6 Psychology-Backed Hacks for Making Engaging Videos

6 Psychology-Backed Hacks for Making Engaging Videos. At HubSpot, our one-minute Facebook videos usually receive more views than our longer videos. Facebook will boost a video’s organic reach if it deeply engages viewers, so we knew our video needed to grip our audience from start to finish -- especially since it’s four times longer than the majority of our videos. 2) Hook Your Audience When Facebook analyzed their users’ video consumption data in 2016, they discovered that 45% of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will keep watching it for at least 30 seconds. Many of our viewers dream about starting their own business, so this quick sketch of the topic definitely piqued their interest. Vision was the only way to learn about the world. Each time our narrator expanded on a concept or some data, our viewers could listen to the information and watch a visual representation of it. 4) Tell a Story When someone tells you a story, they can plant their personal experiences and ideas directly into your mind. 5) Inspire Your Audience According to Psychology Today, brand preference is largely an emotional decision. Humans associate the same personality traits to brands as they do with people.

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At HubSpot, our one-minute Facebook videos usually receive more views than our longer videos. So how is it that our third most viewed video right now is almost four minutes long?

Facebook will boost a video’s organic reach if it deeply engages viewers, so we knew our video needed to grip our audience from start to finish — especially since it’s four times longer than the majority of our videos. If it didn’t captivate them, Facebook could squash the video’s organic distribution.

To maximize audience engagement, we implemented psychology-backed hacks throughout the entire video. Let’s check it out and the takeaways below to learn how to fully capture an audience’s attention.

6 Psychology-based Hacks for Making Engaging Videos

1) Spark Curiosity

To spark on-demand curiosity, George Loewenstein, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, recommends leveraging the information gap theory of curiosity.

The theory states that sensing a knowledge gap between what you know and what you want to know compels you to take action to fill it, like clicking through to a story.

We evoked curiosity in our viewers by using a simple, yet thought-provoking headline: Entrepreneurship is Back.

This title can trigger loads of questions from our audience, like “Entrepreneurship was gone?”, “What does it look like now?” and “How can I be an entrepreneur in today’s age?”, increasing the odds that they would click on our video.

By stimulating curiosity and leaving questions unanswered, we could succesfully create a gap between what the reader knows and what they want to learn.

2) Hook Your Audience

When Facebook analyzed their users’ video consumption data in 2016, they discovered that 45% of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will keep watching it for at least 30 seconds.

This helped us realize that sparking our audience’s curiosity wasn’t enough to engage them. We needed to instantly hook our viewers in the first three seconds. The human attention span isn’t long enough to be entertained by sluggish content.

What hooks people, though? According to Buffer, an effective video hook visually engages viewers and previews the video’s core message. Hooks are potent because they can simultaneously grab your viewers’ attention and generate interest in the rest of the video.

During our video’s first three seconds, we rapidly cut between numerous Shark Tank pitches. The swift frames caught our viewers’ eye. And if they recognized the entrepreneurs, they knew exactly what the video was about.

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The narrator quickly summarizes the video’s main point too. He cuts right to the chase, informing the…

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