Harnessing the Power of Quick Engagement on TikTok and YouTube Shorts
In recent years, video has risen to the top spot across social media platforms. On YouTube Shorts and TikTok, it’s the primary content form that engages users and offers an opportunity for instant virality.
For brands, video offers a considerable marketing advantage. As of 2023, 91% of businesses leveraged video as a marketing tool. Short-form video proved the go-to media format in brand content strategies, and for a good reason.
Their unique formats enable creative, engaging, shareable content that’s tailored to the fast-paced mobile audience. However, it’s not enough to just post videos. You have to create videos that capture attention and stand out from the sea of content in user feeds.
What Is Short-Form Video?
Short-form video refers to video content that’s short, typically less than three minutes in length.
It’s designed for rapid consumption on social platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
These videos appeal to modern audiences because of shrinking attention spans, delivering entertainment or information in bite-sized formats.
The Rise of TikTok and YouTube Shorts
Video has always been popular, especially as technology made high-quality video production more accessible.
During the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place orders, videos had a chance to shine, ushering in a significant shift in how people consume video content.
Once TikTok skyrocketed in popularity, other platforms followed suit. YouTube Shorts was launched in response to TikTok's success, favoring short, engaging videos designed for sharing to complement the platform's typical long-form videos.
Both platforms enable a limitless stream of bite-sized entertainment tailored to individual interests, further tailored by algorithms prioritizing user preferences.
This user-first approach has kept users glued to their platforms while creating opportunities for brands to produce content with reach and engagement.
Benefits of Short-Form Video
Why is short-form video so effective compared to other content? Here are some benefits:
Catering to Short Attention Spans
TikTok and YouTube Shorts cater to the shrinking attention spans of modern users. Videos are designed to capture attention within seconds and hold the user’s interest.
They’re long enough to inform and short enough to captivate. Users watch the entire video, ensuring that they absorb the whole message.
Promoting Engagement
TikTok and YouTube Shorts encourage user participation. These videos prompt users to engage with likes, shares, and comments, further tailoring their feeds to deliver similar content.
This engagement boosts the visibility of the content while creating a more meaningful and dynamic interaction with the audience.
Improving Reach
Both TikTok and YouTube Shorts leverage algorithm-driven discovery, prioritizing content that engages viewers within seconds. This makes it easier for new content to go viral and gain rapid exposure because videos are more likely to appear in feeds based on relevance, not follower count.
Enhancing Content Retention
Users can consume information quickly in a short video, making it more likely that they’ll retain it and key messages. This is important for brand awareness campaigns, product demonstration videos, quick tips and hacks, and more.
Showcasing Brand Personality
Short-form videos are a powerful format for showcasing your brand personality in an authentic and relatable way.
You can incorporate trends, humor, and behind-the-scenes content to encourage audiences to connect on a personal level. This builds trust and loyalty.
Reducing Production Requirements
Creating short videos often requires fewer resources than long-form content or video series. These platforms don’t expect a lot of polish, and mobile-friendly editing tools and effects are enough to help you create high-quality content without breaking the bank.
Optimized for Mobile
TikTok and YouTube Shorts are both designed for mobile consumption. They offer a seamless viewing experience on smartphones and tablets, making it simple for users to swipe through videos and find the content that appeals to them. This increases the time users spend on the app, maximizing marketing exposure.
Democratizing Video Content
In the past, video content was the foray of big brands with huge marketing budgets. YouTube Shorts and TikTok have lowered the barrier to entry for video content, democratizing production.
Anyone with a smartphone can create and share content, allowing brands to test new ideas, capitalize on trends, and stay engaged with core social audiences.
Shareability
TikTok and YouTube Shorts promote virality. Their algorithms are designed to amplify content that users respond to, increasing organic reach. This means that a great video can get incredible engagement and visibility, driving your marketing goals.
Tips to Improve Your Short-Form Video Strategy
Want to see what short-form video can do for you? Here are some ways to improve your existing video strategy for TikTok and YouTube Shorts:
1. Know Your Audience
The key to any marketing strategy is understanding your audience. Initially, many brands wrote off platforms like TikTok for marketing, assuming they were for younger audiences. Then, as maverick brands jumped on, brands in all industries realized the power of short-form video content.
