How to make short-form video - Shorts, TikToks and Reels. - Also this this the final episode in Season 1!

Useful Content | DIY Content Strategy for Business Owners

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Useful Content | DIY Content Strategy for Business Owners
How to make short-form video - Shorts, TikToks and Reels. - Also this this the final episode in Season 1!
Feb 29, 2024, Season 1, Episode 21
Juma Bannister
Episode Summary

In the final episode of Season One of the Useful Content Podcast, we reflect on the  journey from August 2023 to February 2024, celebrating 21 episodes, a transition to a weekly format, and significant audience engagement across platforms. We share statistics that highlight the podcast's growth and engagement metrics, including audio downloads and the successful repurposing of content. The episode features insights into guest dynamics, with most guests originating from LinkedIn, and positive feedback received regarding the show performance. The latter part of the episode focuses on a detailed guide to creating engaging short form video content. It outlines the importance of video in modern marketing, especially for small businesses, and provides technical tips, structure, and strategies for effective video content creation. The episode concludes with an announcement of a potential break before Season Two and a teaser for an upcoming interview with video creation expert, Alex B Sheridan.

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Journey Recap
01:05 Podcast Statistics and Insights
02:39 Guests and Feedback Analysis
03:24 Final Episode: Short Form Video Content
04:36 Importance of Short Form Video Content
10:56 Creating Effective Short Form Videos
13:29 Video Editing and Structure
30:17 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
35:51 Conclusion and Looking Forward to Season 2

*NOTES*
I say Call to actionS several times in this video...it's supposed to CallS to action. Sorry. It was 2022 😅

Subscribe to the Useful Content Newsletter
https://sendfox.com/jumabannister

Submit your Questions!
https://jumabannister.formaloo.me/questions

Thanks for listening. 

Produced by Relate Studios:
www.relatestudios.com
Music by Relate Studios

Host: Juma Bannister
Connect with me on Linkedin and follow me on X (Twitter)
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister/ 
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/jumabannister 

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Useful Content | DIY Content Strategy for Business Owners
How to make short-form video - Shorts, TikToks and Reels. - Also this this the final episode in Season 1!
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00:00:00 |

In the final episode of Season One of the Useful Content Podcast, we reflect on the  journey from August 2023 to February 2024, celebrating 21 episodes, a transition to a weekly format, and significant audience engagement across platforms. We share statistics that highlight the podcast's growth and engagement metrics, including audio downloads and the successful repurposing of content. The episode features insights into guest dynamics, with most guests originating from LinkedIn, and positive feedback received regarding the show performance. The latter part of the episode focuses on a detailed guide to creating engaging short form video content. It outlines the importance of video in modern marketing, especially for small businesses, and provides technical tips, structure, and strategies for effective video content creation. The episode concludes with an announcement of a potential break before Season Two and a teaser for an upcoming interview with video creation expert, Alex B Sheridan.

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Journey Recap
01:05 Podcast Statistics and Insights
02:39 Guests and Feedback Analysis
03:24 Final Episode: Short Form Video Content
04:36 Importance of Short Form Video Content
10:56 Creating Effective Short Form Videos
13:29 Video Editing and Structure
30:17 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
35:51 Conclusion and Looking Forward to Season 2

*NOTES*
I say Call to actionS several times in this video...it's supposed to CallS to action. Sorry. It was 2022 😅

Subscribe to the Useful Content Newsletter
https://sendfox.com/jumabannister

Submit your Questions!
https://jumabannister.formaloo.me/questions

Thanks for listening. 

Produced by Relate Studios:
www.relatestudios.com
Music by Relate Studios

Host: Juma Bannister
Connect with me on Linkedin and follow me on X (Twitter)
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister/ 
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/jumabannister 

Hello and welcome useful content creators to our final episode of season one of the useful content podcast So, between August 2023 and February of 2024, we successfully recorded, edited, and posted 21 episodes of the podcast. And interestingly, in that process, the podcast went from being fortnightly or biweekly, however you want to say it. to being a weekly podcast when I realized I could actually manage recording multiple episodes per week and posting those episodes. So that was a good change for the podcast.

I want to thank you useful content creators for all of your support for turning up when the episodes go live. On LinkedIn and on Facebook and on YouTube and for looking at all of the clips that I pull out and share and making that process of just amplifying the podcast so very easy.

