8 things I learned about Shortform Video in 2022

If you landed here and aren’t familiar with the content I’ve worked on, most of it is on @Redpoint and @Corporayshid on socials. I also help produce The Logan Bartlett Show with Logan Bartlett alongside Justin Hrabovsky and Andrew Nadeau and have my own podcast called No Agenda where friends from the internet come teach me stuff.

If you are familiar and have liked, commented, shared and subscribed this year, thank you for the support and look forward to keeping it going in 2023 ??

A few disclaimers:

1. Each learning probably warrants its own separate deep-dive with examples to account for nuance. If you’re interested in one or the other, please say so in the comments and I can think about the best way to go deeper.
2. I powered through feelings of imposter syndrome even writing this, but several people with whom I’ve casually shared these have told me that they are helpful given the changes in the content world in recent times.

So here it goes:

1.Think critically about your Value Delivered per Minute

Be extremely intentional about what you choose to keep in vs edit out. My last 10 minutes of editing is usually spent trimming fractions of seconds that aren’t needed to deliver the same effect. This is especially true if you’re clipping long-form. I’ve found that in regular dialogue there’s about a 20-30% margin of “fluff" - sometimes higher depending on how verbose the featured people are. When in doubt, cut it and your audience will reward you.

2. More effort ≠ more results

One backwards thing about the content world is that you don’t get rewarded purely for putting in more time/energy into a video. Some of my biggest bangers resulted from an on-the-spot idea that I shot and edited in 10 minutes. Vice versa is also true (and very frustrating). Given the importance of quantity and consistency in operating on Social Media today, you’re looking for ways that you can see repeatable success with the least amount of time/effort spent per video. Keep that in mind and let go of any expectations that something you spent a lot of time making will perform well.

3. Appeal deeply to a niche

The more niche the better, within reason. To take an extreme example, think about how funny and relatable you are in your group chat with your friends. That’s because you’re able to make references to things that only they will get. Apply that at a larger scale to your content and ask yourself: how can I create a piece of content that my intended audience is going to look at and think “damn, I feel seen” or “wow, I feel like this was made for ME”?

4. Be present on all platforms?

?There are weird supply/demand dynamics of quality content on every platform that are changing constantly. For example, I think the reason LinkedIn is hot right now is because there are a ton of daily active users but not a lot of good (funny or entertaining) content. No shortage of people posting platitudes about “How to Get Your Next Promotion” though ??. Less noise to cut through is very good for reach. Be on all platforms and double down where you’re seeing results. (s/o Miranda Head for encouraging to cross-post on LI)

?5. The experimentation loop??

In order to produce consistently with high throughput I think it helps to find some form of template or re-usable style so that you’re not reinventing the wheel with every video. Repetition?and familiarity is also great for audience - people are more likely to stick around if something is in a familiar format. But you can’t get to that point without first experimenting on what works. It’s easy to be discouraged because the algorithm rewards repetition, but in the long run experimentation will improve your breadth in a big way. Plus it’s way more fun to try new stuff than to keep running back the old.??

A surf instructor once told me that “each wave is an experiment” - sometimes you eat shit, but you learn, make adjustments and are ultimately better for it.??

6. Teach or Entertain, don’t promote?

Over the past 2 years people have grown allergic to any sort of promotional language. Ask yourself how you can create content that teaches or entertains your audience, is thematically relevant to your brand and doesn’t feel promotional. Credit to companies like Duolingo, Ryanair (there are many others now) for being early to figure this out.

7. Just post it

The good thing about the algorithmic nature of social media is that if your video sucks, probably not that many people will see it. There’s something to be said about “going viral for the wrong reasons” - take precautions to avoid getting memed, but most likely if you’re worried about a video being "just okay" the algorithm will take care of not showing it to anyone.?

8. Replace “Algorithm” with “Audience” (I first heard this from JT Barnett )??

There’s no such thing as “figuring out the algorithm” - I haven’t found that using the right hashtags, captions and trying to time my posts yield any consistent results on reach or engagement. The audience is what you’re trying to play to, and you do so by making good content consistently to the point where over time the first thing your viewers think is: “I’m used to seeing really good content from this account, so I’ll stick around and watch this new video they just posted”?

Looking into 2023 the goal is to continue to broaden the scope of what we can pull off while doubling down on what seems to be working. Perhaps we expand into slightly longer form content, higher production value, more "edutainment" stuff and fun series around the modern workplace. Feedback is always welcome (from non-trolls) on what we could be doing better / more of - happy new year! ??