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The popularity of video is growing. 2019 saw internet users spend over six hours every week watching online videos. 70% of businesses also saw it wise to create more video content than they did in previous years.
Video marketing is thus the ticket to meeting your audience's needs. But for you to succeed with it, it requires more than just taking the right shot or clips.
A little tweak or edit of your videos/vlogs can go a long way to prevent viewers from zoning out, but spend more hours on your videos and ultimately generate your brand the much-needed ROI.
This post will share editing techniques you can apply to your videos to retain attention and keep your viewers engaged.
1. Hook viewers in the first 5 seconds
The social media landscape has also become a crowded place as brands scramble for viewers' attention. Since viewers have complete control of what they watch online, the faster you can communicate and capture your viewers' attention in the first few seconds, the better. Otherwise, viewers will scroll through to the next video that catches their attention.
To captivate your viewers' attention, leverage motion. Our eyes are quickly drawn to a screen that is moving. Motion plus eye-catching visuals, such as people or animation with aesthetic appeal, can make viewers stop scrolling and click on your video.
An easy way to do it is to make the most interesting part of your videos come first and inspire curiosity in your viewers' minds.
If you're creating an ad, you can also open with a title or call-to-action text, which sets the scene for what viewers can expect from the video.
2. Use best video lengths
Marketers are repeatedly advised to keep their videos brief. However, the best video length is affected by several factors: your audience, content distribution platform, viewers' gadgets, and location, and value.
If your audience is watching your videos on mobile phones while in traffic jams or subways or during breaks at work, they need something quick. A longer video will see them skim through the sections on your video, missing out on your key messages.
If you plan to share your videos on Instagram, they shouldn't be over 60 seconds.
Facebook videos should be between 20 to 90 sec and 4 hrs for stories. On Twitter, a 45-second video is ideal, and those embedded on a blog should be between 30 to 60 sec.
You can also choose to collaborate with a freelance social media manager to determine the correct video length for your audience and the platform you intend to promote it on or seek professional help from a video editing service.
3. Use jump cuts
The human brain is good at switching from one task to another. That is how we co-join and build ideas. Jump cuts mimic how the human brain functions, and therefore, are a great way to increase your video's appeal as they mimic human thoughts and speech.
Editing out those milliseconds will help you get to the point, spit out your thoughts quickly while you drive the message home. You can also use jump cuts to eliminate repetition in a long video, delete unnecessary pauses, and something off-topic.
Jumpcuts are super easy to create with online video editing software. Honestly, you can even get the job doing using screen capture.
This video of Lola Rennt -"Running One" tactically uses jump cuts to keep viewers in their seats.
Notice how the images appear and disappear, the action, and the removal of brief breaks making it more exhilarating?
4. Add captions/subtitles
Chances are your audience comprises diverse kinds of people. A good percentage will view your videos without sound. Like on Facebook, 85% of people view videos while muted. That means the possibility of viewers not understanding your videos on this network is substantial. Captions or subtitles help to bridge this gap.
While some people may find them annoying because of the block of text that obscures some sections of the screen, it is a sure way to communicate your message when viewers turn off sound.
Similarly, subtitles or captions can help your videos be more accessible, improve user watch time, as well as overcome language barriers.
5. Tell a story
Storytelling has become an important tool in online marketing, as we can easily relate to them. Employing storytelling is a great way to attract more eyeballs to your videos. It takes away the boring part of your videos or prevents you from looking too promotional.
GoPro has used this video below to show how its product can be beneficial without even mentioning themselves in the video.
For you to succeed at storytelling, you may use multiple plot lines. You can do a rebirth or share your success journey or how you overcame a bigger challenge that faced your business. Whatever it is, storytelling can make your videos more interesting and real.
6. Set the tone
Your video should be able to entertain the viewer from the start to the end. That means you should aim to leave an impression on your viewers, and this can be made possible by the tone you set.
One way to meet viewers' expectations is to include visuals. Another way is to add background music and sound effects. Don't make your video be a case of the speaker talking till the end. Using the right background sound or music injects life into a video and easily keeps the viewer engaged. Let's see this unfolds in the example of what an ad agency does.
Notice how the background music improves the mood of a viewer, increasing their desire to continue watching the video?
7. Adjust brightness and add light effects
The camera and the human eye respond to lights in different ways. The latter is more developed, capable of picking up the finite details and lighting contrast, while the former requires more lighting to capture details that the eye can see. Adding some lighting effects to your video helps bring it to comparable quality to what the eyes see naturally
Using the right video editing software, you can customize each lighting solution to suit your audience's needs or match up to the scene in the video.
Where you want to show anger or sadness, you can use harsh lighting and soft lighting in a cheerful scene. Whatever light solution you use will help determine the mood of a scene and ultimately affect how the viewer engages with the video.
8. Employ the rule of thirds
The rule of thirds may not work on all your videos. However, it aims to draw the viewer's attention to the speaker as it directs attention to the person speaking in the video. Use the rule of thirds to disrupt the audience's expectations besides showing your creativity. This video uses and explains more about the rule of thirds and how it can enhance your videos and capture the viewers' attention.
Over to you
Editing a video is undoubtedly more time-consuming than shooting it. This is coming from someone who has done a lot of creative video editing. However, using an easy video editor can speed up your video editing process. If you have a strong enough why and mindset; you’ll figure it out.
When you add the right lighting effect, music, or storytelling to your videos, it will improve its engagement rate while attracting more viewers. Not only will your viewers love it, but search engines and social media platforms will also love it when your videos drive traffic to their platform and make viewers take action.
