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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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........

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