You turn up in the comments, you engage, you ask questions, and that's all I could possibly ask for when it comes to making the podcast even more successful as it grows.

So I have some stats I want to share with you just showing you part of the journey and behind the thing. I shared some of this on LinkedIn already and I'm going to share the same thing with you on the podcast. So, here's some of the stats. Let me look at my notes.

So, in terms of the audio downloads for the podcast, we had a hundred and thirty four hours of episode twenty. It's probably more by now and I would say that is a win because we had zero when we started. Uh, I didn't count the views on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. Because I wasn't able to gather all that information on that data, but I know we have much more multiples of views on those platforms, particularly on Facebook, where it gets very good traction.

Uh, for some reason, it just works really well on Facebook and on LinkedIn too, it gets nice engagement. I was able to repurpose around 78 pieces of content. So that's a lot. And I sent out the entire recorded episodes to the guests and they took it and they repurposed the podcast episodes for their own content. So I was happy about that.

So out of the episodes that were released, six were solo episodes, 14 were interview episodes. I had one turnaround episode and the turnaround episode is basically me being interviewed on somebody else's podcast. I was able to take that and use it on this podcast.

I'm not too sure about these stats because a couple of things have changed over the last few days. I have about nine episodes on released about nine guests booked upcoming guests and seven invitations out that haven't gotten a response as yet. So that's where those things stand at this time. In terms of the guests on the podcast, out of the 15 guests, 10 were invited by me personally. Five of them asked if they could be a guest. Most of my guests came from LinkedIn. Three came from a podcaster's group on Facebook and one came from a podcaster's website.

And I have a few more guests coming from different places in the upcoming season. In terms of the show itself, it got good feedback especially from the people who came onto the show as guest teachers.

They all rated the show 5 stars. And in terms of my hosting skills I got rated five stars as well, which was a very good thing for me. And I think i'm improving in terms of my hosting ability But let's talk about what we're going to do in this final episode today. Today I want to share with you a video I made back in 2022 and it was made specifically for a virtual summit and I was going to teach on short form video content and how to convert with it.

So I taught about TikToks, Reels and Shorts at that time. So in the talk, I share why video content is important, how you can use video content in your business. And I give a general structure for how someone can create their own short form videos.

No admittedly in terms of internet time, this content is kind of old, but the principles I share in the content remain very sound.

So I hope you learn much and enjoy this final episode of season one of the Useful Content Podcast. Here we go. Hello everyone. Today. We're gonna talk about how to make reels, Tik Toks and YouTube shorts that convert.

And when we're talking about these types of videos, reels, Tik Toks, and YouTube shorts, we're talking about short form video content. So today we're gonna cover two main things and at the end of today, you're gonna know why short form video is critical for your business,

where the short form video hype came from and why you're better off as a business, creating short form video content.

And we're gonna look at the easy way to make short form videos.

We're gonna look at format optimal video length, and we're gonna look at a video structure that you can use to create short form video over and over again very easily.

So let's start with why is short form video critical for your business and let me paint a picture as to how all this hype came about.

So before the internet was a thing, large companies used to broadcast their video content to everyone. This came in a form of ads that will appear on TV. And this type of marketing was done for the masses

and as a result, it was called mass marketing.

But there was a problem with mass marketing. You couldn't really target who would look at your content. And as a result, everybody would see it. And you would have to hope that inside of the mass people who were seeing that content, that your customers were in there.

And of course, doing mass marketing with video was very expensive. Booking the ad spaces, creating the ads, the production. It was a really hefty undertaking to create mass video content

Well in the nineties, the lovely internet came along and changed everything

because now not only do we have a place to put our videos, we have the ability to create our videos cheaply as well.

And if we know our customers very well, we can decide what platform we want to put our video content on and what type of content we want to make. So we can target our customers specifically and that type of targeting is called direct marketing. 

So, what does that mean? It means that as a small business, as a startup, as somebody who was just getting into creating content, you can compete with the big players using direct marketing that is targeted towards specific customers.

And so if you take nothing else away from this talk today, know this video is an equalizer. And in particular today, I want us to focus on short form video content as a business equalizer, you do video, it makes you more likely to succeed.

all right. So now that we've gotten that, let's talk a little bit about what is video content and why is it so great? What is all the hype about?

So many studies have shown that people tend to remember things better when they see them. This is as opposed to hearing them only.

