Five Common Mistakes to Avoid When Making Short-Form Videos

Short-form videos provide an immediate boost to your digital marketing strategy without the need for costly equipment. You have the potential to create high-quality videos with the tools you already have at your disposal.

However, there are a few things your business needs to avoid while making short-form videos.

1. Posting irrelevant content.

You need to ensure your work is relevant and keeps your audience engaged. It is far less exciting to create a video about something unrelatable such as “How to organize your files”. While this content is helpful, it will not capture your target audience’s attention. Instead, focus on relevant topics within your niche. For a marketing company, examples could include: “Explore a day in the life of a digital marketer” or “Have you tried this trending marketing hack?”

2. Detracting from the main message.

Establish a keen focus on the relevant points of your topic while crafting short-form videos. Your ideas need to be concise and to the point, as many businesses make the mistake of trying to include as many thoughts and visual elements in one video as possible. These types of videos often result in an unpolished final product that can confuse viewers. If your message is unclear and inconsistent your audience can become disengaged and lose interest quickly.

3. Choosing information over emotion.

As the saying goes, “people will often forget what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel”. Thus, it is important to avoid overwhelming viewers with loads of information or primarily focusing on rational thoughts such as statistics and facts. Instead, work to evoke a sense of connection to your business by triggering an emotional appeal inside of your short-form videos. A few examples could include, creating videos that foster inspiration, happiness, or a sense of joy. Implementing this can help to build brand awareness by attracting the viewer’s attention and creating a link between the viewer and the business.

4. Not researching previously created content.

We live in such a consumption-heavy society that it can be easy to want to essentially “post-and-unplug” in terms of content creation. However, creating content is only one aspect of the process. It’s also important to spend an equal amount of time researching previously created content inside your niche. Look for various tactics other businesses are utilizing when creating short-form videos and determine if you can implement them within your own future videos. This research can help provide tips and insights into current trends, engagement opportunities, and various methods in order to captivate viewers.

5. Forgetting the call to action.

Including a call to action in almost any marketing initiative is critical and very effective. No matter how appealing your content may be, it is pointless without a captivating call to action. In terms of short-form videos, your call to action typically invites your viewers to engage with the business through various actionable steps such as following your page, sharing a comment, visiting your website, clicking a link, etc. This is how your business can acquire potential leads that could turn into future clients. Each short-form video you create should consist of at least one or two call to action prompts throughout the video.

You might think, “They are already watching the video. Mission accomplished.”

However, consider the reason why your business started creating short-form videos. The main goal was to entice your viewers to purchase, subscribe, or take a desirable actionable step that will be of benefit to your business.

Avoiding these common mistakes when creating short-form videos will help ensure your business is actively capturing your target audience’s attention without losing potential leads.

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