What Defines a “Short”

Different platforms have different definitions, but generally a short can be defined as a video with a runtime of less than 2 minutes.

On YouTube, the maximum length to qualify for their “Shorts” platform is 60 seconds, whereas a standard video has no official maximum length (although new accounts are limited to videos under 15 minutes). As of this moment, YouTube recommends keeping shorts to a maximum of 45 seconds, but this isn’t actually a limitation or a rule and may change.

On TikTok, originally videos were limited to 3 minutes, but now TikTok allows videos up to 10 minutes. However, TikTok recommends keeping videos between 21 and 34 seconds, but the average length of top performers on the platform in 2021 was 47 seconds (although the top 10 videos in the food category averaged just 13 seconds).

Elon Musk – now the owner of Twitter – has recently floated the idea of reviving the platform Vine (2013-2017), which allowed a maximum video length of 7 seconds.

These kinds of platforms are in a constant state of flux, so if your goal is to create high quality, engaging, and potentially viral short-form video content, you will need to pay attention to policy changes and emerging trends and adapt your content accordingly.

But more than that, you will need to…

Know & Listen to Your Audience

Who are you trying to reach?

How old are they? Where are they from? What language do they speak? What are their interests? Are they male or female? Do they play video games? Watch movies? Are they interested in sports?

Every audience is different, but the only way your content is going to connect with anyone is if you know who you’re talking to and speak to them using the kind of language they prefer, talking about subjects they actually care about.

So get to know them.

Find out what other videos they watch and which other accounts they follow — that information can inform the kinds of content you create.

Furthermore, nearly every social media platform allows users to create polls and ask questions that can be answered by followers. YouTube Community and Twitter Polls are both great ways to capture even more useful insights.

And once you start making content, pay close attention to the metrics such as likes, percentage viewed, shares, and comments — which you absolutely must read and reply to wherever possible. Engaging with your audience directly is exceptionally important, both as a means of building a community and gaining subscribers, and as a way to help you better understand the people you’re making content for.

Getting to know your audience will help you discover what topics and subjects to talk about, and how to connect your unique ideas and perspectives to their pre-existing interests. That’s what’s going to keep them watching and recommending your videos to their friends.

Now, assuming you’ve paid close attention to your intended audience and you have a good sense of what subjects they care about and are likely to be interested in, you should be able to find innumerable ways to come up with great content ideas that will serve both their interests and give you opportunities to create connections to the ideas and perspectives that are important to you.

Some Advice On Topic Selection

I like to think of picking a great subject for a new video as an exercise in finding the point where several key factors intersect. I’ve covered this in more detail in my essay on the 7-Criteria of Project Selection, but the most effective videos you’re likely to create are — at the very least — going to be:

Relevant to your target audience;
Good Ideas that especially work as videos;
Unique or Novel and provide viewers with new information or a different perspective than they normally encounter;
On-Trend and connected to a timely issue people are already searching for and talking about on social media; and
Possible for you, using your existing resources and capabilities, to actually execute within a reasonable timeframe.

The last two points in my “7 Criteria” are about the value a proposed video will create for you and/or the organization you might be working for, and are a bit less important to this discussion. Suffice it to say that if a video does not effectively advance the ideas you’re trying to put out into the world or do so using a tone that doesn’t represent the way you would want to communicate with other people, it’s as much of a non-starter as a video idea that you’re incapable of producing.

We’ve already covered the importance of listening to your audience in order to find out what’s relevant to them, and I’d hope that concepts like “Novelty” and being “On-Trend” are relatively self-explanatory. In my experience, the one criterion that really trips people up is the concept of a “Good Idea.”

Great content ideas will come with experience, but there are a few things I can say to help demystify the discovery process.

For one thing, I’d encourage you to remember that video is a multi-sensory experience. A “Good Idea” for a video inherently means something that will always be visually and auditorily stimulating in addition to being intellectually interesting. If your video concept would work just as well as a Tweet or a Facebook post, or if it would work better as an article or a book, or if it would achieve the same basic effect as a podcast, then it’s probably not a great idea for a video.

But assuming you have confidence in your ability to create a visually captivating video experience for your audience, the other question you need to grapple with is this:

What kinds of stories are a broad range of possible viewers actually going to be interested in? Many years ago, in 2012, I asked the following question of my former boss, Tucker Carlson:

“In your opinion … what are the key characteristics of stories that make for great news, good or bad? What are the things that make readers go crazy?”

His reply?

“Readers love sex, violence, mystery, famous people, death and weight loss stories. Also weather. Inherently interesting topics written clearly make good stories.”

Regardless of what you may think of his politics, it is unequivocally true that Tucker Carlson — currently the host of the top-rated nightly news & commentary program across any cable news network — is one of the great masters at appealing to mainstream audiences, and his advice stuck with me because it is simple, elegant, and most importantly: true.

