Video duration is highest indicator of engagement. Plan to chunk your videos to shorter than 6 minutes in length. Studies show that videos of 9 minutes in length or longer get less than 50% total engagement. Videos of 3 minutes and shorter get the highest. (Guo, Philip J., et al, pg.4)
Source clips from any number of media forms and outlets ranging from TED Talks to popular films. Add timely clarification with authentic casual video clips you record. Remember the significance of nonverbal cues to communicate effectively. Find and create video content to bring these cues into the otherwise isolating online classroom.
Using active-learning techniques within videos or as an accompaniment to the videos encourages students to intentionally engage with video lecture content. It is highly encouraged to add accountability by combining any video with some sort of homework or discussion question to answer while watching the video (M. Kim, Kim, Khera, & Getman, 2014)
Students are usually overconfident when watching videos. You could encourage retrieval practice in aiding retention of the information being taught in video by sprinkling assessment question during the video and at the end.
Spending money on a fancy webcam, microphone, and finding the perfect lighting will do little to increase engagement. Keep it simple.
Recording video could be deceptively time consuming to make, but you could reduce that time and the quality of the content by making yourself an outline and finding a collection of visuals you would like to share.
Early on when I started making videos for a coding class that I taught, I would be 5 minutes into the video, try to compile my code and it would fail. The perfectionist side of me would grab hold, I would delete the video, and start all over. Five minutes quickly spiral into thirty. Multiply that by the total amount of videos I wanted to create and you have hours of wasted effort. Instead embrace the mistakes. I've learned to use my mistakes as a teachable moment. Now, when that happens (and it does...often), I start to think aloud while I debug the problem. Usually I will find the issue quickly, but if not I will just slice the debugging section down with iMovie.
While it may sound cliche, it is very easy to inadvertently change the way you present yourself when on camera. This usually manifests as slowing down your speech and over-enunciating. It takes practice, but do your best to keep your normal tone, and let your personality shine through as it does in the classroom. This is easier said than done when you are staring at a camera and not group of smiling faces.