And video is a combination of moving images and audio. It activates both sight and hearing simultaneously.

And so the nature of video is such that it has an engagement advantage straight out of the gate.

So the delivery of sound that is music and your voice and sound effects

And images that is like color, text graphics, photography is a winning combination for getting attention, keeping attention and getting engagement.

And, you know, what makes it even better when you put your face on video. Because human beings are hardwired to connect with, to have conversation with, and to communicate with other human beings.

So if you put your own face on your videos, the trust factor automatically goes up and the engagement goes up as well.

And what makes this even better is that people can see what kind of emotion you're exhibiting when you're showing your face. So this makes it easy for them to connect with you and easy for them to trust you even faster. And you know, the key to this thing is building trust very fast. So showing your face helps with that.

So the more video you use, you could potentially have faster business growth and more business stability because face it, the preferred language of the internet, the preferred language of social media and marketing today is video.

And it will make complete sense that you learn and become fluent in the preferred language of these social media platforms. Because if the social media platforms want video, they're gonna give preference to the people who produce video.

So as a video content creator, you actually have a great advantage.

If you use video content, you're more likely to speak to the people who will actually buy from you. You'll get more sales, more revenue, and you'll be able to build a stable business over a long period. Yeah. That's the benefit of having video content?

And at this point you might be saying, oh my goodness, I don't wanna do video. Juma you're wrong video is not that important. And, um, that's just your opinion. Well I'm here to say is not just my opinion. Listen to this.

In June of 2021, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram announced that Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app.

He said, the company is looking to lean into videos of entertainment after seeing the success of their competitors like TikTok and YouTube using video content and TikTok in particular, using short form video content.

And there also other stats to back this up by the end of this year, 82% of all internet traffic will be video. So if you're a business owner entrepreneur in 2022, and you are not using video as a part of your marketing strategy, your content strategy to speak to your customers, to build your brand and to find new leads and generate revenue you're effectively sabotaging yourself and missing out on the most effective growth tool that we can use as marketers for our business on the internet and on all of these social media platforms. You better believe it.

So in summary, when used well, video makes you more memorable when used well video makes you more memorable.

All right, now that we've gotten through that, let's talk about the easy way to make short form video content.

So short form video content from a technical perspective starts at about three seconds. Most platforms are between three and four seconds. And from a effectiveness perspective can go up to two minutes. I mean, you could go longer than that, but then you start to go into long form kind of territory. So you kind of want to keep it under two minutes.

If you wanted to qualify as short form.

In fact on TikTok, um, the recent statistics say that videos between 21 to 34 seconds perform the best on the platform. So it may be in your best interest to keep the video shorter. Not because people have short attention spans. No, no, no, because you want to be able to deliver your message in the shortest possible time.

So keeping it shorter, trains you to be able to get to the point and deliver your message quickly and effectively,

And you really only want to make your video as long as it needs to be to get your point across.

And the better you get at doing that, the better and more effective your videos will get over a period of time. Of course, you test with your audience and you see what they like, but in general, you want to make your videos only as long as it needs to be to get your point across. And that is what makes short form video, uh, very much something that you could use.

And of course, the more you practice getting your message and your point across in the shortest possible times, the more likely your videos will perform better. And over a period of time, you'll get more traction, more engagement and your videos will go further.

So let's talk about the actual video lenght from the top five social media platforms these days.

So on TikTok, the shortest you can do is three seconds and they go up to 10 minutes now. So between three seconds and 10 minutes, obviously Tik TikTok did that to compete with YouTube. 

So YouTube shorts are 60 seconds and under. So if you want to use your short form content and YouTube, it's gonna have to be under 60 seconds.

Instagram and Facebook reels are now 90 seconds. You're gonna have to keep your short form video content under 90 seconds. If you want to be a reel on Instagram or Facebook,

And if you're interested in LinkedIn videos, like I do a lot of LinkedIn videos.

And if you're interested in that, you can upload videos up to 15 minutes long from desktop and up to 10 minutes long from mobile. If you make a video that is under 20 seconds, it loops. So that's a cool feature on LinkedIn as well. Uh, of course, all of the other platforms, it goes without saying their videos look automatically

Last, but not least is Pinterest. You can upload videos up to 15 minutes long.