Make sure you research your audience’s interests, preferences, and online behaviors. Understanding what they’re looking for is essential for crafting short-form videos that captivate, resonate, and drive engagement. Begin with demographics like age, location, and interests, then dive deeper into the psychographic—what motivates your audience and their pain points.
2. Film and Edit for the Platform
It’s not a great practice to create a video and use it across all the social media platforms. While you can repurpose, it’s best to design videos for the platform you’re posting to.
For short-form video content, your video should fill the screen. This means vertical filming with a 9:16 aspect ratio to avoid any black areas on the edges. You can do this by filming directly in the app or adjusting the aspect ratio with editing software.
You should also be aware of the area of the frame that contains the user’s interface, such as the like, comment, and share buttons. Both TikTok and YouTube Shorts have these interfaces, so avoid putting images or text too close to them, which will make them illegible to the viewer.
If you want to repurpose your video content, you can adjust it to the chosen platform.
One of the biggest differences between YouTube and TikTok is that YT Shorts are limited to 60 seconds, while TikTok content can be up to 10 minutes for recording and 60 minutes for uploading.
If you plan to reuse content for both platforms, make sure it’s short enough to work for YouTube Shorts—or create a highlight that covers the core message.
3. Don’t Neglect Audio Quality
One of the most important aspects of video content is sound. Watching a video with poor sound quality is an unpleasant experience and can make or break your viewership, so make sure the video sound quality is high.
For example, pay attention to background noise like wind or other people talking, and listen to the video to ensure the sound is good.
While you want to include sound, accessibility is essential. The goal is to create a video with good sound quality and options for silent viewing. Include captions that allow people with hearing disabilities to watch without losing the message.
Many users watch videos on silent during their morning commute, while relaxing with family, or in a waiting room. So, having captions ensures that they don’t scroll away because of their environment.
4. Tell a Good Story
Storytelling is a key part of the success of social media platforms and video content. TikTok and YouTube Shorts offer editing tools that you can use to ensure your videos grab attention immediately and get your users invested in the story you’re telling.
Brands can tell stories in many ways, including sharing the business's background, a glimpse into day-to-day operations, or the “lightbulb” moment that led to a successful product.
Here are some ideas:
Host a behind-the-scenes tour to let your audience peek behind the curtain and understand your business operations. You can include a clip of an employee party, a making-of video for a product, or a team highlight.
Feature testimonials or stories from real customers who used your product or service to solve problems in their own lives or businesses. Seeing how real customers benefit from what you offer shows social proof and encourages an emotional connection in users.
Share how you built your brand, including some barriers and challenges you overcame to get where you are today. People want to support other people, not nameless, faceless corporate entities. Telling your story humanizes your brand and gives them something to root for.
Lume uses storytelling effectively to answer customer questions and humanize the brand:
5. Prioritize Authenticity
TikTok and YouTube Shorts aren’t designed for professional television-style ads. These platforms thrive on authentic, relatable content, so it’s time to let your brand shine without too much polish.
While the approachable nature of video is often used by fun or humorous brands, any brand can be authentic when creating videos. Here are some ideas:
Host a live Q&A session with your team or management to answer common questions from customers and encourage a two-way conversation.
Share a real customer's review of your product or service, and encourage them to tell their story—without editing—to build trust.
Create a “day in the life of” video that offers a glimpse into your day-to-day operations.
Here’s an adorable example from the San Diego Zoo showing their care of the grizzly bears:
6. Promote Engagement
TikTok and YouTube Shorts unite brands and users to encourage dialogue and engagement. You can use this opportunity to boost engagement with contests, live video sessions, and more.
Here are some ways:
Run a contest encouraging users to share their experience with your product or service.
Conduct polls to gather feedback about your brand or products.
Call on your brand fans to participate in brainstorming sessions for your products or services.
7. Ride the Trends
One of the most engaging aspects of TikTok is the trending content. Trends change quickly, so staying on top of the most current trends and making videos to capitalize on them can be challenging. However, getting on trends is a great way to boost your video content to the top of the feed.
