LONG FORM VIDEO IS THE GOAL
When it comes to using video content to market your business there really are two main options to consider:
Short Form video (anything under 60 seconds)
Long Form Video (anything over 60 seconds)
SHORT FORM
Short form video is great because it brings awareness. It allows you to move fast because the edits are very short (on average 30 seconds). It’s the most common starting point for most businesses. And that makes sense.
We all need more people to be aware that we exist and that we can help them.
And short form videos can be created quickly (if you don’t over think it) and you can create a lot of them.
And when it comes to short form (FB, IG, TikTok), quantity is valued over quality.
I like both quantity and quality but it’s really a quantity game.
With businesses that I work with typically their plan includes either: 10 videos a month, 20 videos a month or 30 videos a month. So that’s a starting point for creating consistent content.
I believe all businesses need some form of short form content. But to really build a solid audience of people that love what you do and are crazy about your brand you will need to take them deeper.
Short form can only go so far.
It’s only one piece of the content machine.
Here are a few examples of short form videos: (all under 60 seconds, most on average 30 seconds)
LONG FORM
The other option is Long Form Video.
Once you get the awareness through short form videos, it’s best to transition to long form videos.
Long form videos would be, at it’s core, anything more than 1-2 minutes.
But more realistically it’s videos that are 8-10 minutes.
And the most common platform to use for this would be YouTube.
The reason you would want to start to build out your library of long form videos is that it takes your audience deeper.
You can really develop a relationship with your audience. They can understand your personality more and you can go into greater depth around topics that will help them.
Once someone feels like they know, like and trust you, we know they are more likely to buy from you.
We recently made this transition with a Commercial Real Estate power house team at Hutson Realty Partners.
We had been creating only short form videos (mainly on Instagram) but we decided to shift our strategy and do a combination of short form with long form.
So for them now our content plan includes 1 YouTube video every week and 2 short form videos each week.
YOU CAN REPURPOSE
One of the great things about longer form videos is that you can grab short moments from the longer videos and repurpose those for reels.
The only thing to note here is that YouTube would be mainly horizontal video and for IG and TikTok you would want to do vertical videos.
But one of the things I do is capture both horizontal and vertical broll on the shoot day so that I can easily swap out clips so it looks like it’s purposefully vertical if I needed to go vertical.
Sometimes I’ll even have two cameras going: one shooting horizontal and the other vertical.
PODCAST TREND
A great example of long form video that everyone seems to be doing now is a Video Podcast.
If you are creating a podcast, it’s almost required now a days to have a video component to it.
I had the privilage of working on a podcast for over a year with local salon owners. They have a salon owner coaching program and we created podcast episodes that taught salon owners how to grow their salon’s.
The episodes were on average 30 minutes and it was a great marketing tool that allowed them to deepen their relationship with their audience.
CONCLUSION: CHOOSE LONG FORM
I believe for long term growth, long form videos should be the goal.
There are so many benefits to focusing on that. I think it would be the best choice for any business.
Even for my own business I’ve really been wanting to implement this strategy. (I create so much content for others, I rarely have the time to build my own library out, but it’s coming!)
So don’t wait. Start today.
It can be as simple of putting your iPhone up and teaching your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) something that would help them. Simple as that. Don’t over think it.
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