Short Form Video Is FAILING: Here’s What’s Next

Short-form video is failing. Let’s be real with one another.

A lot of you are doing all the right things: you’re planning out a content calendar of reels based on goals your audience has or problems they want to solve.

Your videos are short, entertaining, helpful, and funny. They have a catchy hook that gets your audience’s attention.

You’re using trending audio and filling your captions with the right keywords. 

You’re selecting relevant topics and hashtags for them and still… NOTHING.

If you’re tired of it and want to know what you’re supposed to do now, read to the very end of this post.

What’s Led To This

So tell us this: just as a personal social media user, you’re scrolling on your phone at the end of the night, do you get tired of scrolling? 

Like do you feel that for the most part, you’re not really seeing anything new? Like a lot of what you’re seeing is just regurgitated ideas, one after another?

If so, it’s probably because that’s what’s happening. 

People and brands alike are all starting to just repost the same stuff over and over again from each other, across all the apps. And as a result, viewers are getting tired of it! 

They’re not responding to videos like they were at the beginning of the short video age! Believe it or not, it’s already been 3 YEARS since the 2020 TikTok baking bread era.

Short videos aren’t giving the same dopamine hit as they used to. And what happens when the audience that was originally on FIRE for these videos starts to lose interest? 

Results start to crash.

And you can tell if you look at the main social media players over the last few years, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook- they’ve all been scrambling! 

They’re monetizing,

they’re demonetizing,

they’re pushing short video,

they’re pushing long-form vertical video,

…they’re calling a 3-minute video a short video (PSA, that’s not short). 

We mean they have been all over the place with short videos and it’s because the short video had an EXPLOSIVE start, that is now flatlining or in some ways even declining. 

If you’ve experienced this firsthand and you’re just tired, we mean TIRED of dealing with it, you have 2 options. 

What You Can Do With Your Content

1. You can hire a professional agency.

Yes, you can hire an experienced video marketing agency like LYFE to handle all of your social media for you.

This is so that you don’t have to fuss with it yet you can still reap the benefits of sales coming through.

If that’s the route you want to go, you can fill out our contact form for a free, custom marketing proposal and quote!

2. It’s time to go back to… carousel posts.

YES, the swipeable carousel posts are actually starting to outperform video in some cases. 

Why? Well, for one thing, the short video is starting to fall short for all the reasons we just talked about. So carousels don’t have to do much for short videos to fail all on their own. 

But more importantly, you can pack all the same value you would in a short form video like Reel, into a swipeable, SILENT, easy-to-consume piece of content.

And we say silent because we think people are here for the silence! We are bombarded with digital noise every day.

Did you know 92% of individuals are viewing videos without sound anyway? 92% YALL!

Do you know why? Because they’re tired of hearing it. They’d just rather read the subtitles or captions.

So you can safely provide the same value you were in reels in a swipeable carousel post. Now if you want to learn how to design carousel post ads, read this tutorial next.

3 Things To Keep In Mind When Creating Carousels

1. You don’t want to give away all the value on the first slide.

Because else, why would they have a reason to keep swiping? 

The swiping (and ultimately the likes, comments, and follows) tells the algorithm that this person likes your content and therefore should see more of it from you organically. 

But if they see the first post on your carousel and DON’T swipe?

That tells the algorithm they scrolled right past it without really looking at it. That’s a negative sign to the algorithm. 

So make the first slide an attention-grabber, and then spread your tips out over each slide. 

For example, if you own a bakery, it could be something like “Why Your Cookies Don’t Taste Like Your Grandma’s”.

And then each slide after that could contain one common mistake beginner bakers make a lot. 

2. Stick with your brand personality.

Just because you’re switching from Reels to carousels, that doesn’t mean you need to let go of all the personality in your posts that you had in Reels. 

If you have quick wit and humor sprinkled in your Reels, keep it sprinkled throughout your carousels! 

Followers should still feel like it’s YOU and your brand talking to them through their screens.

3. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket- one marketing basket.

Before you stop posting reels altogether, and go all in on carousels, you gotta figure out what works first! 

We would have a mix of short form video like Reels and carousels. Maybe you’ll find a mix is what your content strategy needs as opposed to all Reels or all carousels. 

Or, maybe you’ll find that your carousels are knocking it out of the park in terms of getting you followers, engagement, and ultimately customers. 

If that’s the case, then you can pivot your brand’s social media marketing strategy to be heavy on carousels confidently. 

But until you have that data, we wouldn’t just switch totally. We would balance your content calendar with a mix of post types until you find out what’s going to work best for you.