How to Make Engaging Facebook Videos from Scratch
Posting videos to Facebook is all the rage these days. Videos tend to receive more attention than text, which makes them a sure-fire way to increase engagement with your page. But considering that Facebook users consume nearly 1 billion videos each day, apartment marketers face some pretty tough competition if they want to stand out from the crowd.
One way to shout above the noise is to make your own custom videos. People are more likely to view a video if they’ve never seen it before. So if they see a new video in their newsfeeds, there’s a fairly good chance of engagement.
Creating a custom video can be expensive. Fortunately, there are several free resources and DIY tools that allow you to make a Facebook video on a limited budget, or no budget at all!
Here’s a quick step by step guide to producing your own Facebook video.
Step 1: Create Your Script and Storyboard
Jumping into any project without a plan is always a bad idea. That’s why we recommend that you create a script and storyboard before you start messing around with the actual film components of the video.
Before writing your script, figure out the overall direction of the video by asking yourself some questions. For example, why are you making the video? Who is the ideal audience? What type of messaging will generate the desired outcome from that audience?
After answering your questions and writing a script, it’s time to build a storyboard. The best way to do this is to break down your script into individual scenes. Keep your limitations in mind when creating your storyboard. Otherwise, you may get halfway through your video and then realize you have to scrap everything because you can’t produce a certain scene.
Step 2: Find Material
Discovering material to use in your videos is a crucial part of the creation process. You can’t have video without visual content. But you need to know upfront that finding visual content requires a little bit of digging, especially if you’re on a limited budget.
The costs of buying video clips and images add up quickly. So if you can’t spend a lot of money on production, you’ll want to use clips and images that belong to the public domain. Another option is the creative commons, though the usage rules for those clips and images vary depending on the particular license.
There are plenty of online sources where you can download public domain and creative commons clips and images. For clips, head to Pond5.com or Pexels. For images, check out Unsplash and Pixabay.
Of course, you can always shoot your own pictures and videos, and we highly recommend you do so. But if you do, make sure that your work is of professional quality.
Step 3: Edit Your Video
Once you have a script and visual material, it’s time to stitch everything together and create the final product. This can either be extremely easy or extremely complicated, depending on your approach. But let’s keep to the theme of this article and talk about some of the simpler ways of editing.
If you can afford to shell out a few bucks, iMovie app comes highly recommended. The $5 app allows you to upload visual content, add transitions, edit speeds and movement, and add text. Although it’s only available on Apple devices, it’s the perfect balance of flexibility and ease-of-use.
If you’re looking for a video editing tool that’s entirely free, consider Animoto. This app is available on both Apple and Android devices, and has an online tool as well. Animoto is less flexible than iMovie, but it allows you to share your videos online for free. There’s also a paid version if you want to download videos to your device.