TikTok. Short-form video. Don't blink or you'll miss it! Welcome to The Marketing Accelerator Podcast, featuring three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker, and today I'm speaking with Matt Mroczek. He's the Chief Strategy Officer at Steel Croissant, a digital agency that specializes in leveraging short-form video. Matt, you've told me that short-form video is just under two minutes, 120 seconds or less, why is this an effective format in today's market?

Matt Mroczek: Well, today's attention span is shorter than ever, they say it's about eight seconds. So, really, short-form video can be anywhere from 8 seconds to probably under a minute. They say that if you have video on your website, people are likely to be there for two and a half times or longer on there. And, I think short-form video, the way to think of it is that if your attention span is eight seconds, every eight seconds of that video is earning the next eight seconds. So, you need to consistently deliver value or people who are going to scroll past it, click to another thing. I think we need to think about, somebody's attention is the most valuable resource they have, so we want to think about how can we consistently capture that attention and demonstrate value that entire time.

Drew: Matt, how did we get here? Why has short-form video gotten so popular?

Matt: I think mostly, if we look back at the few years, the pandemic, our jobs changing, life changing, things are just… We have so much more on our to-do list now and so whether that's at work or personal, the evolution or emergence of TikTok, the ability and the amount of content that exists, it's endless and so we are consistently looking for the next piece of content to satisfy that next eight seconds or dissatisfy the next thing that we're looking for and so because there's so much content available, we know that we can always skip to the next one, so with that, we have to work very hard at keeping our users attention and making that content very stimulating for them.

Drew: Well, not everyone's a storyteller like you and me, what insider hacks can you share, Matt, that will accelerate one's ability to get started on telling a short-form video story.

Matt: Well, know that you're not starting from square one, right? There's a lot of tried-and-true video frameworks or script frameworks that exist already today. One of my favorites is A-I-D-A, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action, and you can use tools like ChatGPT to help brainstorm topics, then ask it to format a script for you. And that script may not be perfect, but it should get you about 90% of the way there. That's where you can customize it, put your own spin on it, and make sure that your brand voice is resonating with your target audience and help make a really tight script for you.

Drew: Short-form video offers a lot of opportunity to connect with the consumer. Now you know how to get started. The Marketing Accelerator Podcast is a production of MarketingAccelerator.com where we accelerate marketing leaders to higher performance and increase job satisfaction. I'm Drew Dinkelacker.