“As well as grabbing attention, video content can also make social media messages more memorable.”
The Animation Guys, Animators
GIF by Margarita Ivanchikova via Dribble
Social media’s popularity has grown exponentially over the past decade. Social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives, and many people have taken advantage of this to grow their brands. Videos are especially popular on social media, especially on mobile apps like TikTok and Instagram.
Because of this, artists, especially animators, have found social media helpful in getting their brands and services noticed by potential clients. Mastering the art of promoting your animations on a whole other platform is an essential part of shooting your animation business to the top.
A key to succeeding as an animator - whether as a freelance animator or the owner of an animation studio - is to advertise your animation services to potential animation clients effectively.
This process has become much simpler in recent years due to the popularization of social media, and you can exploit this to grow your freelance career and your animation business by advertising your work on social media platforms.
Check out this blog on the best social media tools for animators to kick off your journey into social media marketing!
Every brand, no matter the content, is looking for ways to stand out on social media; social media animations are the most effective way to do so. Learning how to create effective social media animations will not only help your animation business stand out, but you can also offer this service to your animation clients and help them grow their businesses on social media.
In this blog, we give you a definitive guide to creating social media animations by looking at how you can create social media animations, what gets people’s attention, and how to safely follow social media guidelines.
How To Create Social Media Animations
Image by Debbie Moran via Recurpost
As an animator, you probably know how to create short and punchy animations to attract people’s attention. But we’d still like to give you a few pointers to optimize your social media animations to do the most for your and your client's businesses.
- Create Short Edits
One of the simplest and most effective ways to use animation on social media is to include short edits of your animated video projects to entice viewers and potential clients.
Once your video is complete, you can go back through it and create multiple social media snippets to post online. This means capturing key messages and scenes to condense into a one- to two-minute video for a different audience and platform.
This will not only give you loads of content to post over several days or weeks, but it will drum up engagement for your project by keeping viewers interested to see what happens next.
It is also advisable to add close captioning to your social media animations since most online videos on social media are watched first without sound.
- Tailor Social Media Animations To The Platform
When you spend time and energy on creating social media animations to promote your animation business, it helps to get the most out of your effort you can. You can do this by tailoring your content to its platform.
To do this, consider the target audience who uses specific social media sites. For example, TikTok is an app that mostly caters its content to children and young adults. Therefore, you should do the same. The more relevant your social media animations are to your audience, the more engagement you will get, and the more potential clients will contact you for projects.
This also applies to your animation clients. By tailoring projects to different social media sites, you’ll be offering a specialized service that will surely garner positive reviews from all your animation clients.
This is where creating snippets from your animated videos also comes in handy. You can gauge the response to the social media animations you post and adjust accordingly.
Moreover, posting snippets will also give people a taste and entice them to find out more and watch the full video on your animation website. Or you can use this as an opportunity to redirect viewers to your animation clients’ websites.
- Steps For Creating Social Media Animations
If you’re unsure about the process of optimizing your animations for social media, there are some steps you can follow to help you with this.
Creating social media animations can be challenging as you are always fighting the algorithm to try to get as many people to see your content as possible. But it isn’t as difficult as you might have imagined. Here’s how you can create effective short social media animations easily:
- Ideate: Create a storyboard by looking at what content performs the best on the social media app you use.
- Plan: Remember to capture attention early, keep your message simple, design for sound off, and experiment with size.
- Record: Make sure that your social media animations are high-quality in terms of both audio and visuals.
- Edit: Don’t rush the editing stage as these short social media animations serve as advertisements for your and your client's businesses, and you need to make a good first impression on your viewers.
- Share: Now you’re ready to go ahead and share your social media animations on the platform of your choice!
To help you with your planning, here are some tips from Facebook for creating effective videos.
How To Catch People's Attention with Social Media Animations
GIF via GIPHY
Social media sites make up six of twenty of the most popular websites on the internet, and it is a continual battle to stay relevant as a business.
But how do you stay on top in a space where content is always evolving, and the next best thing is just around the corner? The answer is to create engaging content that grabs people’s attention, and there’s no better way than with animated videos.
Social media animations are designed to live and thrive on social channels by being short and eye-catching. And luckily for animators, people love short-form video content.
Aside from the benefit of grabbing people’s attention, social media animations also make the message you are trying to convey more memorable.
Humans are visual beings, and our brains find it much easier to digest visuals than text, so a video is processed more effortlessly and in less time than any other form of content. This also means that viewers are more likely to engage with your animated content.
Videos on social media are often used as a more effective way of driving up user engagement and delivering all sorts of information.
