Rising Appetite for Short Video Content

A short-form video is a video that is up to two minutes and thirty seconds in length. Short-form videos give people a fast and straightforward way to absorb information. The format of short-form videos lends itself to a more creative way of communicating that’s meant to excite and encourage people. It gives a multitude of opportunities for creative social media marketing and can be used as a powerful marketing tool!

Short-form videos have become more prevalent in today’s world. It allows people to consume information quickly and easily. Consumers during this pandemic have become more inclined towards easy-to-digest and love content in the form of short brand-related videos.

In 2020, the short-form video platform TikTok became one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. Its users have more than 9 million in South Africa alone. Many other giant social media platforms have followed suit to accommodate the demand for interactive short videos by adding their own copycat TikTok features.

Today TikTok is the leading platform of short-form video movement— because its videos are most ordinarily related to trending music and dance challenges. It offers unique benefits that are defined by the individual platforms it’s distributed on. The use of short-form video in the promotion of brands in South Africa is expected to grow.

Advantages of short-form videos

Short-form videos are commonly used to make memorable content and are easy to consume. Shareable: People regularly share more short-form videos than any other form of content. People share videos at twice the rate of any other form of content (Wyzowl)

Snackable: Short-form videos are designed to be easy for readers to consume and to share making your message to be memorable.

Fun: Short-form videos are made for fun viral challenges, especially on TikTok. Users create fun challenges on Tik Tok that every user can be able to join to entertain their followers and that also helps to increase followers and viewers.

It’s Attention-Grabbing: As people, we are genetically programmed to react to movement. When we sense movement, we are aware of its effects and respond to them and a short video has a sense of movement that grabs our attention, focus and is easy to remember. It gets to the point: The message of the short video is clear, relevant and (quickly) get to the point.

It’s not too long: With short-form videos, viewers can be entertained and informed without feeling overcommitted. Consumers have become very savvy about the way they consume media. Most check the timecode before they plan to watch (or not watch) a video. if the time investment doesn’t match the engagement, they’re gone.

Easy to watch: Short-form videos offer you more freedom to produce and supply hard-hitting, relatable videos that get to the point, without the overhead of creating more in-depth content.

The goal of this type of content is to entertain and engage audiences and further reinforce the relationship with a brand, program or influencer, and potentially drive behaviour. This is good news for advertisers who want to influence harder to reach consumers.

The spread of small videos is extremely cornerstone even this year and brands who are showing great planning and consideration towards creating creative, compelling and brief videos will see a favourable engagement from the audience. Short-Form video has become such an important way to communicate messages because it ticks all the boxes for reaching today’s connected and distracted consumer.