Increase your engagement by creating video content for social media with Flixier

In 2021, video content rules over social media. From instagram stories to TikToks, it’s easy to see that videos are by far the best way to go when it comes to keeping your followers engaged and even expanding your audience. 

However, making videos isn’t always as easy as it sounds, and making successful videos that get a positive response can be even harder. In this article, we’re going to help you out by giving you some pointers on how to make better videos, as well as show you how using an online social media video maker like Flixier can simplify the process and help you put out content faster and more consistently. 

1. Keep things short

If you look at online trends, you’ll notice that social media is slowly but surely moving away from long-form content towards short, easily digestible videos. And that’s to be expected! Most people use social media on their phones, usually when taking a break from work or going somewhere. They’re not going to be able to sit down and watch a 20 minute vlog, but they will watch a 15 second story if you manage to catch their attention. 

That’s why you should plan your videos in a way that ensures they’re as short and sweet as possible. A short video ensures that people will stick around long enough to see the Call to Action at the end, which is great, because you want them to act in the shortest amount of time possible. 

2. Start strong 

When making social media videos, there’s one thing you always need to keep in mind: your competitor’s content is always one swipe away! You need to grab people’s attention in the first couple of seconds if you want them to stick around for the Call to Action at the end. 

That means you need to add what’s known as a “hook” right at the beginning of your video. A hook can be anything from a problem or an interesting question to the promise of a good, surprising story. You essentially have to show your audience the reason why they should watch a video in order for them to stick around and actually watch it through. 

3. Use powerful visuals

Back in 2019, a survey performed on U.S. consumers found that 92% of them watch videos with the sound off on mobile. Since most of your audience on social media will be browsing from their phones, you can probably see where this is going. 

People aren’t going to listen to your videos. At least not at first. That’s why you need to make sure that your videos have strong visuals that communicate your message effectively even when there’s no sound. 

Flixier comes with a large built-in library of customizable Motion Titles and animated overlays to help with that. Taking advantage of  it will allow you to develop a strong visual identity for your videos without having to worry about spending hours learning how to animate. 

4. Make sure there are subtitles

To add to the point above, since the vast majority of people are bound to watch your videos on mute, it’s very important that they have subtitles, especially if someone is speaking in them. 

Normally, creating subtitles can take quite a bit of time, but Flixier streamlines this process by allowing you to automatically generate subtitles with just a click. Our subtitle generator supports more than 20 languages at the moment and lets you manually edit your subtitles afterwards in case you need to fix anything, making it the perfect way to make your videos more accessible and increase engagement. 

After your subtitles are generated, you can choose whether you want to save them to your computer and upload the file separately or hard code them into the video. 

5. Make sure you have Calls to Action

The term “Call to Action”, often abbreviated to “CTA”, refers to an instruction that a content creator offers to their viewers in order to get them to act on something. In the case of social media videos, a common Call to Action is asking your viewers to follow you on the platform, subscribe to your channel or like the post/video. 

It might sound a little cliche, but the reason everyone does it is because Calls to Action have been proven to work, numerous times. It’s important that your videos have clear calls to action in order for them to be effective, but it doesn’t mean that the CTAs themselves have to be too in-your-face or take up most of the clip’s duration. 

If you’re using Flixier to make your videos, you can take advantage of our animated graphics library to add visual Calls to Action to your video that won’t distract too much from the general flow of your clip while still motivating your viewers to act. 

6. Take advantage of templates 

All the social media platforms  today use algorithms in order to determine who they’re going to show your content to. While there are a number of factors that play into what gets pushed to the top and what doesn’t, it’s known by now that posting constantly is a great way of staying on top and remaining in your follower’s minds and feeds. 

However, staying on top of your video production schedule isn’t always easy, especially if you’re going for well-produced content rather than forgettable, dime-a-dozen videos. Flixier video templates can be of great help in this case. 

Using templates will allow you to put out high-quality, professional looking videos constantly, as they come packed with motion titles, transitions and calls to action.  All you have to do is drag your own media over and make them yours. 

The templates are fully customizable, so you’re free to edit them down to the smallest detail, or if you’re in a hurry, just use them as they are. You can even save templates after editing them so you can easily re-use them later without having to spend the time required to edit them again. 

So, what are you waiting for? Start creating social media videos and increase your engagement right now!