Anyone can post an image, but animators can create high-quality social media animations that are sure to attract attention. By creating content that most people can’t, you can cut through the noise on most social media platforms and stand out among the crowd. This can be done in many ways.
You can create something highly entertaining and funny that gets shared and potentially goes viral. But this might not allow you to connect with your viewers, and potential animation clients, in a meaningful way. By connecting with your viewers, you will stay at the front of their minds.
One great way to do this is by creating purpose-made content for social media, as mentioned previously. This will ensure you catch people’s attention by creating content for them.
Here are some more tips for grabbing people’s attention with social media animations:
- Use Cover Images That Will Elicit Clicks
Before hitting the play button, people need to be convinced that this video, however short, is worth the few minutes of their time. This is where a cover image comes in. The cover image serves to help viewers decide if they want to watch your social media animation or not.
Do your videos a favor and start them off strong with a still shot people would consider eye candy.
- Capture Video Attention Span With Clear And Compelling Titles
Viewers need to know exactly what to expect from your video before they hit play, so let them know right away what they’ll get from watching it with a descriptive title that answers the question, “What is this about?”
Get creative and use wordplay that will entice people scanning your social sites to click.
- Use Text Animations
People often scroll through social media with their audio on mute, especially on mobile apps. For this reason, it’s essential to include text in your animations to create attention-grabbing social media animations.
Including bright, bold text to grab viewers’ attention is a great way to stand out on social media.
- Make People Want More
The way to hook viewers to watch your videos from beginning to end is to have each frame entice people into discovering additional details about the subject at hand.
- Include a Call to Action (CTA)
It’s not enough to have a high viewer count on your best social media animations; you should also leverage each video to encourage viewers to take action – whether following your account or clicking on your website.
You must include clear calls to action that represent your animation business’ messaging and intent. But remember to do this quickly before people can get the chance to scroll away before seeing it.
Popular Video Sharing Platforms and Guidelines For Creating Content
GIF by Thomas Lupoli via Dribble
If you’re going to create successful social media animations, you need to be aware of the content guidelines on different social media platforms. These range from platform to platform, and you need to be sure to follow them to ensure you get as many views and as much engagement as possible.
We’ll review the most important guidelines on some of the more popular video-sharing sites here, so you can remember what type of content to avoid when posting to these sites.
Instagram and TikTok are probably the two most popular video-sharing social media platforms. Both of them have integrated systems that favor video content over still images. But platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have also become popular for video sharing in recent years, and they each have their benefits for social media animations.
For more information on these, you can check out this blog that outlines the guidelines you should be aware of when posting to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Let’s take a closer look at the two most popular video-sharing platforms:
Instagram is a visual platform where social media animations can be very popular. This is a platform where repurposing content into a portrait format works perfectly for posting on your Instagram story, which gives you more opportunities for creating different content.
Currently, Instagram offers three video formats: in-feed, reels, and stories. Instagram story videos are the most popular among users, so posting your social media animations here would be your best bet for engagement and viewership.
For an Instagram story or reel, the video should be 1080 x 1080 pixels, with an aspect ratio of 9:16. The maximum file size should be 250MB. Instagram stories can only be about 15 seconds long, so use them wisely.
- TikTok
TikTok is a popular social media platform with billions of active users worldwide. With its viral funky dance moves, its simple how-to tutorials, and its calm day-in-the-life vlogs, this social media platform has become an attractive space for artists, influencers, content creators, and even the casual observer.
Classic TikTok video dimensions and resolution are 1080 by 1920 pixels, the standard portrait size of most smartphones. Android’s maximum file size for newsfeed videos is capped at 72 MB, while Apple’s is 287.76 MB.
The maximum length for a TikTok video is three minutes. But keep in mind that people lose interest fast, and TikTok’s algorithm penalizes you for posting too many videos with a high drop-off rate. So make every second count by trimming your video to ensure that your entire video is compelling.
Animating in Portrait is the ideal TikTok video format since the platform is designed for viewing on your phone. You are welcome to post landscape videos, so long as they still capture people’s attention and make them want to rotate their phones.
Creating Social Media Animations
Social media is a great way to advertise and market your animation business online. But you must know how to use the algorithms to your advantage to get the most user engagement possible.
Creating social media animations that are specifically tailored to specific platforms and audiences will give you a big boost in popularity and engagement.
If you’re an animator who’s looking to start your own studio or grow your career, check out our blog on How to Start an Animation Studio and GET FREE TRAINING to kickstart your animation career today.
