When using video on social media, one of the most important factors to consider is how your audience is going to be viewing your video.
Most commonly, your average scroller will be viewing on mobile, unless they’re bored at work or a coffee shop and procrastinating on their laptops. In both scenarios, they’re most likely to be watching that video without any sound. On Facebook, for example, 85 percent of viewers actually watch video with the sound off.
That means, when planning your social videos, you have to do extra work to design them to be watchable and still make sense when muted. While it should be intuitive, as video is a visual medium, it can still sometimes be tricky to pull off in practice.
Need an example you can copy? Check out this video we made for TripAdvisor, which communicates a clear message without needing the accompanying audio.
TripAdvisor’s goal was to attract and nurture would-be travelers by showcasing the beautiful and amazing dream rooms of the Treehotel in Sweden. We let the pictures and video footage be our key selling point, while creating supplementary text and title-cards to provide context for what our audience was seeing.
While we did throw a background track for those viewers who were so amazed they just had to turn on their sound, the video is entirely watchable in silence without losing any information whatsoever.
Using exclusively video footage, title-cards, and even simple still images, you can create a similar video for Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to attract eager viewers or nurture on-the-fence followers. By focusing on the visual first and foremost, you’re grabbing their attention in an otherwise crowded feed, so put your most evocative content forward.