Probably the most time-consuming and distracting of the many jobs foisted on artists today is that of Content Machine. On top of writing, recording, mixing, mastering, rehearsing, performing and washing your ass, you’re now expected to regularly post good short-form videos as well as official music videos, lyric videos, visualizers, trailers and a bunch of others I’m probably forgetting.
Your time-consuming and distracting new job can easily drive you to despair when you finally begin understanding your analytics, and you realize almost nobody’s even watching.
Short-Form Video, a.k.a. The Viewer Retention Ski Slope
The chart above represents the viewer retention rate of the average short-form video. 93% of the people watching your video at 0:01 are gone after the first five seconds. Your video has about that long to interest the average viewer before they swipe onwards, much like you do on umpteen videos daily while scrolling your feeds.
The thing is, creating short-form videos is time-consuming and distracting, but can also be extremely rewarding. Like it or not, short-form video is the quickest, cheapest and most effective way to get in front of the biggest number of new potential fans. Vertical 30-second videos perfectly fit both our cellphone screens and our attention spans – especially when it comes to artists we’ve never heard of. Almost nobody will watch your 3-minute official video if they haven’t even given you 20 seconds of their time yet. Short-form videos are definitely more important than official music videos for new artists. Not to say that you shouldn’t also have official videos, but you should have way more short-form videos than official videos, because they are the free samples that lead people to the main course.
Creating good short-form videos is like anything else in life: practice makes perfect. Also like anything else in life, you can speed up your journey to perfect by learning from those who’ve already put the work in. So here’s a checklist you can apply which will ensure you post good short-form videos every time. It also applies to Youtube Shorts, TikToks, Facebook Reels and all other short-form video platforms. This post probably won’t turn your next Reel viral. But it will get you lots more views and followers over the long run, as our years of experience here at 360 Promo can attest to.
the number of followers we recently gained for a client of ours
The process of creating a good vertical short-form video breaks down into three parts: the idea, the editing, and the posting.
Table of Contents
The Idea
Make Lots Of Videos
One thing we know from experience is this: if you release lots of short-form videos consistently over a long period of time, your social media presence and following will grow. The platforms’ algorithms will sense that you are serious, and recommend your video to more viewers. You will also get better at creating videos as you practice more. And keep in mind, every video is not supposed to be a home run. You only need one video to perform well organically, then you can drop ad spend on that and it will get you followers for weeks if not months. The more videos you create, the likelier your chances of hitting that home run, and in the interim at least you’re still feeding the people, and the algorithms, which means incremental growth, which is a hell of a lot better than nothing. One video a day, per social media channel, for at least a few months, is a great first goal. You can of course use each video you create across your TikTok, your Instagram, your Youtube Shorts and anywhere else where you want to grow.
Lots of videos does not necessarily mean you need lots of separate ideas. Especially when just starting out, your best bet for making lots of videos when you don’t have lots of ideas (or resources, for that matter) is to plan a one-day shoot, shoot as much as you can that day, then chop it up into short-form pieces. The cameraman can be a professional, or it can be your buddy with his iPhone. The location can be a live jam with your band (more on that here), it can be you rapping or singing on your stoop, it can be a series of locations. The details are elastic. The point is: make a day out of it, shoot way more than you need to, try everything you can imagine, then cut it up into a slew of videos.
Make Videos For People Who Don’t Know You
I’ll go out on a limb and assume you don’t have as many fans as you’d like. Assuming furthermore your music is good, the main reason you don’t have as many fans as you’d like is not because most people heard your music and hated it, but because most people have never even heard of you.
If you want to post good short-form videos every time, these are the people you should be making your short-form videos for.
I say this because making videos for people who don’t know you is not the same as making videos for fans.
Fans want to see your official music video.
Fans want to see your behind the scenes footage.
Fans want to see your interviews.
