Consumers love video. In fact, experts anticipate the video marketing industry to reach nearly $50 billion shortly. And thanks to new developments in short-form video tools and techniques, video marketing remains fresh while continuing to grow.
Social media power users contribute to this trend with their own tutorial, funny, and collage video content, often in short form. Businesses and consumers use video to inform, educate, and promote products and services.
“It’s estimated that by 2022, 82 percent of the global internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads (Cisco, 2019). That’s an 88 percent increase in traffic share from the 72.3 percent in 2017.” – Oberlo
Capitalizing on the popularity of video marketing, brands have leaned on influencers to provide on-brand content to better connect with audiences. But influencer marketing is just one way brands leverage video to drive web traffic, lead generation, and sales.
Image via Oberlo
More specifically, short-form video pack relevant content into shorter bursts. Marketers often cite user attention span research when explaining the rising popularity of short-form videos. But making videos brief is also forcing content marketers and influencers to say (or show) more using fewer words and images.
Thus, short-form represents some of the best content marketing examples – brief, specific, digestible, and compelling.
What is a Short-form Video for Social Media?
Short-form videos are videos lasting a few minutes or less. Marketers and social platforms are finding that even though long-form videos are not going away, consumers can’t seem to get enough videos in short form.
As the graph from Vidyard below demonstrates, videos that last more than ten minutes experience a rapid drop in viewership. The “sweet spot” seems to be five minutes or less, and the shorter the video, the more likely viewers are inclined to watch until the end.
Image via Vidyard
TikTok is probably the latest full-scale social media platform built on short-form video alone. But users can also create compelling videos lasting 30 seconds to a few minutes on most other leading channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Social Media Video Trends of 2020
The following trends are prevalent across most social channels. Partnering with influencers to produce one of the short-form ideas below can boost your authenticity. They also make for great repurposed content in the form of branded ads.
Here are our top five short-form video trends from 2020.
1. Testimonial or Review Videos
Customer testimonial short-form videos, like the one from Love Yer Dog above, allow consumers to see a before-and-after of your product. Additionally, these real-life stories can create a positive, emotional response from your audience.
What is It?
Testimonial and review videos showcase your product with a live customer. The customer could be an influencer, brand ambassador, or knowledgeable customer that loves your brand.
When creating a product review video, the customer should know your product or service well enough to highlight its strengths. Viewers can see your solution’s difference in their quality of life. Testimonials tell a story; if you make that story compelling in just a few minutes or less, you will attract more consumers to your brand.
Why It Works
Done well, these kinds of short-form videos are great examples of authentic content. Coming from an individual outside your organization also makes the video’s message more objective. Lastly, these videos in brief bits are more accessible for consumers to view and digest.
How to Do It Right
It’s critical that the subject (customer) in your video knows how to use your product. Poor product knowledge can reflect poorly on your brand. In addition, ensure that the customer showcasing your product genuinely loves your brand. If they don’t, the video they create can be inauthentic to the audience.
The more genuine the customer’s excitement, the better your video will perform. One of the great benefits of partnering with influencers is that they have a lot of experience creating testimonial short-form videos. If you vet your influencers and ambassadors well, you’ll be able to create some fantastic short-form video testimonials to boost brand awareness and drive sales.
2. Product Tutorial or How-to
“‘How to’ searches on YouTube increase by 70% every year.” – Social Media Today
Short-form how-to videos can be more challenging, particularly if the task or product use you want to showcase takes some time to complete. Short-form tutorials like the one below from IKEA are excellent examples of how to create high-quality tutorials in less than ten minutes.
What is It?
Product tutorials show consumers how to use or incorporate your products or services into a real-life scenario. How-to videos differ from the testimonials above because your focus now lies on creating visual product instructions. These videos are in high demand because they are practical and informative.
Why It Works
People are using videos to learn to cook, develop professional skills, perform car maintenance, and more. Social media users are drawn to videos that show them how to perform certain tasks for themselves. Also, how-to videos inspire consumers still looking for that ideal solution.
