Episode 264
Steal Ideas from Short-Form Video Creators for Learning
Lo-fi and authentic works. Just look at the best short-form creators, they’ve figured out engagement. They know how to be authentic, intentional, and drop hooks that make people actually want to watch. No matter what kind of video’s you make, what can you learn from how short-form creators do it?
In this episode of The Visual Lounge, host Matt Pierce explores how creators, educators, and businesses can borrow the best parts of short-form video to make any kind of video more effective. Matt unpacks why lo-fi, authentic content often outperforms polished production, how to apply short-form storytelling techniques to training and learning videos, and what it means to create “content like short-form” rather than “for short-form.”
He also shares practical insights on hooks, energy, experimentation, and repurposing, plus how AI tools are helping teams create faster without losing their human touch.
Learning points from the episode include:
- 00:00 – 02:14 The rise and impact of lo-fi, authentic short-form video
- 02:14 – 03:08 Why short-form video matters for all creators
- 03:08 – 05:05 Make content like short-form, not for short-form
- 05:05 – 07:01 How to make any topic engaging
- 07:01 – 07:27 Keep things moving to keep viewers engaged
- 07:27 – 08:20 Why energy makes your videos more engaging
- 08:20 – 09:13 Experiment often and use feedback to improve
- 09:13 – 12:31 Hook your audience early with curiosity and story
- 12:31 – 16:04 Batch produce and repurpose your videos
- 16:04 – 16:59 How AI can help you create and edit faster
- 16:59 – 18:23 Choose the right video length for your audience
- 18:23 – 18:48 Keep learning from short-form creators as trends evolve
- 18:48 – 20:17 Lo-fi and authentic content builds real connection
- 20:17 – 21:27 Outro
Important links and mentions:
- TechSmith Unlocked: https://discover.techsmith.com/techsmith-unlocked-2025/
- Camtasia: https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/
Transcript
Lo fi and authentic work.
Speaker:When we're thinking about what's playing now, obviously a nice camera, nice
Speaker:microphone, we're not going to turn those down.
Speaker:But the opportunity to create something that just off,
Speaker:in the spur of the moment, off the cuff or just with your phone and
Speaker:a microphone can be really great. Good
Speaker:morning, good evening, good afternoon wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. My name
Speaker:is Matt Pearce, host of the Visual Lounge and right now not in my
Speaker:normal studio, but I do want make sure I get this episode out to you.
Speaker:Got a few things I would like to share, but I hope you're enjoying all
Speaker:the things TechSmith announced at the TechSmith Unlocked. If you haven't been able to see
Speaker:that, go check out some of the things we announced. Some really cool
Speaker:stuff, some things that are free for everybody, some things that are in the
Speaker:works and much, much more. I also want to
Speaker:mention, if you haven't checked out the video viewer study before, I will be talking
Speaker:about a little bit of the data that is included in the video viewer study.
Speaker:Make sure the links in the description for wherever you're seeing this. But it
Speaker:is still really relevant and highly important
Speaker:to understand viewer preferences. Viewer preferences can help
Speaker:us make decisions about the things that we are creating,
Speaker:decisions about the length, decisions about the type of assets, things that we include in
Speaker:them. And there's a whole section on AI and hopefully in the next
Speaker:few months, maybe in a future episode, we can talk about some supplemental
Speaker:research that we've been doing around AI and using it for
Speaker:learning impact, particularly when it comes to videos. So what are we talking about
Speaker:today? Well, I want to talk a little bit about social media,
Speaker:short form video in particular. Now, short form video is not new. It is not
Speaker:something that should surprise everybody. It's extremely
Speaker:popular. In fact, we know that at least I think it's
Speaker:70 billion shorts on YouTube are watched every single
Speaker:day. That's 78 billion with a bag views per day on YouTube
Speaker:shorts. And that's even an older number. Haven't been able to find updated stats. I'm
Speaker:sure there's more even now than there was a year or two
Speaker:ago. TikTok for instance, has 34
Speaker:million videos uploaded per day. Again, that's an old stat.
