Short-form content is social’s best friend

Whether you’re posting it or consuming it, short-form content for social is winning on every platform. Videos that seem to be decreasing in length and copy that’s becoming more and more brief are telling us one thing; ‘I just don’t have the patience’.

As marketers, it’s not easy telling an SME or a C-suite exec that their thought-leadership piece cannot just be copy and pasted onto LinkedIn, or the video of them talking to a static camera (without captions) is not really going to entice anyone into doing anything other than reach for a pillow.

So we know video is king on social – blah blah blah – we’ve all heard it. But what’s interesting is the brevity in which it’s consumed. Consumer attention spans are shortening to as much as 8.25 seconds – in a world where we were told how to explain our workings when growing up, we’re now being told to get to the facts and quick.

So that ‘short clip’ you made that’s 1min long, is very unlikely to reach full viewership. In fact, to quote Springboard in 2023 – 58% of viewers will finish watching videos in under a minute. But if the video is over 20 minutes, only 24% of them will finish the video.

In 2024, you can be sure these percentages have grown. It’s a trend that doesn’t show signs of stopping.

TikTok, Facebook, Instagram – and now LinkedIn – are all pushing short video feeds; essentially TikTok led the way before Insta’s reels came into play. They’re here to stay and they’re growing. For B2B it may seem difficult to understand how this may work, but there are many many ways of making those videos you have work for it.

Consider:

  • Provocative soundbites
  • Statistical insights
  • Hook terms; AI, for example – will get people’s attention

Also, remember mobile first – vertical formats are key to proper consumption!

Intrigued? Well, we’ve some other ideas here in our resources section that can help you with any campaign and any platform: https://immediatefuture.co.uk/resources/

Latest Posts

Truth on Fire, and Brands Are in the Line of It We’re all in the truth business now. At Somerset House, on a chilly evening in June, I joined a panel to unpack the uncomfortable realities of misinformation and disinformation, and what brands can do about it. The session was…
Read More
Yes, that is me being a bit obvious, but sometimes you need to be a bit blunt.  Social is where buyers research, where conversion journeys begin, and where measurable business outcomes are shaped. And yet too often, it’s still seen as secondary to ‘real’ marketing. This newsletter edition…
Read More
Reddit may have been in the shadows of other social platforms for years – in fact, the debate is on as to whether it’s a social platform at all – but one thing is for sure, the B2B buyer and marketeer are finding it a safe haven for research and…
Read More