Video autoplays silently in most feeds, and a large share of people never turn the sound on. Make a video that only works with audio and you have made a video most people see as a moving picture with no explanation.
Captions are the whole fix
Not a nice extra: the thing that makes the video legible. Platform-generated captions are good now and take a minute to check, and checking is the part that matters — automatic captions are confidently wrong about names, places and anything specific to your work.
The first frame is the thumbnail
It is chosen for you unless you choose it, and the default is often a blurred half-second of movement. Make the first frame legible: a face, a finished object, a line of text that says what this is.
- Something recognisable in the first half-second, not a fade from black
- Text on screen if the point needs words — do not make people guess
- The interesting part early. There is no patience budget to spend on a build-up
What the sound is for, then
The people who do turn it on are the ones already interested, and it rewards them. Music sets a tone, a voice makes it personal. But it should be the second layer, not the load-bearing one.
Test it honestly: mute your own video and watch it. If you cannot tell what it is about, that is what most of your audience is seeing.