Speaker:My guess is it's continued to go up as it continued to grow in
Speaker:popularity. Now why is that important? Because
Speaker:if you are creating video content, the things that you're
Speaker:creating should at least understand the
Speaker:world of short form video. You should understand the
Speaker:influence that that type of media is having On
Speaker:a lot of things. It's changing and starting to influence the
Speaker:way we look at and consume. It's changing the way people are thinking
Speaker:about what they want to consume from a media perspective.
Speaker:And that doesn't mean we should make all of our videos short form videos.
Speaker:But there are lessons that we can learn from short form video creators. Now I
Speaker:give a whole presentation about this that takes an hour. We're not going to spend
Speaker:an hour on this. So I apologize that, you know, if you want that experience,
Speaker:please find me. I'd be happy to share some things with you. I've got some
Speaker:examples that I could share for podcast purposes. Today we're going to just kind of
Speaker:go through some high level information, but I'd love to talk with you
Speaker:more about it. So a couple things to keep in mind is when I talk
Speaker:about short form video as well, I want to think about how we can make
Speaker:it like short form media. Not for short form media.
Speaker:You might be doing content creation for YouTube, TikTok,
Speaker:Instagram or one of the other many platforms out there. But what
Speaker:I'm suggesting is that we should learn some best practices, some
Speaker:ideas and steal from essentially to bring them into whatever
Speaker:other platforms that you might be working on. That could be your learning management system,
Speaker:that could be your own kind of corporate governance type things. That could be
Speaker:your marketing. That could be whatever it is that you're trying to do. We don't
Speaker:have to necessarily make for those platforms, although you might. We just want to
Speaker:be informed by it. So we're making content like but not content
Speaker:for. One of the most important things I will
Speaker:emphasize at this point is that whatever you're doing, keep in mind your goal.
Speaker:Remember that the goal of someone who is making content for say,
Speaker:TikTok or YouTube shorts, their goal is views and
Speaker:engagement. Why? Because views and engagement mean they get more
Speaker:revenue. And if revenue is the name of the game, great,
Speaker:go for views and engagement. That means your techniques might be slightly different.
Speaker:Now, if you're going for, say, a learning focus, you might not be
Speaker:thinking about views and engagement. You might be thinking about content
Speaker:like knowledge transfer. You might be thinking about how do I
Speaker:help people understand the importance of this? You might be priming them
Speaker:to understand something that's coming down the pipe so that they're prepared to
Speaker:receive the information that you have to deliver. You might just be giving them a
Speaker:job aid or support. So your goals might be different.
Speaker:Now that's not to say those things can't also be the same,
Speaker:but for many people it's going to be kind of one or the other. But
Speaker:there are obviously the group of people out there who are very successful, by the
Speaker:way, at creating content that is about knowledge transfer, but also about
Speaker:views and engagement. And those are sometimes a sweet spot, particularly if you're in the
Speaker:learning development field. So I want to go through a couple
Speaker:secrets. They're not really secrets, but they're best practices. Things that we can take
Speaker:away from some of these content creators. First and foremost,
Speaker:what do people on short form content do really well, I think
Speaker:they make content people want to watch. That can be hard to do.
Speaker:It can be hard to make content that people want to watch, especially if your
Speaker:topic is something that's maybe not something people really want to watch
Speaker:a lot of. So I use the example often of compliance training, right?
Speaker:We've been there. If you work in a corporate situation, you know, like you've got
Speaker:your security training, you've got your HR training, you might have
Speaker:hiring training, you might have whatever training it is, it doesn't really matter. Those are
Speaker:important, those are valuable. They have a good reason for that, why an organization
Speaker:wants you to go through that. But sometimes they're like, oh,
Speaker:snoozers, right. And so you don't always have control of the type
Speaker:of content. But what can you do to make that content more interesting? What
Speaker:can you do to help make sure that people want to see that content? A
Speaker:couple things, I think. Find something interesting to talk about. Find a way
Speaker:to spin it a little bit so it is interesting. Now, we don't want to
Speaker:mislead people ever. We don't want to take them down a path that's not really
Speaker:going to engage them or really help them. But what makes
Speaker:something interesting. There's a great video out there. This woman,
Speaker:she was working in her yard, they found a rug that was buried. Go find
Speaker:it on TikTok. You'll see this whole kind of go watch, see the whole thread
Speaker:of the rise in popularity and the fall of popularity. Why were people
Speaker:interested in that video? Because there was a suspense there. They didn't know the outcome.