People who haven’t heard of you don’t care about you, and consequently, don’t care about your music video, your behind the scenes footage, your interviews or anything remotely resembling it.
The people who don’t know you make up the vast majority of the world’s population. If you get the majority of your views through ads, then you get the majority of your views from people who’ve never heard of you. Why would you make the majority of your videos for anyone else?
Making videos for people who don’t know you is an umbrella rule that encompasses most of the rest of this list, the most important being Keep Your Video & Audio Clean, so that Youtube and Meta will approve it for ads. But ultimately it’s all important. If you want to post good short-form videos every time, make some videos for fans, but make many more for people who don’t know you.
Make Videos About Things People Like
As we’ve established, people who don’t know you don’t care about you. So in order to make them care, you have to start by making videos about things they do care about. Here goes a list of things people care about.
Famous Songs
Cover a famous song. Rap over a famous beat. People will hang around, even if it’s just to watch you bomb, and if you add the original artist and song name in the caption, your video’s SEO will improve.
Their Hometown/State/Country
Make videos about where you’re from. Show people the streets, the landmarks, the people. Even better, make videos about where your viewers are from. And make sure you geo-tag the videos and mention the locations extensively in your captions for that SEO action.
Trending Topics
Trite but true: if Instagram is putting videos about a certain topic all over everyone’s feeds, Instagram will probably put your video about that topic all over everyone’s feeds too.
Themselves
Music videos traditionally are staged and plot-driven, with the viewer as a spectator. Vertical videos are about a direct relationship between the creator and the viewer. So if you want to post good short-form videos every time, break that 4th wall and look right into the camera and talk to your viewer. Introduce yourself. Tell them where you’re from and what you want them to do. Above all, make them feel special.
Live Performances
People today love watching live performances online, for the same reason they’re cooling on music videos: live performances feel authentic, and give the artist nowhere to hide. They’re also much cheaper to pull off than the average music video. So consider availing yourself of the best music content hack there is at the moment. Forget about expensive official videos for your new album, and instead schedule a day where you and your band will perform every song on the album in an intimate setting with professional sound, in front of good cameras. Each of these become an official performance video for each song. On the same day as you record these, you should also have a few other people on your team filming you with their phones from different angles for short-form content that we can use. Sing the song acapella. Sing it with just a piano. Try lots of different stuff and film it all with good iphones, and there’s your social media content. Spend one day doing this and you’ll have official videos and social media content for the whole release.
Things Other Than Music
Everyone loves music. Everyone also loves lots of stuff. They love food, travel, clothes, politics, animals, love. People love all kinds of stuff. So if you have a good idea for a vertical video that isn’t directly about your music, try it. You can’t ride that train forever and expect people to care about your music, but this tactic can initially get your foot in the door, buying you time to figure out how to make your music more interesting. People will always gravitate to something genuine – which brings us to our final point here….
Whatever You Do Best
At the end of the day, if you’re actually a talented artist, your talent should be able to speak for itself. You should be able to turn your camera on, aim it at your face, do your thing, and get views. Funny though, the simplest ideas are often the hardest, which is why social media video can be so surprisingly hard to create. The staging and plots of music videos provide lots of places for artists to hide from the audience. That’s all out the window on the feeds, where the biggest videos are often little more than an artist looking into their cellphone wedged in a corner of their room and ripping their heart out for millions of strangers. You don’t need to overthink it. If you want to post good short-form videos every time, you do need to put your all into it, and be patient enough to improve.
Your Old Videos That Did Well Organically
Zillions of videos go online every day. Most of them do nothing. That means that any video of yours that does well organically is extremely valuable, and you should consider reposting it or running some advertising on the existing post (unless it’s more than a few months old, in which case you should repost it then run ads on it). With videos that do well organically you can assume two things
- If it worked well with a small number of people it will work well with a large number of people
- The vast majority of the world has still never seen it, so you should promote it more.
