Unless you have been hiding under a rock the last few years, you will at some point have watched a short form video. Short form video has gained tremendous popularity among consumers over recent years, and because of this it has quickly become one of the most effective ways for brands and businesses to connect with their target audience.

Platforms like Tik-Tok, Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts have all soared in popularity with all age groups and from all around the world. Some of the statistics are pretty staggering

• People watch over 1 billion videos on Tik tok daily.
• 89% of people say watching a video has convinced them to buy a product or service.
• 73% of consumers prefer to watch a short-form video to learn about a product or service.
• The short-form video has the highest ROI of any social media marketing strategy at 30%
• Short-form ranks #1 for lead generation and engagement.

And when 63% of mobile advertisers consider social and short-form video a top trend for 2023, it’s clearly something we should all be doing to drive brand growth and engagement. 

So in this guide, we are talking about short form videos, what they are, the benefits, tips on creating them and how fern Colab can help you. So lets get into it. 

What are Short-Form Videos

Short-form videos are pretty much exactly what the name implies, short videos. Typically less than 10 minutes, most often a lot shorter, like 15 seconds to 1 minute. They are easy to consume, scrollable, and shareable on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Youtube or Snapchat. 

They are often creative, engaging and entertaining and can be comedy skits, dances, tutorials, reviews or music videos. When you scroll through TikTok or Instagram Reels and watch back to back videos of funny cats, you are watching short form videos. Notice how many short videos you consume within a short time scrolling? That’s exactly what makes short form video so popular among marketers. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among younger generations, as they allow for quick and easy entertainment and communication in a fast-paced, digital world.

Benefits of Short-Form Videos for Your Brand

There is a long list of benefits of using short form video in your marketing strategy. Here are some of our top reasons. 

Higher engagement

Short form videos are often quicker paced, with visuals and music that captures and holds viewers attention. This leads to higher engagement rates compared to slower paced long videos. 

Wider audience reach

With so many platforms adopting short form video, it is easy for people to consume and share, making them more likely to go viral and reach a global audience. ​​Tik Tok alone has over 1.39 billion monthly active users currently.

Cost-effective 

Reading this on a smartphone? Yea? Well you have everything you need to make a short form video. This makes it accessible and affordable to everyone, and videos can be produced quickly and inexpensivly, making them a cost effective marketing tool. 

Increased brand awareness 

With short-form videos, you can showcase your products, services, or content in an engaging and attention-grabbing way. This can help you reach a wider audience and increase brand visibility.

Enhanced social media presence 

Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels have a large user base, and creating content for these platforms can help you reach more people. Short-form videos are ideal for social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, where they can help boost your social media presence and attract new followers.

Improved SEO 

Short-form videos can help improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) by increasing engagement and driving more traffic to your website.

Tips For Creating Short Form Video

Focus on trends

Tapping into current trends is a sure fire way to get more engagement from your videos right away. And this task can be pretty fun, cause all you have to do is scroll through other peoples short form videos. Remember though you are here for work, and 3 hours of funny animal videos is not going to help you grow your business. 

While you are scrolling, keep an eye out for recurring sounds, songs, or video topics that creators are utilizing repeatedly, this is often a good sign of a trend. Creators and brands commonly create content specifically to tap into these trends as it can boost the chance of their videos reaching a wider audience. Not only that, if a viewer recognizes a trend while coming across your video, is significantly increased thet likelihood of them watching it in its entirety. 

Remember though, that while you may want to jump on every trend going, it’s important to consider how it reflects back on your business. It is essential to ensure that they align with your brand and don’t show you in a bad light, think about things explicit language in lyrics or what the trend symbolizes. 

Grab attention quick

Short form videos are by nature meant to be consumed quickly as people scroll video to video. So it’s important that you grab their attention right away or the chances are they will just keep on scrolling before getting to the point of your video. 

So, start with a hook. Something that stands out and instantly grabs the viewer attention. This could be something eye catching, or a sound that stands out.  Use high-quality visuals and graphics to grab the attention of your target audience. Make sure your visuals are relevant to your content and convey your brand’s message.

