3 Easy Ways to Create 60-Second (Or Shorter) Social Videos – EP010

In this moment, quick, short videos have taken over social media. Consumers in these spaces are super busy and they don’t have the time or the attention span to watch longer videos all the time, so making shorter videos will allow you to leverage those platforms designed for short content and get in front of those audiences.

In order to make your short videos more easily, there are three key questions that you need to ask yourself before you get started.

1. Where are you going to use your short video?

This is where you should start when making short videos because different platforms allow different video lengths. For example, if you plan to use your video on Instagram Reels, it only allows increments of 30 seconds or 15 seconds right now, so 60 seconds would be too long. Choosing your platform ahead of time will determine what your length will be for the video that you are creating.

2. What design tool will you use?

I am a big supporter of using tools that you already have, so think about how you can create your video using tools you have right now instead of signing up for a new subscription or investing in new software. There are so many options out there for creating video, such as Canva, Wave, Vimeo, and more. Choosing your design tool will allow you to determine what you can do with your video.

3. What method do you want to use to create the content?

When you create content for short videos, you have two options: you can start with a short video in mind, write a script from scratch, and create a start to finish 30 second video; or you can have a longer video, like my 30-minute live streams, which you can then convert into multiple 30 second clips.

I want to go into a little more detail for this last one because there are so many possibilities. I’m a big fan of repurposing content and getting the maximum value out of what I create, so keep in mind that you can also repurpose your existing content. For example, if you have an existing YouTube channel or something similar, you might want to show a short clip, as a sort of teaser, to try and entice your audience to go and watch your longer videos.

If this is something that sounds like a good fit for you, there is a great tool called Repurpose which is specifically designed to pull from larger video and audio files and convert them into smaller clips, which can save you tons of time.

Having diversity in your content bank will allow you to be seen on different platforms, so it’s important to leverage these short videos right now even if you’re used to long-form content. Using these three questions will make your process super easy.