Two caveats to this are:
Seasonal Videos
This one is obvious. Don’t post your Christmas video in July just because it did well in Christmas.
Videos That Performed Well Only With Hardcore Fans
This one is a little less obvious. Basically, if a reel advertising your new album got tons of comments from existing fans but almost none from new viewers, it is less likely to do well with advertising. Remember, advertising promotes the post to new viewers.
Don’t Use A Clip Of Your Music Video
Creating interesting vertical short-form videos isn’t easy. It requires time, intuition and a whole lot of time outside of your comfort zone. The average artist, faced with this, chops their newest music video into 30-second pieces, maybe slaps on an “out now!” caption and a rotating Spotify logo on top, and calls it a day. This is just a waste of your time, and if you’re running ads, your money too.
Music videos are not built to get a point across in 20 seconds. People will know they’re watching a music video, but they will have no idea what they’re watching because it’s one small section of your video, and they will have no idea why they’re watching it because, again, they don’t know you, which means they don’t care about you. So they will scroll on, as the song says.
In an era where everyone is well aware you can make a perfectly good Reel with the phone in your pocket, turning your music video into five Reels is a lazy move, and your views will likely bear that out.
The Editing
Get Into The Action Immediately
Remember that viewer retention ski slope we talked about? The millisecond your video begins, it needs to be firing on all cylinders. That means music and interesting things start happening onscreen just as your video hits 0:00. Not 0:01, but 0:00. Do not build subtly to a climax. Do not save the best for last. And above all, no intro. Intros basically guarantee that 99% of the people we serve this video to as an ad will keep scrolling.
When The Action Stops, End The Video
Matter of fact, no outro either. Every second of your video needs to be unmissable, not only because those are the kinds of videos that send people fumbling for the Subscribe button while speeding on the freeway, but also because when lots of people watch your entire video as opposed to just a fraction, all the social media algorithms will recommend your video to more people. If that means you end up with a five-second video that people watch ten times, so much the better.
Remove Every Boring Millisecond
Judge your video on a second by second basis. Millisecond is better. If it’s boring, replace it with something not boring. If too much of it is boring to replace, replace the entire video with a new one.
Keep Your Videos No Longer Than 30 Seconds
You want to use one vertical video on as many platforms as you can, right? Right. Well, that includes Youtube Shorts, and Shorts cannot be longer than 59 seconds. But when was the last time you got to the end of a vertical video? Almost nobody does, and when people don’t get to the end of your video, you sink in the algorithm. So keep ALL your vertical videos in the 30-second range at most, then you’ll be able to crosspost all your vertical videos everywhere, and the algorithm will be kind(er) to you.
Keep Your Video & Audio Clean
People can’t enjoy a video they never see. Meta and Youtube Ads allows us to put your video in front of hundreds of millions of people, but not if your video is dirty. That means no cursing, but it also means no tits, no ass, no guns, no liquor bottles, no drugs, no weed, not even tobacco smoke.
If your lyrics are on the screen, edit the curses.
If you’re cursing in the audio, edit the audio. The quick and dirty way to do this is by reversing the entire audio track during every curse word, which of course also means you will reverse the beat and any other sound that overlaps. It sucks, but it’s better than a video that won’t pass ad approval.
Try your best to edit out any section of your video that goes against this complete list of Youtube’s content guidelines here. Most social media platforms have very similar guidelines, so obey these across the board and you’re golden.
Keep the description clean too.
For more on keeping your video clean, read my tutorial here.
Don’t Overlook Sound Quality
You don’t want your Reel to be the quiet one that makes everyone check their Airpods. Make sure your audio is as loud as the average Instagram Reel. If your vertical video is live footage, make sure your audio is clear, or junk the video.
