There’s a lot of noise out there in social media land. Everybody is wanting to jump in and contribute their two cents.
“Blogs are popular? I’ll write blogs.” “Videos are the new thing? Let me get out my phone and create some.” Problem is, a lot of times two cents equals just that… not much. Just more noise to clog up your feed.
We wrote an article a month ago about How to Use Video To Generate Leads, now let’s take that blog post a step further.
One thing is certain, all videos are not created equal.
So how do you create a video that stands out above the noise and gets people to want to click and watch, and ultimately buy what you’re selling?
I googled the most viral YouTube videos of 2016 to see what made them so contagious. I wanted to know the themes, the components that made them irresistible.
Here are a few things that stood out to me:
- They tap into an emotion – either hilarity, happiness, cheering for the underdog… viewers love having feelings and emotions stirred up.
- They make you smarter – they educate, inform, and give you useful knowledge to be the hit at the next dinner conversation.
- They have cute kids in them – because who doesn’t want to watch a cute kid be cute?
- They are like a bad trainwreck – you know you should look away, but something makes you keep watching until it’s over.
- They are relatable and personable – you usually find yourself wanting to become friends with the person or people in the videos because you are “so much like them”.
- They are authentic – your videos actually don’t have to be perfect and professional, but they do have to feel “real”.
- They are entertaining – humor is a great addition to any movie. Add in bloopers, keep in “mistakes”.
Another point to note: it’s an extra bonus if you make your video engaging without any sound. You can do this by avoiding dialogue altogether, or making sure that you include high-quality closed captioning (you can outsource this or do it yourself).
The truth is that nobody will care (and click) if you just turn your video on during a class and do a pano of the activity. What they will care about is if you do a close up of someone (who looks real and relatable) hitting a PR while everyone around them cheers. Or if you do a fun educational video about nutrition that is funny and endears them to you.
Like all things in business, your videos need to have a strategy and serve a purpose.
If you’re not shooting videos to promote your business, now’s a good time to start. And if you are capturing things on video, take your video’ing up a notch and include at least one thing from the list above.
Don’t just add more noise for the sake of “doing videos”. Instead of being noise, make your videos sing and be like music. When you do, people will watch and want to be a part of what you’re doing.
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