Speaker:They didn't know, was she going to find, was it just a rug or
Speaker:was it something much more nefarious? We love crime dramas, right?
Speaker:Not to say we're going to create crime dramas or everything's going to end up
Speaker:with some possible scenario where things look like people have
Speaker:died. We don't want that. But what we can do is find interesting ways to
Speaker:talk about the stuff that we do have to talk about. What's interesting, what's
Speaker:relevant, what's valuable for your viewer, and what's gonna help them
Speaker:get hooked into that. With that said, another thing you
Speaker:can do is keep things moving and changing. A static video, something that
Speaker:changes a lot, you're gonna be honed to watch it, right? People are gonna
Speaker:turn their head. They're gonna be forced to like, okay, what's going on? What's happening
Speaker:here? And if it's just a very static video, kind of like this one,
Speaker:actually, I get it. It's a little bit dry to
Speaker:watch because it's me here in a hotel doing a
Speaker:podcast. Another thing is find some enthusiasm. The camera
Speaker:steals energy. Let's just call that a universal
Speaker:truth at this point. The camera steals energy. So what you need to do
Speaker:is say, how can I bring a little bit more to the party here?
Speaker:You know, I think it was Sean Cannell from Think Media said, you know,
Speaker:be you times two. And so you want to put on a little bit more
Speaker:energy than what you had. You want to bring to life the thing. And you
Speaker:don't need to be over the top. You don't need to yell. You don't need
Speaker:to be too loud. I already speak really fast. And to the
Speaker:viewer who left a comment about me speaking too fast, I apologize. I
Speaker:will work on it. I will dial it back a little bit. But
Speaker:what we need to be thinking about is how do we bring enthusiasm to whatever
Speaker:topic it is? And if you can't, can someone else can? A subject
Speaker:matter expert? Do you need to get someone that can act a little bit?
Speaker:We want to be authentic, but we want to make sure we're bringing the energy.
Speaker:The other thing is, I think social media creators do, is they try stuff that's
Speaker:new. They're willing to test stuff out, and they're always testing
Speaker:stuff. They're putting stuff out. They're seeing how it performs. They're trying another thing and
Speaker:another thing and another thing. They're doing a B test. There really
Speaker:are systematic processes that you can use. Now, you
Speaker:might say instantly, hey, Matt, we have a backlog of things
Speaker:to do. We don't have time to do three different versions or two different
Speaker:versions even. What do we do? Well, each
Speaker:time you create a course, as long as there's enough kind of relationship or
Speaker:similarities, try something or don't
Speaker:do the whole thing. Just try an opening, try a different approach and
Speaker:send it to someone, get feedback, and then see, you know,
Speaker:are they like, ugh. Or are they. Oh, yeah. And
Speaker:use that signal to allow you to inform the next decisions that you make.
Speaker:Okay, a couple other things here that you can do as you're going through
Speaker:this process. We want to start thinking about hook. Even if you're doing
Speaker:an internal video, what's the first three to five seconds,
Speaker:maybe 10 seconds that is going to allow someone to get hooked
Speaker:in to the things that you want
Speaker:them to understand. Like what's gonna keep them wanting to watch or what's
Speaker:gonna pull them in away from email, away from their watch, away
Speaker:from everything else. Find that way to hook them. Some things that you can do
Speaker:is maybe say something wild. What's kind of a far out statement that's
Speaker:gonna allow them to be like, whoa, what did they say?