Remember you have a very short time to engage your viewer before they move onto the next, so dont be afraid to start loud. 

Create Relevant Content

You should create content that is relevant to you and your brand. This applies whether you are following trends, using a particular audio or making completely original content. What you create should align with your brand values aswell as deliver the content your audience would expect to see from you. You can make content relatable by showing your products, or linking to your business in the description.

Short Means Short 

When it comes to creating content for short-form video platforms like TikTok, it’s important to keep in mind the time limit. While some videos, such as tutorials or stories, may push the 3-minute mark, it’s best to aim for less than 60 seconds, and even shorter if possible. This ensures that your content is easily digestible and fits the platform’s bite-sized format.

Don’t feel like you need to create a full-scale production for a short-form video platform. Embrace the opportunity to play around with extremely short videos as well as those that are between 30-60 seconds long. By diversifying your content, you’ll be able to keep your audience engaged and offer a range of viewing experiences.

Shoot Vertical 

Short-form video platforms are designed for vertical viewing on mobile devices. While it’s possible to crop horizontal content into a vertical format, it’s generally best to record new videos in a vertical orientation. This approach ensures that your content is optimized for mobile screens and that your audience can easily view and engage with it.

Recording vertically also helps you avoid the mistake of posting a horizontal video on a vertical platform, which doesn’t look as good and doesn’t use all the space given to you. Imagine having a big billboard and only putting your advert on a little part of it. When you record vertically, your video will fit seamlessly within the platform’s vertical format, making it more attractive and accessible to your audience.

See in the image below how the vertical video on the right, uses up the entire screen, verses horizontal on the left, where you can see large black areas.

So, when creating short-form videos for mobile platforms, remember to record vertically to ensure that your content looks great and is easily accessible to your audience.

Be consistent 

Consistency is key when it comes to short-form video content. If you want to see results from your efforts, you need to post new videos on a regular basis. Ideally, aim to post at least once per day. This ensures that you have a steady stream of content for the algorithm to choose from and show to your target audience.

Its also important to remember, things tke time. While there is every possibility you go viral with your first video, it often isnt the way. So stay commited, keep creating, learning and posting. 

Share across platforms

It’s also important to promote your short-form videos across platforms. While you may choose to share certain videos on only one platform, such as TikTok or Instagram Reels, you can easily share your content across multiple platforms, including YouTube Shorts, Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and even Twitter.

By promoting your short-form videos across platforms, you can reach a wider audience and increase your chances of success. This approach also allows you to maximize your efforts and streamline your content creation process, as you don’t need to create separate strategies for each platform.

Include a Call to Action

There’s not much point putting in all this time and effort to creating and posting this content if we have no way to convert all our viewers right? So, make sure you include a call to action in your shorts. This can be in the description as links, or a spoken shout out in your video. However you choose to make your call to action, make sure you have something for people to follow. 

Add Captions

Adding captions to short form videos helps to make the content more accessible, engaging, and understandable for a wider audience. Captions provide a text-based alternative to the audio content of the video, making it accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and improving comprehension for viewers who may struggle to hear or understand the dialogue. Captions can also increase engagement and improve the search engine optimization of short form videos. 

You can learn a lot from Mr Beast. With 135 MILLION subscribers on YouTube he and his team obviously know whats up. See how they use captions to add to the visual effects of this short.

Want Help Creating Social Media Content and Short Form Video?

If this all sounds great, but you are sat there and don’t know where to start, wishing someone could help you with all of this, don’t worry, we got ya. 

At Fern Colab we have built a network of extremely talented social media content creators and influencers ready to help you deliver your video marketing strategy. Constantly up to date on the latest trends across all social media platforms they experts in maximizing your bsuiness impact. 

With access to our award winning creative team, our knowledge and skills, we can help businesses create and promote engaging short-form video content that resonates with their audience, boosts their brand recognition, and ultimately drives conversions.

Whether you want the odd video here and there or, 30 videos a month, we can. 

Drop us a message to ask any questions and learn more about how we can help you.