Short-form videos are one of the dominant social media trends - and there’s a good reason for it! Follow this process to get the most out of them.
If you're looking to create engaging and shareable content that resonates with your audience, a short-form video could be the answer.
Short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts offer your content a unique opportunity to reach a new audience to showcase your products, services, and brand personality in under 60 seconds.
As 72% of customers say they would rather learn about a product or service through video, video marketing in short form is a vital part of any business or brand's social media strategy.
This article will explore why short-form video is important and how to utilise best practices to create engaging short-form videos for your client's brand to connect with their audience and achieve their marketing goals effectively.
Short-form video typically refers to video content less than 60 seconds, even though recent social media updates allow short video content up to 3 minutes. They are designed for quick and easy consumption on social media platforms to keep viewers scrolling for hours.
Short-form videos are an excellent way to capture your audience's attention, increase engagement, deliver your message quickly and effectively, and allow you to market your products towards a larger audience without spending enormous money on paid advertising.
Now let's dive into some best short-form video marketing practices you can use to help boost your client's social media game.
There are four things you need to do to ensure you're publishing high-quality videos that will help you reach your business goals:
Scrolling through social media is one of the fun parts of being a social media manager. Still, the key is to use this time efficiently and not get distracted by dancing babies or the latest celebrity rivalry.
Stay on track by keeping your brand in mind when scrolling. Your video content should align with your brand voice, personality, and values whilst also using trending content that fits in with what's going on on social media.
For example, the popular ceilings trend where users run on video like they’re in the last scenes of a romcom triggered tons of user-generated content on Tik Tok.
The Savannah Bananas cleverly created their own version to highlight the brand's personality. It was entertaining and funny, connecting viewers to their brand identity while also being current by following a trend.
Remember, though, don’t use a sound just because it's trending. Use a sound that resonates with your brand's message and audience.
Tiktok
Listening out for sounds that are on repeat on your for you page (FYP) is a key indicator of a trend on Tik Tok. Typically you'd want to use a sound that everyone’s using, but also be on the lookout for sounds which have future potential to grow or go with your brand and content ideas.
Alternatively, you can use Tik Tok’s creative centre, where you can find the top trending videos, and hashtags filtered by industry and region on the social media platform, this gives you great insights into what’s working on Tik Tok so you can incorporate it into your client's brand and leverage short form video.
Source: TikTok
For example, this sound has been used over a million times and found on your FYP numerous times. This is an indicator that the sound has been used by users on the platforms several times, and if you think it goes well with your content ideas, it’d be perfect to use to keep your content trendy.
Instagram Reels
On Instagram Reels, the small diagonal arrow in the left-hand corner of the reels page indicates a trending sound.
Hopping on this sound as quickly as possible increases your chances of your video reaching a wider audience as trending sounds catch viewers' attention in short-form video format.
Source: @_hellomedia
Short-form videos are all about delivering your message quickly and effectively. As the format itself is designed for quick and easy consumption, it's important to keep your content simple and focused on one or two key ideas.
As viewers' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, it's a social media manager’s goal to grab their attention in just a few seconds.
For example, you can use eye-catching hooks, sounds or transitions to spark user interest in your videos in only a few seconds.
Sendible’s post had a message to send about future social media trends, we used a trending sound at the time, our message as a hook and kept it interesting with the message editing pop-ups.
Repurposing your long-form videos into short form is a great way to do a lot by doing a little. You can turn a long Youtube video into a vertical Tik Tok video or Youtube shorts by chopping and cutting down the video into byte-size consumable content with key focus points like how-tos or an explainer video. This could lead viewers to seek out the longer form video, which means even more engagement, so this is a win-win social media hack.
Source: @Sendible
You can also repurpose your short-form video content across different social media platforms. For instance, this TikTok user breaks down the genius of another TikTok user, Jordan, who repurposed his short form Tik Toks to Youtube Shorts and has received tons of engagements without having to create new content.
Using content pillars is an epic way to manage your short-form content. When you consistently share content that aligns with your brand through content pillars, you establish a consistent brand voice and image, even in a short format. This way, you can use quick and snappy videos to meet your marketing strategy initiatives, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, and increase brand awareness.
So, when creating your short-form videos, keep in mind these best practices we listed above and stick to this checklist to create high-quality videos.
When creating short form videos, be sure you are catching your audience’s attention in the first 3 seconds of the video. It is of utmost importance when producing any reel or shorts across any social platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Failing to do this, your audience may wipe swiftly to the next short video, and you may lose the audience forever. A key way to snag your audience’s attention in the first 2 seconds of your short form video, is adding a title describing what your short is about.
Producing a specific type of short-form video, such as Instagram Reels, works in a similar fashion. Motion graphics in the form of animated texts and illustrations from start to end of a short video are key to retaining the audience’s attention so they are fed visual cues, ensuring optimally that they stay watching from start to finish.
Keep in mind the best practices for the short-form videos we listed above, and use this checklist to create stunning, high-quality videos every time:
Define your audience: Before you start creating short-form videos, it's essential to define your target audience. Who are they, what are their interests, and what kind of content do they like to consume? Knowing this information will help you create content that resonates with your audience.
Pro tip: Check out the ChatGPT prompts we use to come up with new video ideas, scripts, and promotion copy.
Posting videos at the optimal times is essential to engage your audience when they are most active, thereby boosting engagement rates. Sendible constantly analyses and adjusts to the best times based on changing audience behaviour and interaction trends. This convenient feature is available directly in the Smart Compose box for a seamless scheduling experience.
Selecting the appropriate video thumbnail is a key factor in increasing views. While most of your target audience will discover videos based on algorithm suggestions, a significant amount of views will come from keyword research. And in this case, they'll first see the thumbnail. The right thumbnail enhances navigation and user experience, increases visibility and searchability, and makes content more accessible. Sendible lets you choose the thumbnail, eliminating the need to go back to the native app to add them later.
Creating an attention-grabbing video with a strong initial hook is crucial. However, you need a compelling copy with a strong CTA to truly expand your video's reach. Crafting copy optimised for both the algorithm and your audience can be challenging, so we've integrated AI Assist directly into the Compose Box. By selecting the appropriate parameters, our AI Assist will help you generate engaging, optimised, and on-brand copy that enhances reach and boosts engagement. You can also use our Custom Tags to quickly tailor posts to multiple audiences with the right information.
Sendible's Content Library boasts a variety of advanced features, one of which is its ability to store top-performing hashtags. If you use different sets of hashtags for your social media content pillars, you can save them and effortlessly import them into your video posts using the Smart Compose Box.
Monitoring the performance of your short-form videos is crucial to understanding their impact on your business objectives. Are they effective in boosting brand awareness or driving traffic to your website? Instead of switching between platforms to manage videos, you can label them directly in Sendible and automate report generation to evaluate their performance. This enables you to swiftly respond, optimise, adjust, or focus on producing the most successful content clusters.
If you're interested in exploring these and other advanced features, you can test Sendible for free for 14 days!