The average American checks their phone 46 times per day. Whether your audience is using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or another social media platform, video stands out on their feed.

Using video to increase visibility and engagement, however, is often overlooked by account managers as part of their social media marketing plan despite being an effective strategy. The following suggestions will help you create videos that make an impact on your audience and establish your social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Add Subtitles

Adding subtitles to your videos can effectively increase the view-through rate (VTR) of your videos. It defeats the potentially disruptive aspect of audio and allows viewers to enjoy videos throughout their day in public or in private. In addition to increasing the ability to view videos in places where they may normally be disruptive, subtitles can help grasp the attention of your audience. All three mentioned social media channels have auto-play video features. However, the volume of videos remains muted until a viewer decides to activate sound. Adding subtitles can help your audience quickly understand what your video is about, and whether or not they want to watch it.

Grasp Attention Quickly

With an endless amount of content being delivered to social media users, your video has to stand out from the crowd of posts if you want it to be noticed. As users are scrolling through their feed, they don’t stop to look at everything. The first 3 seconds of your video must be able to grasp the attention of your audience. Use high-quality visuals, humor, shock, interesting subtitles, a gripping story, etc. to capture a viewer’s attention. Tip: Try to keep your video less than 60 seconds long. With the average human attention span lasting only 8 seconds, keeping your audience focused for longer than a minute may prove more difficult than you’d think. Hubspot recommends a maximum of 30 seconds for an Instagram video, 45 seconds for Twitter, and 60 for Facebook.

Tell a Story

If you own or work for a small business, your brand story is what sets you apart from the big brands which often don’t have genuine, relatable, human qualities. Big corporations are veering towards high-quality production. However, it comes with a loss of authenticity and charm. Use video to tell the captivating story of your company with your audience. An effective medium for telling your brand’s story is the use of Instagram and Facebook Stories. Instagram Stories see over 400 million daily users while Facebook stories have grown to over 150 million daily users. Effective storytelling can portray authenticity and establish trust with your audience. As a small business owner or account manager, you are most likely surrounded by the day to day activities of your company. Take advantage of the situation and film different aspects of your company, or have employees record their daily highlights. Ex: If you own a hot sauce company: film yourself making hot sauce, going to visit suppliers, engaging with the community, making sales, designing packaging, etc. Remember, anything can be interesting if you frame it the right way. The camera quality doesn’t have to be professional grade – many of today’s smartphone cameras are able to achieve amazing video results. Post your stories consistently to achieve optimal audience growth.

These guidelines for creating captivating videos can easily increase and boost your social media presence and keep your audience interested. As they become increasingly popular in 2018, now is the time to take action and dive head first into the world of social media videos.