Short-form video — the vertical, sub-minute clip — is how a lot of discovery happens now. Used well, it introduces a brand to people who would never have found the website. Used badly, it is a production treadmill that produces nothing durable.
What short video is genuinely good at
- Showing, not telling. A process, a product in use, a before-and-after — things that a paragraph struggles to convey.
- Personality. How the team talks, the tone, the point of view. This is hard to fake and valuable when it is real.
- Reach. Platforms push short video to non-followers, so it is one of the few organic ways to be seen by new people.
What it is not good for
Detailed explanation, considered decisions, anything that needs to be referred back to. Short video is a top-of-funnel format. It should lead somewhere — a longer piece, a page, a conversation — not carry the whole weight of communicating what you do.
Make it sustainable
- Batch. Film several pieces in one session against a repeatable format rather than improvising daily.
- Have two or three formats you can refill — a tip, a project walkthrough, a question answered — so you are not inventing from scratch.
- Caption everything. Most people watch without sound, and captions help accessibility and comprehension.
- Keep the first two seconds doing work — they decide whether anyone watches the rest.
Connect it to the brand
Short video should look and sound like the same company as the website: same tone, same visual sensibility, consistent framing and treatment. A feed of clips in a different style from everything else reads as someone else's account.
In short
Use short video to be found and to show what words cannot, then route attention to somewhere with more depth. We plan and produce it as part of media and social work — tell us what you want people to see.