Whether it's a snappy tweet, a captivating Instagram story, or a brief video clip on TikTok, short-form content has taken the internet by storm. As platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts continue to grow in popularity, short-form video is a vital avenue for marketing.
Unsure how your business can branch out into this format, though? Here are a few things you could try:
Repurpose your longer content for platforms like TikTok
Repurposing your longer videos is a great way to start creating a library of short-form content for platforms like TikTok. Take a look, for example, at the short videos produced by our sister brand The Evidence-Based Investor:
Structurally, we take interesting sections from the longer originals and make those the highlight of their own shorts. So: what changes do we make to fit the new platforms? Mainly, we reframe them for the mobile-friendly vertical aspect ratio, and add subtitles so that they can be more widely enjoyed.
This technique doesn't just give you a ready-made library of shorts. These videos can also motivate your audience to check the longer versions – effectively working as “teasers”.
Grab your audience's attention with eye-catching visuals
One of the key things that a short video for TikTok or YouTube Shorts needs to do is grab attention quickly. As Georgia Pontin writes in The Drum:
“You have about three seconds to capture viewers' attention, so you need to make your point quickly. TikTok makes it incredibly easy to just keep scrolling and many people will unless they hear or see something that will convince them that the contents of the video are worth sticking around for.”
There are lots of ways you can do this. Think about how you could sum up your video in a compelling question or phrase that could introduce it. Or isolate a particular fact or key line, and illustrate it via a technique like kinetic text.
Contribute to conversations
As well as being a video sharing platform, TikTok is also crucially a social media platform. So, think about this. How can you make short video content that contributes to the conversations going on around your particular field?
A platform like TikTok enables users to do more than just share videos about relevant topics. It also enables them to actively engage and converse using other users’ content:
"Duets", where users can create a video that shows alongside another user's video.
"Stitches", where a user can edit their response to the end of another user's video.
Users can even create video replies to specific comments under their content. This could be great for answering your business’ most frequently asked questions.
Of course, there are a lot of other considerations when making video for platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. One of these is thinking about how to frame your videos for a new aspect ratio. Another is thinking about how you can position subtitles and text so that the platform's user interface won't obstruct them.
If you’d like to know how we can help you, please do not hesitate to get in touch via the contact page.