity and passion are the best way to build loyal followership  in current online space. “Just be authentic” – they said. However what I see is that personalities who are authentic and passionate about their area of expertise generate high engagement, sometimes even without utilising hooks, fancy video editing and other techniques. Hooks are great but without consistency, and authenticity attached they are just other videos people generate.

Show emotions

Be brave, show emotions. There is no better way to show authenticity online than revealing emotions. In the current social media content overload emotions is the number 1 factor that makes people care. No fancy animations, no perfect framing or script but emotions. They always win. This is even true in B2B space and on LinkedIn.

Show vulnerability

Share your challenges if you can. Literally the most effective way to create a bond with your online audience is to show vulnerability. Less showing off, less acting, more sharing your genuine vulnerability that your audience can relate to. 

I am aware this might not be the most comfortable thing to do or you would not like to do it. I am not also saying that showcasing your vulnerability is always a good idea. Not always from a marketing point of view sharing your emotional secrets is a good idea. 

This also heavily depends on the industry, brand and marketing goals. High engagement is not always the main goal and your strategic marketing message might prevent opening too deep. However incorporating emotions to your content and at least some elements of vulnerability will often lead to significantly higher engagement.

Make it fun

With a more than ever saturated social media space your videos need at least some entertaining element to grab and keep attention. People want to be entertained on social media.

Have you heard about “Advertainment”? Advertainment is basically a combination of various forms of entertainment with only elements of advertising to promote products or brands. In the 2024 trends survey done by Hootsuite revealed that above all, consumers want to be entertained. Keep it in mind when you plan your #contentstrategy for social media presence!

Motion or creative angles

A very good way to differentiate and attract attention on social media is to add movement or creative angles. This is especially important if you create “talking head videos” without many cuts and B-Rolls.

Video is not only visual content, it is visual content in motion, similar to our natural perception of the world. Motion attracts attention! We love motion because it is much more interesting and energetic! Visual content in motion is also similar to our natural perception of the world.

Dynamic video editing

At the moment you need to add a cut to a video every few seconds to make it more engaging and keep your audience watching. To make it more dynamic, change camera angles, add B-Rolls or motion graphic elements. 

Especially if you record static “talking head” videos with limited B-Rolls available, adding transitions and motion graphic elements will keep your audience watching. Honestly in this 3 second world no one likes boring “talking head” videos.

Provide value for your target audience

When you create content, have in mind your audience and what their interests are. There is no point of implementing all other elements if your audience simply is not interested in what you would like to share. Remember that people do not use social media to see ads. They use social media to be inspired, informed and entertained. 

If you create and share valuable content they will follow you, to see it more. Only after a multiple exposures can you convert some of them into clients or customers. 

Build community beforehand

Do not just post content. Build a community around it. One of the best social media hacks I have seen recently is a mixing social media marketing with event networking (face to face or online). People will engage with your content if they actively participated in a webinar or a workshop you are posting about. To make sure they will, you can actually ask them to do so during the event. Any engagement will signal the algorithm to boost visibility of the post and increase exposure of your profiles to the wider audience. 

If you organise online events you can also ask participants to share their LinkedIn profiles in the chat. It’s a great networking opportunity for the whole community so you should receive a great response. Then, with their approval you can tag them in the post, to make sure they will not miss it.

Video quality

Should you focus on quality or quantity? It depends on the industry, target audience, platform where we use the content and of course budget/ time available. I would focus on quality while maintaining quantity. 

In the world when video can be easily produced, quality can be a significant differentiator. In current information overload producing poor-quality content, will not grab attention online, and make them stop scrolling down the social media feed or a website 

Additionally the quality of your content reflects on your brand image, so if you constantly produce low-quality content you can not expect to be perceived as a premium brand or even a serious, established, and trustworthy business. As a result, your brand perception will decline over time following a lack of trust and subsequently dropping sales and conversion rate.

Consistency

In this article I focused on strategies that will increase engagement of your social media videos. However there is one more, long-term, probably the most important factor, to grow your social media and see engagement. It is actually the consistency. 

To be remembered and keep the audience engaged you need to constantly create new and engaging content. Creating occasional content is not a strategy. We get it, we are all incredibly busy and often lacking time to create content consistently. The reason is usually this same, lack of time and resources.

The only way to use marketing content effectively and grow social media nowadays is to produce new content consistently. 

It’s time to start using video regularly as a part of your long term marketing strategy! We produce multimedia content on a monthly basis: Social Media and Video Marketing Plan