Add Captions
Now that you’ve taken care of the Airpod crowd, spare a thought for everyone with the sound off and add captions of everything said over your video. Make sure you edit the curses. Just make sure not to put them way at the bottom of the video because…
Keep The Bottom Of Your Video Clutter-Free
Instagram, Youtube, TikTok and the rest all put the text field, buttons and your video caption at the bottom of the screen, so anything you put at the bottom of your video will go beneath and will not be seen. Don’t put anything you need people to see there. That said…
Make Sure Your Video’s Aspect Ratio Is 16:9, And Use The Whole Screen
16:9 aspect ratio is geekspeak for ‘vertical video’ – a video that has been shot with a smartphone camera, or if shot with a professional camera, then edited to precisely fit the screen dimensions of the average smartphone. Make sure your video is 16:9. Every pixel of the viewer’s cellphone screen should be occupied with your video. For vertical short-form videos, that means your videos’ dimensions should be 16:9. No black or white bars surrounding the video. Formatting video dimensions can be a pain, but not half as much of a pain as releasing a video nobody watches.
A note for those running Meta ads: make sure you choose the ad types that cater to the dimensions of your video. Not all of them do. Learn more about Meta advertising video dimension specs here.
If You Must Create Reels From Your Official Video, Follow These Rules
As I said earlier, creating reels from your official music video isn’t optimal. But sometimes it just needs to be done. So in those situations, always follow these rules:
Make Sure Your Reel Focuses On The Section Of The Video Where The Action Is
A reel is a vertical rectangle. A music video is a horizontal rectangle. That means that when you’re creating a reel from a music video, you will not be able to get the whole music video into your reel. You have to choose the section of the screen the reel will display. That means that at all times, you must choose the section of the screen where the action is.
Don’t Start Your Reel In The Middle Of A Lyric
A reel is a standalone piece. Assume that the people watching it have not seen the music video. You need to clip a portion of the music video that will make sense to the viewer. Beginning a reel where the artist says “I met my girlfriend and we went for burgers” makes sense to the viewer. But beginning your reel where the artist says “and we went for burgers” does not.
The Posting
Describe Your Video In The First Six Words
Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts descriptions initially display maybe seven short words, then the viewer must click to read the rest. If those first words don’t connect with the viewer, there will be no clicking or reading of the rest.
Your job here is to make sure your first few words tell people who’ve never heard of you why they should care about this video.
Remember, people don’t know you, so they don’t care about you.
They don’t care that your album is out now.
They don’t care who directed the video.
They don’t care about your smartlink.
They don’t care about your name. Your artist name is right above the caption already anyway.
They don’t even necessarily care what the name of the song is.
Is your video about their hometown? They care about that.
Are you covering a famous song in your video? They care about that.
Is your video about a trending topic or current event? They care about that.
Is your song about something specific that you can explain in a few words? They might care about that. Worth a shot.
This is not the place to be subtle.
For example, if your video is you freestyling over a Drake beat, write “I FREESTYLED ON A DRAKE BEAT”.
If your video is a cover of “a famous song “Counting Stars”, write “MY COVER OF ‘COUNTING STARS'”. You could also use a particularly unique lyric from the song. Odds are the average viewer recognizes the lyric “I feel something so right / doing the wrong thing”.
If your song is about heartbreak, write “I GOT MY HEART STOMPED ON.” You could do better than that, but you could certainly do a lot worse. At least people will know what they’re getting if they continue to watch. And that’s the point.
If you’re just completely out of ideas, use a couple of thought-provoking hashtags. Hashtags nowadays serve two functions. The first is to give users of the platform a way to find your content via the hashtag. The other, which is also quite useful, is to tell viewers what this post is about in one word. A hashtag like #LostLove may be way too broad to help anyone find you, but it does tell users what your post is about in the span of nine characters, and that’s valuable. More on hashtags a little further down this post.
Note: the more social proof your post has, the less you need to follow this advice. When your account has a million followers you can be subtle and use more mystique in your first sentence, because people will see that other people care about you, which will interest them. If your account has 80 followers, your mysterious post description will just look like you talking to yourself in an empty room.