The For You Page can offer insights into what’s trending in your industry and on the platform in general. Once you know the trends, you can find ways to tailor them to your industry and brand. Here are some ideas:
TikTok dances are a popular trend. If there’s a trending dance video, create your own video of your team dancing to the music trend and enjoying their time at work.
Use sound effects and music clips, mainly trending ones, to enhance your content.
TikTok challenges are also engaging. You can create a branded hashtag challenge to prompt your audience to share their experience with your brand.
Here's an example of Reiss clothing company recreating a flash mob with the in-house social media team:
8. Optimize Hashtags
Hashtags are used to make discoveries on TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Hashtags work similarly to keyword research. They must be relevant and tailored to your brand and content to ensure they attract the target audience.
Many brands take a shortcut of spamming videos with trending hashtags irrelevant to the industry (or even the video itself!). While this may promote visibility and traffic, viewers might not attract your target audience who are interested in your brand and offerings.
Only choose hashtags that are relevant to make your video searchable for the users who are looking.
Here’s an example of how the Metropolitan Museum of Art used hashtags strategically to capture audience attention from their core art and culture fans, city travelers, and art enthusiasts:
9. Use Visual Enhancements
TikTok and YouTube Shorts offer tools to add effects and enhance your video, such as stickers and filters. Used sparingly and strategically, these visual effects can enhance your video's appeal and help it blend in with the platform's style.
TikTok's business page uses overlay features to drive important messages home:
10. Don’t Lose Originality
When starting with short-form videos on these platforms, it can be easy to follow the trending content too much. This makes you lose the originality that makes your brand “your own.”
While you should pay attention to what works on these platforms, don’t lose your originality. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle.
Take note of content that works and why it works, then make it your own. Put a new spin on an idea, take a unique angle, or look for only emerging trends. This helps you keep your brand differentiated on these platforms.
11. Stay Consistent
Consistency is a big part of success on all social media platforms. However, with a constant influx of content on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, it can be difficult to stay on top of the demanding schedule.
Remember that focusing on quality over quantity is better, even on these platforms. You don’t have to post multiple videos each day like an influencer.
Pick a realistic schedule, such as three times a week, and stick to it. Eventually, the platform and your audience will expect your videos at predictable times.
12. Never Stop Learning
Video marketing isn’t a hands-off marketing strategy. You must set goals and track your progress with short-form videos like any other content.
Fortunately, both TikTok and YouTube Shorts offer advanced analytics to help you determine what’s working, what could be improved, and how to serve your platform audiences better.
While your metrics should align with your goals for video content, pay attention to metrics like comments, likes, shares, and video views with the built-in analytics tools. These insights can help you make better videos in the future.
For example, if users aren’t finishing videos, you can see if you’re losing interest or momentum after that snappy intro.
13. Experiment a Little
Both TikTok and YouTube Shorts thrive on authenticity. You need to stay true to your brand personality and tone, but don’t be afraid to stretch your creativity a little. You can test the waters and see what your audience responds to.
If an idea gains traction, you have a jumping-off point for future content. If your efforts don’t get the desired results, you have some “what not to do” ideas to create higher-quality content in the future.
Either way, you won’t know if you don’t try.
Get Started with YouTube Shorts and TikTok
TikTok and its influence on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook have made video content more accessible and appealing for brands and their audiences. Fortunately, these platforms don’t require a high production level like a television commercial, allowing you to deliver authentic, concise messages with viral potential.
Whether you’re just getting started with short-form video content or your video marketing strategy isn’t performing as it should, these tips should help you maximize your results and create videos that captivate your audience.
Torrey Tayenaka is the co-founder and CEO at Sparkhouse, an Orange County based commercial video production company. He is often asked to contribute expertise in publications like Entrepreneur, Single Grain and Forbes. Sparkhouse is known for transforming video marketing and advertising into real conversations. Rather than hitting the consumer over the head with blatant ads, Sparkhouse creates interesting, entertaining and useful videos that enrich the lives of his clients’ customers. In addition to Sparkhouse, Torrey has also founded the companies Eva Smart Shower, Litehouse & Forge54.