Short vs Long Form Video Content: What Will Work Best for You?

Now that you have started developing video content for your business, you are faced with a choice on how you want your content digested. Will your audience prefer long videos with deeper information, or do you want to promote engagement with smaller bite-sized videos? Depending on the role of your videos, you may prefer one format over the other. Here are some pros and cons of both to help you decide on your preferred video length.

Short Form Video Content

Short form videos are typically under 60 seconds in length, making them ideal for quick consumption and prominently used on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. Short form content for business usually spans a little more time, but you typically would want to stay below the 2 or 3 minute mark to optimize engagement.

Pros

1: Attention Span: Short videos cater to today's shorter attention spans, making them more likely to be watched in full. Viewers are more inclined to engage with bite-sized content that delivers a message swiftly.

2: More Easily Marketed: For those potential viewers who aren’t already engaged or have active interest in your brand or business, shorter videos provide an easier gateway to your initial message to pull in new engagement.

3: Flexible: Dealing with shorter videos allows editing to be completed quicker, which means getting your message out to your audience faster. Additionally, making changes, updating your video, or delivering weekly announcements will be significantly easier when cutting down on upload and transcoding time.

Cons

1: Limited Depth: The brevity of short form videos restricts the depth of content that can be covered. Complex topics may not be fully explored, leading to continued searching for additional information.

2: Brand Messaging: Crafting a cohesive brand message in a short time frame can be challenging. Ensuring brand consistency and conveying key values may require strategic planning and concise scripting as well as more deliberate editing.

Long Form Video Content

Long form videos typically exceed 10 minutes and can potentially extend to a few hours if you are sharing AGMs or seminars for internal use. Here are the pros and cons of embracing long form video content:

Pros

1: In-depth Information: Long form videos inherently communicate more information, which allows the video to delve deeper into topics. If a lot of information needs to be communicated to your audience, long form videos are far more engaging than the alternatives of reading papers or sifting through reports.

2: Consolidation: By putting more content into a longer video, you can then share and provide all required information in one accessible package. Chapter the video into its own sections, and you now have a library's worth of content with a single upload.

3: Easier Editing: Although it may seem counterintuitive, longer form videos tend to be more straightforward in how an editor approaches them and can usually be streamlined faster. The logic behind it is that cutting down a lot of footage into a short video is more complicated and deliberate than topping and tailing one long video. If you are sharing an AGM recording for example, then you want to present the footage in its entirety, making narrative cuts, effects, and re-works less prominent.

Cons

1: Time Commitment: Consuming long form content requires a significant time commitment. A potential viewer seeing such a long playback time can be immediately turned off before even starting the video..

2: Audience Retention: Holding audience attention throughout a lengthy video can be challenging even when they do start the playback. Any form of distraction can pull their attention away from the video, and they may forget to continue watching later.

3: Fluff: Sometimes information can be condensed into a smaller, more easily digestible package while retaining the same key message. This may take more commitment to craft, but will ultimately improve content engagement.

Combine the Best of Both Worlds

What if you have a lot of content to deliver but want to make the viewing experience more digestible? Viostream has two specialized tools that allow you to distribute your in-depth message easier.

Chapters

If you would like to keep your long-form content confined into one long video, then Viostream Chapters will be perfect for you. Chapters allows you to segment and organize the content within your video to customizable sections which the viewer can then select to easily navigate around the viewer timeline. This system ties in beautifully with Viostream’s engagement timeline in the reports so you can see which section of the video is most popular.

Channel Templates

If you would like to break your long-form for content into more digestible bite-sized videos, then Viostream’s Channel Templates will allow you to consolidate your smaller videos into one package that can be delivered on custom branded pages, or embedded directly into your website or CRM. Channel Templates can act as a playlist for your video series, or as a full-blown video library complete with optional sub-pages and descriptions.

Both short form and long form video content offer unique advantages and challenges. Your choice should align with your content goals, target audience preferences, delivery suitability, and resources available. Consider experimenting with both formats to find the right balance that resonates with your audience and drives meaningful results for your brand or content strategy.