Speaker:You know, like. And not to make anything up, but like, how can you pull
Speaker:them in with something that's just kind of like, oh, I had no idea. That's
Speaker:crazy. That's a crazy thing. Is it true? And then you lead them
Speaker:down the path. There's a great storytelling method and I think I've talked about on
Speaker:the podcast before, but I can mention here again, Jenny Hoyas talked about it. You
Speaker:can go search the so or the but so
Speaker:storytelling. I love it. It's so simple. You just simply can take a
Speaker:story like I need to go to the store to get something and it started
Speaker:to rain, which is not much of a story. But when you start saying so
Speaker:I wanted to go to store but it started to
Speaker:rain so I grabbed an umbrella
Speaker:automatically. It's just going to create a little bit more engagement. And Jenny says on
Speaker:her videos in particular, when she says the but
Speaker:that is when people actually stop scrolling. She sees it in her data
Speaker:that people will stop scrolling, hang on a little bit longer because it engages people.
Speaker:Very simple. It's not going to apply for everything. You can't use it all the
Speaker:time, but it is something that you can put in your repertoire and you can
Speaker:use that to help you to tell stories in your training, in
Speaker:your learning, in your marketing. And it's very simple and it's very
Speaker:approachable, but it can be very effective as well.
Speaker:So another thing you can do, I'm throwing a lot of things at here.
Speaker:There is a lot of things you can do. You can. I wouldn't try all
Speaker:of them in one video. Try them in bits and pieces. See what works
Speaker:is what's the interesting thing that you have to say. A good friend of mine,
Speaker:Abby Cook, she's really great at this. She does stuff about learning science and
Speaker:she always has some way to make it Interesting, particularly at the beginning.
Speaker:Right. And I encourage you to find things that are gonna
Speaker:again pique that interest. Not just the wild stuff, but
Speaker:what's something that maybe it's a fun, it's a fact or it's
Speaker:a question, it's something that's gonna like make them
Speaker:have to say, oh, I don't know,
Speaker:or I wanna challenge that a little bit.
Speaker:Right. We don't wanna get anyone angry at us, but what we do wanna do
Speaker:is bring them along and really find a way to connect with them.
Speaker:Find them a way for their brain to say, wait a second. And once
Speaker:you get that, wait a second, and they're looking at the video and they keep
Speaker:watching, that's awesome. Now the reality is, if you're doing
Speaker:a longer video, and longer could be a minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10
Speaker:minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever. You may have
Speaker:to rehook people along the way. Talked about the book Brain
Speaker:Rules on the podcast before Dr. John Medina, he talks about
Speaker:like in his lectures, every 10 minutes he's got to drop a new hook. You
Speaker:want to re engage them, you want to pull them in, you know, every so
Speaker:often. If you're doing short videos, you might not need to do it more than
Speaker:once, maybe twice again, depending on length, depending on the topics, what you're covering.
Speaker:Now a couple other things, these are more practical, less about like the video
Speaker:itself, but like short form. Video creators batch produce. They
Speaker:make things in mass. Like they're not just making one. I mean, sometimes they do,
Speaker:obviously, but they're trying to make as many as they can. So if like now
Speaker:I should probably record like three podcasts because I've already done the work to set
Speaker:up the camera, get the computer going, hook on the microphone, turn on the lights
Speaker:as you batch produce, that can save you a lot of time and effort. It
Speaker:also allows you to get in a state of flow. Now sometimes you gotta watch
Speaker:out for burnout because you can only say so many things if you're the on
Speaker:camera talent. But like you can say, I'm gonna record, I'm gonna edit.
Speaker:And that can work really well because then you get in a flow you don't
Speaker:forget as many things allows you to really process and move forward.
Speaker:But that takes preparation, takes planning and
Speaker:it takes work. But it can be really worth it because then you can have
Speaker:a break. I can tell you from a podcast perspective, it's hard to
Speaker:record two episodes in a month. Even now it's hard to
Speaker:get a revisited episode ready because it takes a lot
Speaker:of Time to schedule. It takes time to prep the questions, take time to edit.