Okay. Let's look into some technical things now. So when you're creating short form video content, you want to keep it vertical or some people say portrait that is with the long side, the taller side that is vertical and is shorter. Side is horizontal. So it's tall instead of wide. And the reason for that is because most short form video is, filling up the entire screen and is on this infinite scroll.

And in order for that to be effective for you and for you to have video that works well in that format, on your mobile phones, you want it to be tall and not wide. You want it to be portrait and not landscape.

The aspect ratio of a regular TV, a wide screen TV, a high Def TV is 16:9 and all you have to do is just flip it on its side and you get the aspect ratio of 9:16 vertical content. And so all vertical content is fine being done at 9:16 And you don't really have to worry about that too much. Most smartphones are doing it in that aspect ratio anyway, so you should have no problem that is the easy part.

When you're shooting at videos, you wanna do it in 1080P. You can do it in 720 as well on mobile. It doesn't really matter very much because on those small screens, nobody's gonna notice the difference in quality. So shooting at 1080P shooting at 720 P is fine. Don't worry about that too much.

Most mobile phones come at the default of 10 80 P at 24 frames, which is like standard film, video settings. That really shouldn't impact the quality of your videos.

Because here's the truth in order to create short form video content, you don't really need anything else, but your smartphone and, in order to do it, you just need to grab your smartphone and hold it like this, use your selfie camera. If you can set it up, you, you can do it in, use the back camera, but using these selfie camera is fine and you can create content just like this.

And that will work for all of the content you want to create in the short form format.

Now over time, if you wanna get fancy and you wanna upgrade your setup, you can start looking into DSLR's or mirrorless cameras, and you can buy a tripod and all those things, and then you can buy lighting. So right now I'm using a ring light to light myself. I have a kind of a special set up here. I am using a DSLR camera. So it's a bit of a higher quality, but you don't really need that to start out. All you really need is your selfie camera on your phone. And if you're shooting during the day and you want light, all you need to do is sit at a window and let the light stream in on your face while you're recording. And that will illuminate your face nicely.

And so it's very easy to get started making short form video content. All you really need is your smartphone.

All right, you have your smartphone and you've shot your video, and now you want to edit it. And you're wondering, well, do I need to buy some big, expensive program to edit my videos?

And I would say, no. One of the best programs on the market right now is absolutely free. This is a program called Cap Cut. They have a mobile version, a desktop version, and now they have a web based version.

That software is very powerful. It's absolutely free. You can edit your videos, you can cut it. You can add music. You can even add captions inside of that piece of software. It's very versatile, very easy to use, easy to learn, and it will help you along your way in becoming a good video editor.

Another free alternative I would recommend is VN editor. That one works well too,

But in actuality, most of these platforms are creating their own editors. They're integrating these content creator tools into their platform. TikTok was like the front runner doing this, and they're continuing to improve their platform so that people could have more powerful tools for editing, adding music, adding titles, adding, adding subtitles, adding stickers and graphics and images.

TikTok is getting very good at that. And that is something that you can use if you just wanna edit on a platform itself. I mean, for me, I think it's wise to. Not edit everything on your platform because you want to have your video somewhere else. And you don't want all of your content to just be on TikTok, but you can use the platform for that.

And Instagram is following suit and YouTube is gonna follow suit. I'm sure very soon. So all of these platforms are making it so that you can edit those videos on the platforms themselves. So that is another option. If you don't want to use an external editor.

And you might be wondering, what do I use? I use a piece of software called Descript. I love Descript because it is a transcribing software gives you all of the text that you have said, and it also allows you to edit by just deleting the text. So it's very interesting, but it's a paid piece of software.

If you want, you could go check that out as well.

All right. So let's talk now about how to structure your video in order for people to want to watch it and for them to ultimately convert and buy your products.

So the first thing I wanna share is that my personal philosophy about creating content is that content is created to build relationship.

So you put the content out there so that your potential customers can get to know, you know, your products, know your services, and over time they get to know you and they get to trust you and know that you can deliver this particular service or product to them.

So you're building a relationship with them over a period of time. And that is the purpose of content and video content accelerates that process.

But in order to get to the point where people are buying your stuff, where they trust you and where the relationship is built, you have to give them something that they need. You have to deliver to them, VALUE.

now, while most people have things to give and say of value, they don't know how to structure their content in order to deliver that value to their potential customers and to people who want to buy from them. And that is what we are gonna address right now,

Now this structure is not set in stone. You Can mix and match, but some components inside of the structure are gonna help you connect with the people who you want to serve faster. And it's gonna give you more consistent results when you create your video.

