Creating Compelling Content
October 23rd, 2023
Keep the People Engaged
If you’ve been on the hunt for ways to make your content pop and stand out amongst millions of videos, you’ve come to the right place. Now, what if I told you that at the end of this blog post, I could tell you where to find the billion dollar winning lottery ticket? Wouldn’t that be awesome! Well I can’t tell you that because I don’t know where it is and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be sharing it here. This is a perfect segue into the first way on this list of how to create compelling content: create a curiosity gap.
The Curiosity Gap
Perhaps you believed me and perhaps you didn’t, but maybe I created just enough curiosity for you to keep reading, or maybe you even scrolled to the end just to find out I lied. Either way, curiosity is human nature, as viewers, we always find ourselves wanting more. Whether that’s letting Netflix autoplay the next episode of a show or seeking out the sequel to a movie you just watched, sometimes you just can’t get enough. That feeling of wanting more is how you keep an audience captivated through your content. A way you can do this is by saving a story reveal for the very end of a video. You want the viewers to stay connected until the last second of your video, this keeps them engaged and, you guessed it, wanting more.
Utilizing Movement
When watching video, what would you rather see, the same person in the same frame for 60 seconds or the same person from 3 different angles, zooming in and zooming out, seeing text on screen and transitions? You probably said the latter, if you didn’t, I’m worried. We want to utilize movement in a video. Not only does it look better, it adds more for the viewer to be captivated by, keeping them engaged longer whether they realize it or not. A good rule of thumb to operate under is to not stay on the same frame for longer than 5 seconds in short-form or 10 seconds for long-form.
Experts and Influencers
Picture this: The new summer blockbuster is coming out, it has a star studded production crew, big name director, and an Oscar-winning writer, and the lead role is an unknown actor, maybe a child star, maybe from A24 films (no hate to A24). Would you be enticed to see it? Or would you rather see Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston in a lower budget indie film? Shocker alert: I’d once again choose the latter. The point I’m trying to make here is that people go with what they know. Bringing experts or influencers into your content is a great way to reach a more vast and diverse audience. If you’re collaborating with an influencer, most likely they relate to your content in some way. If said influencer is well-known, someone might click on the video purely because of their feature in the content.