Short-form videos should be your best friend as a business owner or marketer, and we’re here to tell you why. Our attention span has decreased substantially over the last couple of decades, so if you want to capture the attention of your target audience you’ll need to do so within the first few seconds that they see your content.
This type of content has undoubtedly revolutionised the way brands engage with consumers, offering a dynamic and effective way to capture their attention. In today’s article, we’ll discuss the reasons why your business should adopt short-form video content as a crucial part of your marketing strategy in 2024.
What is Short-Form Video Content?
So, what is the actual definition of short-form video content? A short-form video is a video which lasts 60 seconds or less. They are intended to convey information in a bite-size format, making it easy for the user to watch on the move, replay, share, or save and refer back to at a later point. Social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook have made short-form video content commonplace, allowing brands to directly engage with their target audience to showcase their products or services, build brand awareness, tell a story, or provide a glimpse into their real day-to-day life.
Why is this Type of Content Relevant?
According to some research, the average attention span for an internet user has decreased from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2024. Marketers and business owners need to adapt to this with shorter, more impactful messaging as well as powerful visuals to win over the attention of consumers, so it’s no wonder that short-form videos have taken the digital world by storm. Internet users are continuously bombarded with distractions such as notifications, adverts, and messages, so it’s important to be able to captivate your target audience effectively – otherwise, they’ll have already moved on to the next thing fighting for their attention.
Why is Short-Form Video Content Beneficial to Businesses?
There are many reasons why you should embrace the power of short-form video content as a brand or business owner – here are just eight of the most significant ones to help you understand why this type of content is more than beneficial.
1. You can Appeal to Dwindling Attention Spans
As we’ve touched on already, studies have shown that our attention span has gotten considerably shorter over the past twenty years. Because of this, if you don’t capture your audience’s attention within the first few seconds, they will probably have already moved on. Short-form video content allows you to tap into this to provide short, sharp bursts of information about your brand’s products or services or quickly convey any message you want to get across to your target market.
2. Quick, Easy and Flexible
You don’t need high-tech, expensive equipment to create short-form video content – you just need a smartphone. This makes these videos extremely easy to create, as well as the fact that they can be uploaded to whichever platform you choose within a matter of minutes. Short-form videos also offer a lot of flexibility as they can be used for a wide variety of purposes, such as marketing campaigns and product demonstrations. This combination of benefits make this type of content an ideal choice for small businesses as not a lot of time or money is required to create effective content.
3. Concentrated Messages are More Impactful
Longer videos can include various different messages and discuss multiple subjects, which can confuse the consumer and dilute the information that you’re trying to convey. With short-form video content, it’s much easier to get across one, powerful message that the consumer is more likely to remember.
4. You can Embrace Spontaneity and Authenticity
Consumers today want authenticity and transparency from the brands they buy from or engage with. It’s easy to create spontaneous, “in the moment” content with short-form videos, which will provide a sense of authenticity about your business and give your audience a better insight into the brand behind the camera. Creating content like this will foster a sense of relatability, which is highly important for connecting with your target audience at a more personal level.
5. Used on the Most Popular Apps
Short-form videos are widely used on today’s fastest-growing and most popular social media apps such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, so these platforms are of course where you want to be focusing on reaching more people. TikTok – arguably the leading platform in providing short-form video content – reached 1 billion monthly active users in 2021 after only being in existence for five years, showing that short-form videos are the way to go when it comes to maintaining an audience’s attention. Posting on these platforms will open your brand up to growing your target audience even further, especially with the functionality for users to save and share content.
6. Easy to Consume
Short-form videos are easy to watch anywhere at any time, whether you’re on the go, on a break from work, or resting in-between your daily tasks. They’re also highly addictive and can be shared among users in a matter of seconds. Not only is this convenient to consumers, but as a business owner or marketer this means that this type of content can be repurposed or recycled across different social media platforms, so you’ll always have a pre-existing audience ready and waiting to view your content.
7. Your Brand will Stay Relevant
Short-form video content is clearly here to stay, which is made obvious by TikTok’s staggering rise in popularity over the last few years as well as this form of content becoming the main priority of the Facebook and Instagram algorithms. By embracing the trend of creating short-form video content, you’ll be able to stay relevant among your competitors and remain easily visible and accessible to your target audience.
8. You’ll Boost Engagement
Last but by no means least, short-form videos will massively help to increase your brand’s engagement. Short-form videos are essentially engagement magnets; they encourage active participation from your audience through comments, shares, reactions, and saves. By creating some captivating short-form video content, you’ll drive up those all-important engagement metrics which will boost your brand’s visibility.
From capturing dwindling attention spans to boosting brand engagement, short-form video content is the way forward when it comes to staying relevant as a business and effectively reaching your target audience. Despite their length of one minute or less, short-form videos pack a powerful punch in the digital marketing world while remaining a low-cost, easy content creation method, so it’s simple to see why your business should prioritise short-form video content in 2024. So, grab your smartphone, get creative, and get started. Trust us – your business and your engagement statistics will thank you for it!
This type of content has undoubtedly revolutionised the way brands engage with consumers, offering a dynamic and effective way to capture their attention. In today’s article, we’ll discuss the reasons why your business should adopt short-form video content as a crucial part of your marketing strategy in 2024.