Speaker:But the more I've been able to batch produce, when I'm able to do that,
Speaker:the happier I am, the more successful I feel like the podcast is, the better
Speaker:content it is because I feel like I get in a flow
Speaker:now. I understand. Again, work is busy.
Speaker:You've got a lot that you're responsible for, a lot that you have to do.
Speaker:And batch producing might seem like, wow, gosh, I don't have time to batch produce.
Speaker:I can only squeeze in one video here and there as needed. Well,
Speaker:that's obviously a thing that you have to figure out what's going to work for
Speaker:you. But if you can batch produce, I recommend it. That includes writing scripts, that
Speaker:includes the pre production, that includes the production, every piece of it you
Speaker:can batch and it can work really better for your needs
Speaker:and then record a bunch of things. The next thing I'll say is when
Speaker:you're working through that process, particularly in batch producing, look for things that you can
Speaker:repurpose and reuse. What is it that's there that
Speaker:you can say, I can use that for another video, whether that's B
Speaker:roll, maybe it's parts of the text you can take. Maybe it's a three minute
Speaker:video and you create a 30 second video out of it. Looking for those ways
Speaker:to reuse and repurpose. Or even just to say, like, we're going to write a
Speaker:script for three minutes, however long it needs to be, and we're going to do
Speaker:a short form video that's going to be 30 seconds. Doing that at the same
Speaker:time so it's ready to record is awesome. We've been doing this a lot
Speaker:lately and it saves a lot of cognitive overhead. Right. We're not having to go
Speaker:back and think about what is it that we want to share, what is the
Speaker:things that we have to say, what are the topics, what are the things that
Speaker:we need to do? So just by being thinking about like, what can I
Speaker:repurpose and reuse, what can I save for another video
Speaker:is awesome. Especially if you got footage of like an environment or
Speaker:space that's hard to get into. Again, you need to have a
Speaker:good plan. You need to be thoughtful about that. It is much easier to plan
Speaker:it up front and then make it in a way that does that than just
Speaker:trying to go backwards and saying, well, what can I pull from this video?
Speaker:It's always going to be better to plan it up front a little, takes a
Speaker:little bit more effort. But I Think it's better than trying to edit through
Speaker:10 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever, to try to find pieces that actually work together.
Speaker:The next thing I would say is build content that you know will work in
Speaker:short form and you can take it from other things. So if you got like
Speaker:a marketing piece, an elearning course, maybe it's a, you've got a product,
Speaker:it's got a bunch of features like what can you steal to turn that into
Speaker:something that is short form media highly recommend it.
Speaker:You know, there's nothing wrong with reusing those pieces. There's nothing wrong with saying,
Speaker:hey, let's take it and change it a little bit for our
Speaker:format and for our purpose. So definitely can do that. There's
Speaker:definitely some AI play here. I mean, first of all, AI, you could feed
Speaker:it a script and it can help you come up with ideas for hooks, it
Speaker:can come up with ideas for maybe ways you could break it into a shorter
Speaker:form piece of content. There's also tools out there like we'll talk about
Speaker:with Camtasia Audit, which we announced it will be Camtasia Creator AI
Speaker:coming soon. You can feed your video into there and you can start
Speaker:basically doing text based editing and that can help from an
Speaker:AI perspective, help cut things down. You can get to smaller clips or maybe you
Speaker:can parse it into a couple clips, whatever you need to do.
Speaker:Great tools out there that will take your whole video and turn it into smaller
Speaker:clips, videos that will transcribe it again. Camtasia audiate,
Speaker:Camtasia Creator AI. But other tools
Speaker:will do that as well that you can then, you know, talk to your GPT,
Speaker:ask them for, you know, feed it some information, ask it questions, have it ask
Speaker:you questions so you can work through that process. Now
Speaker:I mentioned the video viewer study at the top of this. I think it's important
Speaker:to say like now's the time to bring that up because length is always
Speaker:a question we get. And I've answered this question about a million times, but I'm
Speaker:going to answer it again. What's the length of a video that should be? Well,
Speaker:short form videos tend to be shorter, anywhere from, you know,
Speaker:15 seconds to, depending on the platform, 3
Speaker:minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it really depends. Short form,
Speaker:right? It's subjective to some degree. Video
Speaker:viewers from our research shows though
Speaker:for an instructional video or informational video as well, that they're
Speaker:willing to actually go with a longer video, 10 to 19 minutes.