So the basic structure consists of four parts. The first part is your hook. The second part is your intro.

The third part is your message. And the fourth part is your call to action or your C.T.A.

And it usually goes in that exact order.

So the hook in your video is used to grab attention. The intro is used to say what the video is about. The message is the value you're going to give inside of the video and the call to action. Like the name implies is telling people what to do after they've seen your video.

So let's talk about the hook. The hook is an attention grabbing device implemented at the start of your video. 

So the sole purpose of the hook is to secure the viewer's attention.

To get them to stop scrolling so that you have a chance and an opportunity to deliver your message.

and of course it goes without saying, that's why the hook is at the start of the video, because that is the place where it's most critical to secure someone's attention.

So at the start of any video, you have about two to five seconds to convince someone to stop and to convince them that this video that you are showing them is worth watching.

And a hook is important, because if your content does not secure the viewer's attention, you don't have a chance to deliver your message.

Because remember, it's all about delivering the message. You've worked hard, you've done your selfie recording. You've edited your video and it will all be wasted if you don't have a chance to say the thing that is of value to the people. So you want your hook to be able to secure the attention so that you can deliver that value.

Okay. I'm not gonna give you specific examples of hooks, but I'm gonna give you four general guidelines or four ways you can craft your hooks in order for it to be effective.

The four ways you can do it are ask a question, make a provoking statement, make a promise,

or use a unique sound or visual.

So you can ask a question in your hook and then you can answer it in the message.

You can make a provoking statement in your hook, and then you can support it or subvert it in your message.

You can make a promise at the beginning of the video, in your hook. And then you keep that promise later on in a message,

Or you can use a unique visual or sound that grabs the people's attention.

Now these are four general categories. There are more but you can use this as a guideline to craft hooks because there are many questions you can ask. There are many provoking statements you can make. There are many promises you can make, and there are many unique sounds or visuals that you can include at the beginning of a video in order to grab the viewer's attention.

So that you can understand it better. Let's craft four hooks using the four guidelines that I just mentioned. And for this example, I'm gonna be using the subject of a facial cleanser.

Okay. This one is asking a question.

Are all these brand name, facial cleansers really better than the cheaper ones?

So let's make a provoking statement about facial cleansers now,

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you've been wasting your money. Buying all these expensive brand name, facial cleansers.

All let's make a promise using facial cleansers as the subject. Now,

Let me tell you why cheap facial cleansers are just as good as the expensive ones.

And all let's use a unique visual or sound.

Oh, my Good. I'm wasting my, my daughter's facial cleanser here. Let me just put this away. It's all on my hand. I need to take a break and go wash this off.

Okay. Okay. I'm back. So now we can talk about the intro.

So the intro is the summary of what the video is about, or it identifies the problem that you're gonna address in the message.

You can identify, what the audience will learn, and you can go deeper into what exactly the outcome of the message will be or what the problem that you'll be solving

So let me play a couple of the videos that I have made to show you exactly what an intro sounds like. Are they staring at your phone right now, wondering what content to make. So let me see this technique will give you an almost unlimited amount of content topics if you do it right?

Yep. So you see that part where I said this topic and what it will do, that is what the intro is, it emphasizes, what the person will receive in the message. Let's look at another one.

So this is a ring light, and recently I've been telling people, this is not the best way to use your ring light in generally way. Most people use a ring light is by putting it directly in front of their face, their phone, or suggest a different way. You could use it for a different type of look in videos with little show you.

So what's your all right. And so in that one, I'm saying, I wanna suggest a better way. You could use your ring light, with little effort. Let me show you how that is emphasizing the solution that I'm giving inside of the message or the problem that I'm gonna deal with. Inside of the message. And that is what your intro does.

So let's talk about the message. Now, the message is the place where you deliver the value to your audience. This is where you give them the thing that they came to hear.

Now, this is not where you want to sell your product or sell your service. This is you delivering on the promise that you made earlier on this is you answering the question that you said you would answer earlier on. This is you proving that provoking statement, or this is you following up on that great audio or visual hook that you delivered earlier.

