Short-form video might be a three-word phrase that marketers are sick of hearing, (right up there with “content is king”), but that’s just too bad. The short video trend is here to stay. (It is the next trends after Tiktok Marketing Trends as well as Social Commerce & Accessibility Marketing Trends.
What Is Short Form Video Marketing Trends?
But, what does “Short-Form Video” mean? Common denominators of most short-form video content include: quick edits or trick edits, cleverness, transformations, unique ways of adapting trending audios, strong captions, and hooks that encourage viewers to stop scrolling.
However, the definition of short-form video has been changing rapidly over the past few years as new platforms and video lengths emerged.
When TikTok burst onto the scene in 2020, it was somewhat dismissed as just a new version of Vine, which was popular and novel for its 6-second video format. TikTok was much the same, offering a max length of 15 seconds.
Though TikTok started in the same way, it did what Vine could not by achieving mainstream adoption and it has continued to evolve. One of the platform’s biggest shifts came in 2022, with the announcement that creators would have the ability to produce 10-minute TikToks the average length of a YouTube video.
On Instagram, Reels can be up to 90 seconds, and Stories can be viewed in 60-second chunks. Similarly, YouTube Shorts can be up to a minute long.
Although YouTube Shorts were released globally in 2021, it’s taken a bit of time for them to really come into their own.
Being a video-first platform already, and one with a fairly long legacy, YouTube faces a unique challenge in introducing its own short-form component. It needs to balance things carefully to avoid angering its user base, as Instagram did.
So the rather slow burn of Shorts becoming more prominent on the platform is understandable.
It’s also interesting that with so many short-form options out there, from TikTok to Snapchat to even Pinterest, YouTube has decided to invest so much time in developing its version. And they have been developing at a very fast rate including making a move to help creators monetize Shorts through ads something TikTok and Instagram are still struggling with executing, as of this writing.
Given that monetization through YouTube videos is fairly common for creators, it’s actually not that innovative for the platform, but it could be a defining update if the content creators who are already monetizing their videos on YouTube show the platform more favortisim.
Midway through 2022, YouTube made it easier to create a Short directly from a longer form video uploaded to your channel, so creators who maybe felt they didn’t have the time or mental energy to invest in yet another video format can now simply parse their longer content into shorter clips — getting in front of new audiences and finding more subscribers just like that.
That’s not to say that other platforms have been sleeping on new features for short-form videos. Not by a long shot. Pinterest is one platform whose adoption of short-form video will be particularly exciting. The company recently announced a series of agreements with record labels that will allow users to add popular songs to its video-focused “Idea Pins” in an effort to reach parity with TikTok’s audio library.
Pinterest has also slowly been integrating more video capabilities, introducing a unique live shopping forum showcasing all kinds of different creators and influencers. Since then, the comapny has made improvements here and there, including partnering with institutions like the Louvre museum for unique behind-the-scenes video content — a great way to showcase how other creators could use Pinterest for video.
So while the definition of “Short-Form Video content” may be changing as each platform continues to expand the length of the videos allowed to be published, one thing is not: video content remains a priority for the major social media platforms.
Marketing teams should be incorporating more video into their content and social media strategies for 2023, experimenting with different video lengths and several of the new features. Next year, we expect to see even more social commerce features — paid ads, and purchase capabilities — to be coming to short-form in response to a growing need to provide a seamless buying experience, minimizing in-app interruption.