Speaker:Now I don't think that means you should make a 10 to 19 minute video.
Speaker:What I do think it means though is that you should be thoughtful
Speaker:and make the video that's the right length. And particularly if
Speaker:you're making a compliance based video, something about compliance, compliance training,
Speaker:keep it short. If you're making something that you think people are going to want
Speaker:to dig deep a little deeper on, go longer people, when it's
Speaker:valuable to them and they want to dig in, they will watch in the study.
Speaker:You'll see there's the video viewer preference and then there's a reason
Speaker:why people selected that option, what they were hoping to get
Speaker:out of those videos. I think that can be super instructive and encourage you to
Speaker:look at that. We'll put the again in the description down below or
Speaker:wherever you're watching, wherever the description is, you'll find a link to the video viewer
Speaker:study. I think I'll
Speaker:end with this because there's a lot here, there's a lot of ideas,
Speaker:there's a lot that you could do, there's a lot that we haven't covered. But
Speaker:at the end of the day when you're making videos, if you
Speaker:want to learn from short form video creators, one, you got to go watch short
Speaker:form video creators. See what they're doing, see what's changing. Because it's changing
Speaker:all the time. People are inventing new stuff. They're the styles, what's popular.
Speaker:But I think what's important is that lo fi
Speaker:and authentic work. I'll say it again,
Speaker:lo fi and authentic work.
Speaker:When we're thinking about what's playing now, obviously a nice camera, a nice
Speaker:microphone, we're not going to turn those down.
Speaker:But the opportunity to create something that just off
Speaker:in the spur of the moment, off the cuff or just with your phone and
Speaker:a microphone can be really great. Don't
Speaker:downplay it. Just because it doesn't look like the highest professional quality
Speaker:doesn't mean it's not good content. Good content will be important
Speaker:in that. But if it's authentic, people want to connect
Speaker:with people. People want to connect with real.
Speaker:There's a lot with AI that obviously can be very valuable and
Speaker:helpful, but it also can be a little bit like, ugh, I don't want, I
Speaker:don't want to watch more AI getting a lot of that right now. So don't
Speaker:downplay the importance of just kind of letting it be
Speaker:natural and authentic. There is real value in
Speaker:that. And even some mistakes like we see, it's
Speaker:funny like AI is learning to put in its voiceovers, pauses and even some
Speaker:ums and things like that. Why? Because that is natural.
Speaker:Because it helps. Those are like your chance for your brain to catch
Speaker:up. It's a chance for your brain to process. Those are good
Speaker:things. So be you, be you times
Speaker:two. But be natural and authentic as you go.
Speaker:So I hope you've taken away a few ideas here about using short form
Speaker:video to help you inform the videos that you're creating for your
Speaker:organizations for your purposes, whether you're going to YouTube,
Speaker:TikTok, Instagram or you're just putting in your learning management system on
Speaker:your CMS or wherever it might be. But really appreciate everyone who has
Speaker:tuned into the Visual Lounge. We're going to keep going here with more things soon.
Speaker:Got some more great guests coming, but again thanks to everybody who signed up for
Speaker:Techsmith Unlocked. Had a great time behind the scenes.
Speaker:Obviously we're a little bit disappointed with some of the technical issues that we ran
Speaker:into, but we hope that those that have watched the video will see the video
Speaker:and got to experience the live stuff. I hope you took away some great information,
Speaker:got to hear some of the great announcements which I'll make sure we have a
Speaker:link to that page so you can go see that stuff as well. But we're
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Speaker:I'm grateful for everyone who is willing to put themselves out there and
Speaker:make videos. So we hope you take a little time,
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Speaker:Thanks everybody.