So this is where you give them the value that they came for. This is why the people are here. And this part has to be good. Has to be robust, has to do the thing that will give them the understanding that you are the person that they need to come to if they want this problem solved.

and remember you wanna deliver this in the shortest time needed.

so, you know, while we're here, let me address this short attention span thing. Now I know you've heard over and over again, or everybody has a short attention span.

People have short attention spans, and that's a problem. So that's why you're making short content. That is not necessarily true.

The reason you're making short content is not because somebody has a short attention span. Think about it this way. You have shows that you like, think about what you've watched on YouTube or Netflix or Disney plus, or any of those platforms that you consume. Video content. There is long form content that you like, and that you sit to watch you find value in that long content.

So you stay and you look at it.

So in that way, short attention span is not really the issue.

The real reason you're making your messages shorter is you wanna become more targeted and more succinct in the delivery of your message.

You only wanna say exactly what you need to in order to communicate that to the person watching

And the less time you have, the more targeted you become with your words and the easier and simpler you make your message so that people will understand it even better.

So you're training yourself to become a master of saying a whole lot with very little.

And if you're good at that, it only takes a short period of time.

So keep your message only as long as it needs to be.

And finally we have your CTA or your call to action.

So if you did a good job with your hook, your intro and your message, your audience is now fully engaged, and you are going to have permission to tell them what action to take when they are done, viewing your video.

Now, depending on what type of content you create or what stage of the customer journey the viewer is at, you might want to give them different call to actions.

So for example, if you're just getting to know your audience and you're now building out your social media following, and you kind of do a more mass appeal piece of content, like a how-to piece of content,

You can keep the call to actions. Very, very simple. You can ask them to like, and follow, which is like low impact call to actions.

So if you've built a bit of a following and you know, people are returning to consume your content and you're doing content that is designed to build community like behind the scenes content or telling specific stories or answering community questions.

Then in your call to action, you can ask them to comment and share and even save it.

And if you're doing a piece of content that is directly connected to selling something, or you're giving away a free resource, then you can do a big call to action, like click the link in my bio or go to this particular URL so that they can get the resource there.

The main thing about call to actions is that you have to assume that the audience does not know what to do after they view your content.

And so you have to be very specific about what you want them to do thereafter.

Otherwise, they won't do what you want them to do, or worse yet they'll just do nothing. And if they don't do anything, then you're kind of wasting your time creating all this really beautiful content.

The full disclosure, even though this is a general structure and it works, I've tested it. Sometimes you can do something that is completely different and get the results that you want based on your business goals or whatever your key performance indicators are. You can get the results you want doing something completely different.

So if you're creating your own videos, especially at the beginning, you wanna test out different types of structures. Sometimes you might wanna leave out the intro. Sometimes you might wanna emphasize the message. Sometimes your call to action might be something that's different. You wanna try different things and test it out, to see what works best with the audience that you are targeting.

And you have to determine what a successful video looks like to you.

And so you have to have some plan or some strategy or some goal for creating and, distributing all of this content because at the end of the day, you want to get the result that you are planning and creating the content for.

And you also have to understand that one video does not make or break your profile or your channel. You have to continually build over a period of time in order to get the results you want. It is possible to go viral, but even if you go viral and you don't have a body of work, or you don't consistently create quality and valuable content, it's highly likely that people will not return after a while.

And wouldn't continue engaging with your content.

So the most important thing is that you continue to put the content out and you are very consistent in doing that because statistics have shown that it takes about 12 to 18 months to get to the point where you can get people to buy. And you can make money off of the content that you're creating,

so if you're not in this as a long game, you are highly likely to fail at it.

So you wanna get yourself primed and ready to do this over a long period of time because creating content short form as it may be is a journey.

so let me leave you with some directions and some words of encouragement.

You have to be bad before you get good. When you first start making content, you're gonna be terrible at it. You're not gonna do very well at it. But in order for you to get to the place where you can create content, well, you have to create several bad videos first. And trust me, it is no fun when nobody engages with your content.

When you put out a CTA and nobody listens to your CTA, but if you give up early, then you'll never get to the point where you can create good content. You'll never get a chance to discover what your audience likes. So you have to stick at it. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and you have to be bad before you get good.

Secondly, the quality of the message is so much more important than the technical quality or the video quality itself.

It's more important to know what you're saying, know who you're saying it to and to deliver that message at fixed intervals over a period of time. 

