VROOM!!! It’s unbearably fast. The speed is absolutely frightening. And nobody else but you are then one who rides it. Though the numbers 07-30 seconds sound like one, we are not talking about automobiles here.
The average time slot each video get in your social media feed is 0.7 seconds. Can you imagine how fast you scroll up the feed? That’s certainly frightening for any advertiser. Imagine you take
all the efforts for making your video and then it is viewed not for a mere second. Disgusting and disappointing, isn’t it? But that’s how it works.
I remember the early days in my career as an ad filmmaker where we used to keep the duration of a corporate video strictly under 7 minutes because the attention span of a general viewer used to be around 7 to 8 minutes. With the rise of the videos the same holding time reduced to 3 minutes and now with the videos exploding from almost every device, it’s gone even down. But 0.7 seconds is definitely an alarming number.
Why should we increase the attention span?
Imagine how hard it must have been for the makers to crate a hook in the first 12 frames! Considering the fact that the online videos are of 15 FPS, you get only 12 frames to attract your audience. It’s really taxing. The average viewing rate is 10% of the reach. If your video reaches to 1000 people, the possibility is 100 out of them would stop to watch it and 10% of the would watch past 4 seconds. That’s about 1% of the reach.
Even though it sounds cruel, it’s not unusual. These days average social media user gets about 100 minutes of content every minute to watch. And that too only on YouTube. Now, add up Facebook, Instagram Reels, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and other sources. How would one watch each and every video? We can’t expect them to watch each and every video. But we can always make them watch our video if they are here to spend a few seconds.
We are addressing all the advertisers and businesses owners here. We are not discussing the videos randomly posted on the internet. We call them bottled videos. They are like putting up your message in a bottle, seal it and throwing it in the ocean, hoping that someone would find it some day and respond.
Advertising video are made to target a specific audience. They are created with a thought in mind and they are created with a great effort by spending a good amount of money. Even after spending the extra few thousands on social media, if it’s not catching the desired attention, the advertiser has to suffer heavily. Even though every effort in a business involves a certain amount of risk why shouldn’t we take some extra efforts in the making to make the audience watch it a few seconds more?
Mutability:
People check social media anywhere. Apart from the privacy of their homes or their offices, they can check their feeds literally everywhere – in running a bus, in a mall, while eating at a restaurant or even in a public toilet. Can you expect them to turn on the audio? Each of your video should be able to talk without its audio and the simplest thing to achieve that is to add subtitles to your video. Try and make catchy subtitles so that a viewer is able to watch and enjoy your video anywhere.
Thumbnail:
Earlier a business video was always a tool to promote a business unlike a cinema. A cinema was a product and it needed a video as a marketing tool. Now a days, in context with the social media, a video too needs some attraction to be seen. That's challenging and one way to beat that it to create a stunningly attractive thumbnail. It's like a movie poster. Half of the people click on the video if the thumbnail is catchy. Take some more efforts to create them.
Text:
Marketing videos also need some pretext, some sort of description - topic, treatment, genre, etc. It helps the viewer to take a call whether to watch it or not. Apart from that a good and extensive description is needed for it to appear in the high rankings of search results. More the description, better the chances of it coming top of the search results.
Concept:
A good content never dies. Here in a social media video, we need an engaging first frame along with an extremely brilliant concept to fight with hundreds of senseless and even more brilliant videos at the same time. A great contents always scores over the ordinary and win you the desired audience.
Production value:
A high production value always helps to grab the attention. The good looks of your video depend upon many aspects - Good quality camera, experienced technicians, seasoned actors, etc. You may not have budget for such video every time. But then you can always plan your budget for a video eg. You are planning to make 10 videos a year, make 2 of them of high quality, 2-3 motion graphics and others of moderate quality with may be decreased duration. High production value means high brand value. So, always turn to the professionals like One Mile Ahead Films who have vast experience in producing high quality videos.
Duration:
Duration does matter. Earlier it did because of the airtime cost of the television channels. Now, it matters because of the attention span. Short videos are watched more. They attract more attention. Keep that in mind while creating a concept and even during the editing. And if you have a story that would go beyond a minute, make sure that the script better be great, engaging.
Humour:
We all know that humorous videos hold more attention than normal videos. Emotions always sell and humour tops them. Even if you are in a business of a serious product, a humorous video always gets more attention. Don't force humour. Natural humour increases the possibility of your video going viral.
Take away:
There has to be a take away of your video. A good CTA (Call To Action) helps winning more buyers. If your audience likes it and they have nothing to do with the products you are offering, they'll at least end up forwarding your video. That's the success of a video on a social media.
So, if you want to put a brake on the viewer's speed of 0.7 seconds per video to 30 second per video attention span, keep the above things in mind every time you make a video. Otherwise select the reputed professionals who've been doing it and you take care of creating your products better.
Go vroom! Enjoy the magic of videos.