Keep Your Description Under 100 Characters In Length
The first few words of your description are by far the most important. The rest, less so. Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts and TikTok descriptions do not support external links, so adding your smartlink or links to your other socials is pointless. Youtube has set the titles of Shorts to a 100 character limit for a reason: nobody reads the rest anyway. On all social media videos, keep it under 100.
Generally speaking, people go one of two ways at this fork in the road:
Long & Detailed
If you have lots to say about this short or the song or video it may be advertising, don’t be shy. Go in. Some people lack reading comprehension but plenty of people do not. If you have it in you to write a lot about this video, go for it.
Short & Poetic
If you don’t have much to say about the short, less is more. A lyric from the corresponding song or a famous quote that fits the mood, combined with the first few frames of the short can sometimes pique viewers’ interests enough to keep them watching.
But most importantly…
Always Tag Your Collaborators
Tag any accounts that have anything to do with the video in the description – guest artists, producers, directors, labels, all of them. Doing this will alert them to the post, and may spur the algorithm to recommend your video to their followers.
Keep The Description Clean Too!
Your video needs to be 100% squeaky clean in order to run ads on it, and that means no cursing in the description either.
Use Hashtags Correctly Or Not At All
If you’re going to research the best hashtags for your post, add them. If you’re going to add hashtags that may not get you extra views but describe your post well, add them. If you’re going to flood your description with #best #new #music #listen, don’t bother. They make you look like an amateur.
Link To Your Main Video
In the rush to just get it over with already, artists routinely forget to add links to their focus material for people to click on, which is the whole point of doing all this in the first place, last time I checked. On Instagram, make sure you update your bio with the correct smartlink. On Youtube Shorts, make sure to choose the official video you want your Short to point to in the Add Related Video field (learn how to update Youtube’s Add Related Video section here). Regardless of the platform, if you want to post good short-form videos every time, make sure that after all this effort, the people who didn’t care about you before who actually care about you now can press one button to hear the rest of your stuff.
Check The Video On Your Phone Before You Make It Public
In this world, no matter how well you prepare, things are always a little different on the ground. When it comes to posting social video, the best way to make sure your video hits the mark is by previewing it before it goes public in its natural environment, a.k.a. on your phone. On Instagram, save your video as a draft and view on your phone; on Youtube, set your Short to Unlisted status and view on your phone, and so on. Is your aspect ratio correct? No important text hidden under the text field at the bottom? Everything good to go? Set it loose. And congratulations. You just learned how to post good short-form videos every time.
Extra: How To Create & Upload A Good Spotify Canvas
A Spotify Canvas is the short vertical video that you sometimes see playing behind a song you’re streaming on Spotify on your phone. Since they are so similar to Reels and Shorts, you might as well handle them at the same time. Here’s how to create and upload one on desktop.
Create The Canvas
A Spotify Canvas must be
- No longer than seven seconds
- Vertical 9:16 ratio.
- The artist’s own material, meaning the source video that you edit to create the Canvas must be have originally been made by the artist.
Beyond those rules, anything goes. Cut a Canvas from the song’s official video. If no official video exists, pull a vertical video from the artist’s social media that best compliments the song. Slow motion works especially well on Canvas.
Upload The Canvas
- Navigate to artists.spotify.com and log in via the email login screen at the bottom (ask us for the credentials). You’ll also need an authenticator password, ask me for that when you log in.
- Once you’re at the Spotify Artists homepage, click the Roster button on the left navbar, then select the right artist. Then click on Music, also on the left navbar. Click on the name of the song you want to upload the Canvas. On the song page, click the Manage Canvas button, and upload the Canvas.
- Note: sometimes, for some reason, the Manage Canvas button is missing. In this situation you’ll need to
- download the Canvas file to an Android phone
- install the Spotify For Artists Android app
- follow the steps above to upload the Canvas from your Android to the artist Spotify account.
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