As opposed to focusing on whether or not is high definition or 4k or 30 frames or 60 frames or seven 20 P or 10 80, none of that matters. If your message is not high quality and you don't consistently deliver it. 

So a consistent quality message is more important than the technical aspects of the video.

So speaking of technical things, that's a good segue. The third thing is that sound is important, but also it's not. So let me explain this one, because it will sound kind of strange.

So when it comes to your video, people often say that 50% of it is visual and 50% of it is audio, meaning that the audio is very important and that is true.

But I would even go further to say that the audio sometimes can be more important than the actual video. If you have terrible visuals, but you have good sound, then people will actually stick around for your video. And in addition to that, there's so much emphasis on trending songs.

There's so much emphasis on sound effects. There's so much leverage that you can gain by using something that is in the space of people and that people like it, that audio has become a big part of how people create content that engages and connects with people.

And that's a big emphasis for short form video content in particular, because you can see all of these platforms expanding their audio libraries in order to add to how people create their content

And interestingly, on the other hand, many people still consume their short form content with the audio off, at least initially I think the number now is about 70 to 80% of people scrolling, through feed do it with their audio off, whether that is because they're in a public place or they're at work or whatever it is, they consume it with the audio off, at least initially.

So if you're depending only on your audio to get people engaged, it means that you will fail at doing that.

And that also means that captions are very important.

Fortunately for you, most of these social media platforms, Captions integrated. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have captions integrated.

you just have to include it or turn it on when you post your content. But if you want to use a third party, editing software that will make your captions more attractive, like for example, make them a particular font or make them a particular color, a particular size, or even emphasize individual words that will make your content even more engaging.

and the last piece of encouragement that I will give you is that your videos will compound

the more you create short form video content, the better you'll get at it. And each new video is amplified by your previous video.

So that means that the greater, the volume of content you put into the digital world not only will you get better by putting in the repetitions of creating the content, but you're more likely to speak to the people who you came to speak to.

All right. Let's do a quick review of what we learned today, so we can make sure that you got everything that I promise you would get.

And for this, I'm just gonna read these things off. So I want you to tick the boxes as you go along.

Okay, great.

So the first thing you should have learned is that as a small business or startup, you have access to direct video marketing and you can compete and be successful in the same arenas as big businesses using video content.

And a better way to say that is video is an equalizer.

So video, when well used, makes you more memorable

video can potentially lead to a more stable business and a faster growing business.

Video is a preferred language of social media today.

All you need to start is your smartphone.

The basic structure of a video is a hook, which grabs attention, the intro. What is this about the message which delivers the value and your call to action, which gives the viewer instructions as to what to do after they look at your video.

It takes about 12 to 18 months to gain traction on social media, to the point where somebody will want to buy from you. So video and video content, even though it's short form, it's a long game.

You have to be bad before you're good.

Your message is more important than the technical aspects of the video. Good sound and captions are important.

Your videos will compound over time and get people to buy.

So I hope this was very, very useful. I'm Juma, I'm an educator, content strategist and content creator. I'm also the founder and creative director at relate studios. And I hope to see some of your short form content very, very soon. So that's a wrap, everyone. It's quite possible that I'll be taking a one week break before starting Season 2, but I've not fully decided on that yet, so I'll let you all know.

If you see an episode within one week, you know I decided to go ahead and just continue on to Season 2.

In the meantime, be sure to join 136 smart useful content creators and sign up for the useful content newsletter link is in the show notes.

And if you want to ask any questions that I can answer right here in a Q and a session on the podcast. There's also a place where you can leave those questions. The link is in the show notes for that as well. So thanks again useful content creators and see you in episode one of season two of the useful content podcast, where we talk with prolific video creator extraordinaire and master at edutainment, Alex B Sheridan. See you then.

Anne Wickley. Huh I have a few more episodes to edit But I'll get through those and those will go into season two as well. Let's see how that goes Good that I could share some of these stats. There's other behind the scenes that was happening with the podcast So I'm happy to kind of bring this season although, you know, somebody recommended that I don't do season and I know there's some people who don't believe in seasons.

In fact, somebody in season two, a podcast creator, um, coach or podcast developer. He kind of doesn't believe in seasons, but I don't know. I'm having seasons anyway. You can just do it how you like sometimes. So that's it. Um, see y'all in season two. Yeah. 

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