Are plugs on social videos worth it?

Credit: Screenshots via The News Agents (left) and Johnny Harris (right) TikTok accounts

Is it worth putting a small animation at the end of your social videos telling your viewers to 'like and subscribe', 'watch the full video' or 'find us on Spotify?'

The short answer is: it depends on whether it is for horizontal, long-form video or vertical, short form video.

Long-form video

You have probably heard a million content creators tell their viewers to like and subscribe on YouTube, the undisputed home of long-form social video consumption.

It certainly does not hurt to do this type of call to action, but channels should also encourage deeper engagement metrics, like watch time and commenting to grow engagement. These metrics also matter more for short-form video.

Some news channels do not bother with any outro, especially for clips from their broadcast or news wires.

Option A: record your own outro

You do not necessarily need fancy animations asking viewers to take action. You can record a presenter-led outro.

Prime example of this is Piers Morgan, who records a few lines for his YouTube channel plugging the subscribe button and discoverability on other platforms (Spotify and Apple Podcasts).

Option B: combine with YouTube features

YouTube provides a number of useful native tools that can achieve the same outcome, and clever publishers can combine these with their own animations.

LadBible does this across its various channels. Note how the animation for 'subscribe' points to YouTube's subscribe button, and how the animation for 'watch next' leads to YouTube cards to encourage a second watch.

Option C: classic stinger

Broadcast news loves a little sound effect. The News Agents podcast has a voiceover and music bed at the end of videos to promote the show on the Global Player (its own app).

Short-form video

Generally speaking, you will not see as many call-to-actions across short-form video, on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, according to social media expert Matt Navarra. It is more common to see videos looping over and over, or just coming to an abrupt end.

LinkedIn is a slightly different beast. Video is not yet a core feature, but the platform is placing more emphasis on creator names and individual brands.

"It's not to say that like and subscribe is not important at all, it's just the platforms and the user behaviour has changed, and when its short-form video in an algorithmic feed, it's a very different proposition to long-form content you might find on YouTube," he explains.

It has diminished because of two factors. Algorithmic weighting favours those deeper engagement metrics, like shares, saves and watch times. It is also less natural to stop during a quick scrolling session to perform an action, particularly something as friction-heavy as migrating people from one platform to another.

Here, Arsenal FC fan channel attempts to do this on TikTok.

@aftvmedia

What's happened to Martin Odegaard this season?! 😔 Less than 10 tickets remain in our @raforte.com raffle to win 2 VIP hospitality tickets to Arsenal v Chelsea - link in bio! 🔗 (UK only) AFTVLive

♬ original sound - AFTV - AFTV

Option A: opt for implicit call-to-actions

TikTok provides a number of native features that can serve as calls to action, a particularly powerful one is the ability to embed comments.

Social-first news publisher TLDR News encourages its followers to head to the comments at the end of its videos.

@tldrnews

🇮🇷 How Iran became a regional power | Global Alliances Ep. 3 #news #politics #maps #map #iran #geopolitics #tldr #tldrnews

♬ original sound - TLDR News - TLDR News

Option B: Lnk.Bio

Link referral tools are a handy directory of sorts that can provide a bunch of useful links in one place. Particularly useful on TikTok and Instagram where referral traffic is pretty much nullified.

You can put links to your news subscription, podcast and so on in one handy Lnk.Bio and then promote that at the end of your video. See The Telegraph's example.

@thetelegraph

💸 Do you want to be rich? In this six-week newsletter course brought to you by Telegraph Money, our experts will share the knowledge and tools you need to better understand your finances and build your wealth. From property investment to prioritising your pension, our advice will put you in good standing to reach that ultimate seven-figure sum... ➡ Find out more and sign up at the link in our bio #budgeting #finance #money #tiktokmoney

♬ original sound - The Telegraph - The Telegraph

Option C: Link to the longer video

YouTube, again, provides the option to put a link in a Short to a longer video. It is a popular tactic by The New Statesman and many other channels.

Here is how to do it.

Option D: call-to-actions for specialists

General publishers tend not to focus on calls-to-action in short-form content because the algorithm is likely to resurface more content to engaged users.

However, Navarra says it makes sense for more specialist creators, who provide more niche or scarce content, to use call-to-action animations to drive viewers to subscribe, or head to other destinations, like websites or podcasts.

Think creators who specialise in tutorials, analysis or educational content. Journalist and documentary filmmaker Johnny Harris is a great example with his very subtle 'subscribe' animations at the end of short-form video clips.

@johnny.harris

The Most Remote Island

♬ original sound - Johnny Harris

Daniel Ionescu puts handmade animations at the end of his LinkedIn clips to promote his podcast, Millennial Masters, which is also a pretty niche show.

Option 1: work from a template

He creates these on the graphic design tool Canva, which has a bunch of templates to get you started and edit from. He pays for the premium version of Canva (£13 a month) as that provides a stock image library.

Option 2: use a ready-made animation

Mobile editing app Capcut provides some standard and free 'like and subscribe' templates that can simply be downloaded and added to your clips. Just search for them in the app.

Option 3: DIY

It is also quite simple to make these yourself on a mobile editing app like LumaFusion, says content creator specialist, Caroline Scott. This will give you more creative control over the graphic.

She says: "You could either make your own by layering titles and shapes on top of one another. If you do this in LumaFusion you could make the design you want from scratch and then export the animation with the codec HEVC with transparency (so it would have a transparent background) and you could layer this over any video you make."

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