Talking Head Video Tips to Increase Engagement Among Your Audience

Talking head videos are incredibly diverse and can be used for a variety of purposes across virtually any industry and for all audiences. But a crummy talking head video can leave your audience less than amused with whatever the message was that you were trying to convey. Whether you’re trying to explain your day as a vlogger, or you’re sharing your expertise in a particular industry, finding ways to increase engagement with your talking head videos is essential. These talking head video tips are going to help you find ways to influence your audience’s attention so that they’ll be excited to watch until the very end.

1. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

The quality of your video is going to directly influence the engagement. A poorly produced video that lacks quality is not going to keep your audience engaged. In fact, in order to draw audience attention, you need to at least focus on:

• Having a plan for your video.
• Knowing your target audience.
• Focusing on delivering quality content.
• Ensuring each video has a purpose.

The days of producing more and more content, regardless of quality, have long passed. You’re up against a ton of competition, and brands are investing a lot of time, effort and creativity into the production of talking head videos – don’t be the brand that tried to get away with slacking off.

2. Evoke Audience Emotion

The best and most engaging talking head videos are those that evoke the emotion of the audience. This is why knowing your audience is so important to the production of a talking head video. In fact, one of the best talking head video tips we can provide to increase engagement among your audience is to make sure that you are creating content that is going to make your audience feel a certain way – happy, sad, mad, glad, scared, worried or otherwise. Touching those emotions will be key to boosting engagement.

3. Include Text Overlays, Annotations & CTAs

You want your audience to take a certain action when they’re engaging with your talking head videos, but they don’t always know what the action or behavior is. Including text overlays that deliver key information, offering up annotations, and providing specific call to actions that draw viewer attention will boost your engagement and increase conversions for your talking head video. Don’t be afraid to tell your audience exactly what you want them to do!

4. Keep the Content Short & Focused

We can’t stress enough the important of following any talking head video tips that mention focused content that is short and to the point. A long-winded talking head video that includes a bunch of information that isn’t necessary can be difficult for any audience to focus on. Keeping the content short and focused, so that the audience is only expected to engage for many two minutes or less, is best. For almost all platforms, including social media, website, and elsewhere online, a video of two minutes or less is ideal.

5. Use Camera Techniques to Draw Attention

Even if you’re not a professional filmmaker, there are simple ways that you can use your camera to make a talking head video more engagement. In fact, we recommend that you use at least two cameras to film your talking head video and that you make sure that one camera is adjusting the depth of field (the distance between subject and camera) based on topic. If your subject is speaking about something very important, you zoom in, and when the subject matter is less emotionally charged, you can show a larger range view. Simple steps like this will help you to film more powerful footage that your post-production team can use to make your talking head video a success.

6. Film B-Roll for Visual Interest

The best and most engaging talking head videos include plenty of backup and supporting footage to share the story visually. While you might immediately think that a talking head video must be only a subject, speaking on camera, so that you see a “talking head,” you’re wrong. Some of the most powerful talking head videos, and one of the best talking head video tips we can offer in regards to this, is to film more b-roll than you think you need. Providing your post-production editing team with several minutes of b-roll footage for every desired minute you wish your finished video to be in length is key.

Ready to put these, and other, talking head video tips to work for your business? Give Beverly Boy Productions a call so that we can use our two decades of experience, and all of these talking head video tips, to help you represent your brand!