Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn have become an integral part of our lives. These platforms provide businesses an opportunity to directly engage with their target audience and promote their products/services. However, with countless brands jostling for user attention on social media, it has become increasingly difficult to breakthrough the noise. This is where creating engaging social media videos comes into play. Videos are proven to be one of the most effective content formats on social media as they can convey your message in a visual, energetic and memorable way. However, creating high quality, professional looking videos from scratch requires significant effort, skills and budget which may not be feasible for many small businesses and entrepreneurs. This is where design templates come to the rescue. Design templates allow you to quickly and easily create polished, on-brand videos without requiring advanced video editing skills or huge investments. In this blog, we will discuss how you can leverage design templates to create engaging social media videos for your business.

Understanding What Makes a Video Engaging

Before diving into how to create videos using templates, it is important to understand the key elements that make a video engaging. Some of the main factors that keep viewers hooked include:

Clear Call-to-Action: Every video should have a clear call-to-action asking viewers to do something like subscribe to your channel, visit your website or download an eBook. This keeps the purpose of the video focused.

Compelling Opening: The opening few seconds are crucial to hook viewers. Use an exciting opener like a intriguing question, surprising statistic or intriguing visuals/animation to pique curiosity.

Strong Visual Storytelling: Tell your story visually with relevant imagery, graphics and minimal text. Rely on visual storytelling rather than just talking head videos.

Short & Sweet: Majority of viewers have short attention spans. Keep your videos under 2 minutes for platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Break into multiple short videos if content requires. Element: Feature real people in your videos - customers, employees, business owners. This makes the content more relatable and authentic.

Adding these key elements to your videos will make them instantly more shareable and engaging for viewers on social media.

Choosing the Right Template

With so many free and paid design templates available online, choosing the right one can be overwhelming. Here are some tips to select templates best suited for your social video needs:

Purpose of Video: First understand if the video is meant for introduction, tutorial, customer testimonial etc. Pick a template addressing that specific purpose.

Branding Elements: Templates that allow adding your logo, colors and fonts help maintain visual consistency across all marketing assets.

Platform in Mind: Consider the aspect ratios and formats suitable for different social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube while choosing a template.

User Experience: Ease of customization, smooth transitions and overall user experience of the template editor is important.

File Types: Check if templates support popular video formats like MP4, MOV suitable for social sharing.

Free vs Paid: Many great free templates are available but paid ones provide more customization options and technical support.

Doing some research on template providers, reading reviews and testing out sample templates will help you land the most suitable option matching your needs and budget. Popular free and paid template sources include Videohive, Placeit, Animoto, Adobe Spark etc.

Customizing the Template

Once you've selected the right template, it's time to customize it as per your brand and video content. Here are the key steps:

Add Your Branding Elements: Upload your logo, choose color palette and fonts matching your brand. You can also add your website/social links.

Import Visual Assets: Drag and drop relevant images, illustrations, videos, animations within the template frames/layers.

Record or Add Voiceover: Narrate your story verbally or use on-screen text/captions if recording is not an option.

Edit Transitions & Timings: Play around with transition styles and duration between slides/scenes.

Add Background Music: Most templates allow adding custom background music/sound effects from online libraries.

Export & Share Settings: Choose video quality, format and configure for sharing on desired social channels directly.

Test Rendered Output: Preview the final polished video before sharing to check quality and make any required edits.

Taking time with customization helps create an on-brand, polished video that effectively conveys your message in an organized visual manner. Popular free tools like Adobe Spark, Animoto allow multiple revision cycles as well.

Adding Enhancing Elements

While customizing the template is essential, taking some extra steps can make the video truly engaging:

Introduction Hook: Add an intriguing question, quote or animated graphics/text at the start.

User Generated Content: Feature real user comments, reviews or testimonial videos within the template scenes.

Interactive Elements: Use call-outs, highlights, zoom-ins creatively to draw attention to important bits.

Endscreens & Overlays: Add endscreen icons linking to your other videos, website or newsletter signup.

Quizzes & Polls: Include interactive elements like trivia questions or polls to boost engagement.

Transcripts: Provide full/partial auto-generated captioning for accessibility and searchability.

Custom Icons: Create branded play/pause, volume icons using tools like Flaticon.

Graphics & Visual Effects: Enhance storytelling using illustrations, infographics, transitions sparingly.

Optimization Tags: Add metadata like title, description, tags, chapters for better discoverability.

Leveraging extra elements thoughtfully can elevate the video and enhance overall viewer experience multifold. Test different combinations to find what resonates best.

Promoting your Video

Now that your video is ready, it is time to share it via your preferred social channels and drive maximum engagement and views:

Optimize Post: Use attention-grabbing title, description, thumbnail, hashtags and call-to-action links.

Schedule Posts: Plan a publishing schedule and queue posts across channels for consistent exposure.

Display in Bio: Feature video link high up in your social profile bios for visibility.

Share in Groups: Engage industry groups by posting video with a question/poll for comments.

Email Marketing: Promote video links in your email newsletter to reach existing subscribers.

Blog Post: Write a supporting blog post around the video topic and cross-promote them mutually.

Influencer Marketing: Ask influencers, partners in your domain to share the video organically.

Dynamic Ads: Run facebook/instagram lead ads or retargeting ads specific to the video.

Track Performance: Monitor views, shares, comments, clicks via each platform's analytic dashboard.

Analyze Feedback: Understand audience response to your calls-to-action for improvement.

With consistent promotion efforts across top platforms and channels, brand awareness will multiply exponentially helping achieve your marketing goals.

Conclusion

In this digital era where visual storytelling rules the online landscape, a well-designed social video can take your brand's message to greater heights.By leveraging free online video design templates, you can create polished, professional looking videos for your business without spending huge budgets. The key is to focus on the right combination of design, customization, interactivity and promotion tactics. With some experimentation, you will surely find your best video formula to meaningfully engage target audiences and boost ROI through every share. Social video is here to stay - so start creating yours today!

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