How to Do It Right
To make these how-to videos in short form, you will most likely need to utilize fast frames, as though the viewer were fast-forwarding the video. To prevent confusion, you can create explanatory voice-overs using text to voice generators or add aesthetically-pleasing text on the screen.
3. FAQs – Responding to Customer Questions
FAQs – sometimes called “explainer” videos – address common customer questions. In short form, these videos are easy to place throughout your website and share on any social channel. Additionally, you can add the necessary metadata to increase your ranking on search engines.
What is It?
For a good FAQ short-form video, you need to address common questions you get from customers and/or prospective customers. These videos allow you to inform your audience and showcase your products and services.
Many FAQ videos address common questions in the industry rather than just product-related questions. These broader topic FAQs can boost credibility with your audience and position your brand as an industry authority.
Why It Works
These videos are helpful to consumers. And since they are videos, they usually generate more attention than written FAQs. Keeping these videos short and to the point allows you to make more of them and create more meaningful content for your audience.
And because of their SEO value, FAQ videos greatly drive traffic to your website.
How to Do It Right
FAQs only work if you ask and answer the right questions. Addressing questions, you wish customers were asking may not connect with your audience. Pulling common questions from your sales and customer service team is helpful.
Also, be sure to only address one question at a time. This approach will keep your videos in short form and also give you a chance to create more content.
4. User-generated Content
Some of the most outstanding examples of on-brand short-form video come from outside your organization. Like the GoPro video above, customers put their creativity to good use and show off what a particular product can do.
What is It?
User-generated content is any content coming from someone outside your company or marketing team. It’s common for social media influencers to talk about their favorite brands or showcase specific products that enhance the lifestyle that they want to promote.
Why It Works
UGC short-form videos are frequently unsolicited. But consumers flock to them and appreciate the lifestyle that particular brand or product applies. Influencer videos are among the most compelling examples of UGC.
Many of these videos are clearly homemade and demonstrate a more significant measure of authenticity. Furthermore, UGC short-form videos promoting products feel more objective (similar to testimonials). The content isn’t created by the brand in a studio – it’s everyday people talking about the products they love.
How to Do It Right
You may already have UGC in short video form already out there, so you may need to search for social media users that tagged your brand or included your name in the video title. Or, you can partner with influencers with a strong track record of creating informal videos like the one above.
After finding the right UGC, you can purchase the rights to the content and repurpose it for ads or branded content on your owned media channels.
5. Live-streaming
One of the fastest-growing trends in social media is video live streaming. In a live stream, there is a greater opportunity for followers to interact and watch your event in real-time. One of the most creative examples of short-form video live streaming occurred when Tomcat (an exterminator company) created a series of short videos that they weaved together on Facebook in response to comments from the audience.
What is It?
Most live-stream events occur over Facebook and Instagram, though some brands host live-stream videos directly from their website. Many brands promote these video live-stream events ahead of time to boost anticipation.
But live-streaming is even popular among brands and users that launch live videos unannounced. Either way, viewers can tune in live or catch the video after your live stream has finished.
Why It Works
Audience members generally feel more connected to the individual featured in a live stream and may post live comments in response to the video content. These videos also act as virtual events and post-production content that you can re-share after the event.
How to Do It Right
You need to plan ahead to create compelling live streams in short form. Unplanned live streams (though perfectly acceptable for those that know how to do them well) generally go longer than anticipated. When you want to keep your live streams to just a few minutes, you’ll want to stick to the message or topic.
Ideally, you leverage your live stream video to incentivize customers to engage. In the Tomcat example above, the brand actually coordinated the next live video in real-time based on feedback from those tuning in.
Conclusion: Leverage short-form videos for social media and build your brand.
Studies show that relevant, well-crafted videos attract more impressions than written and image posts. And in many cases, the more concise your videos are, the more likely viewers will want to watch until the very last second. Any short-form video techniques listed above can help you expand your audience and engagement on social media. After endearing wider audiences to your brand, you can nurture those relationships toward higher conversions.