And sure enough, shortly after that exchange, I happened to be at a grocery store perusing tabloids as I waited in the checkout line. The first headline that jumped out at me was (I kid you not):

“Celebrity Sex Death Mystery!”

I tell this story because on YouTube or TikTok, just as in any other form of media, content is king.

No amount of marketing and advertising can compensate for a creator’s failure to come up with (or competently execute) compelling content ideas. So you must put some serious effort into topic selection. It’s the foundation of the whole process, without which everything else will fail.

Capturing Viewer Attention

In the end, there’s no simple answer to the question of what makes a video “good.”

Producing content everybody loves and shares is far from an exact science. But especially with shorts, I like to think about it in terms of “viral potential.” The more the following elements can describe your content, the more likely it is to be successful at capturing and holding your audience’s attention.

Your content should be:

Relevant to your audience’s interests (something they already care about)
Novel / unique (making a point viewers are not likely to have encountered already)
Timely or On-Trend (what people are currently talking about)
Visually exciting (you’re making videos!)
Truthful (lying will backfire)
Illuminating (creates an epiphany for viewers)
Contentious (sparks debate)
Fast-paced (don’t waste viewers’ time)

In this section, we’ll discuss the factors that contribute to writing and producing exciting videos that large numbers of people voluntarily choose to watch, but assuming you’ve selected a good subject, the very first step is convincing viewers to make the choice to click on your content in the first place.

So let’s start there.

How to Title Your Video

Assuming you’ve picked a great subject that’s going to make for an interesting video, you must still persuade potential viewers to watch your content with an enticing title and an eye-catching thumbnail.

There is no magic to creating a great title. It should be concise (YouTube titles are limited to 100 characters), dramatic, and give your viewers a clear idea of what the video is going to be about. You should try to incorporate searchable keywords and use language that most people are familiar with.

Bonus points for titles that make potential viewers laugh or which highlight a contentious claim that they’re going to feel compelled to watch. More bonus points for the use of emotional adjectives.

Here are some examples of extremely effective video titles:

I Paid a Real Assassin to Try to Kill Me (Mr. Beast)
1000 Blind People See for the First Time (Mr. Beast)
Gordon Ramsay Savagely Critiques Spicy Wings (Hot Ones)
Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir? (Veritasium)
AK-47 Underwater at 27,450 Frames Per Second (Smarter Every Day)
Real Lawyer Reacts to Better Call Saul (LegalEagle)
Krabby Supreme from Spongebob Squarepants (Binging with Babish)
Is Captain Marvel Actually a Hero? (Out of Frame)
Wax On, F*ck Off with Ralph Macchio (Funny or Die)

Note how many of these titles hit on some of the themes Tucker Carlson mentioned… Mystery, Death, and Celebrity (broadly defined to include famous fictional characters and widely known weaponry).

A common feature of great titles is that they almost always raise a burning question in the mind of the potential viewer. And if they believe that the answer to that question will be effectively contained within the video, they’re probably going to watch it!

What Makes a Great Thumbnail?

Thumbnails are the visual counterpart to titles. Everything that makes for a great title is also true of a great thumbnail. The more visually arresting, dramatic, and emotionally resonant it is, the more likely potential viewers will be to stop scrolling and click on your content.

A few things to consider:

More than 50% of the brain’s cortex is dedicated to visual processing. We interact with the world primarily through our eyes.
Most people’s eyes will be inherently drawn to bright colors, action, and — most importantly — other human beings.
Drama is about emotion. Images that depict and/or elicit strong emotions are going to be far more compelling than those that don’t.
A huge percentage of users on any platform are going to be looking at your thumbnails on mobile devices — in other words, your beautiful thumbnail will be seen as a tiny postage stamp. If people don’t know what they’re looking at, they will not click on your video. Clarity is key.

Trends in thumbnails come and go, but I’ve often found success by using close-up shots of highly expressive human faces, set against bright backgrounds.

As an example, this is the thumbnail on “Jack Ryan is Lying About Venezuela” (675k views):

Other examples include: MrBeast — I Got Hunted By The FBI

Good Mythical Morning — Will It Slime?

Veritasium — Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?

Colin Furze — DIGGING A SECRET TUNNEL Part 6

In each case, you’ll see a focus on human beings and their emotional expressions rather than inanimate objects; the foreground is clear, simple, and bold; and there is an obvious connection between the thumbnail and the title.

Even if you’re looking at these thumbnails on a phone, you can instantly understand what kind of video you’re going to see if you choose to click. Furthermore, the quality of the imagery and designs conveys professionalism, which most viewers will rightly associate with better videos.

A Note on Click-bait:

“Click-bait” can be defined as headlines and thumbnails that intentionally misrepresent the actual content of the video in order to trick people into clicking play.

In spite of the obvious short-term temptation, you should avoid it at all costs.

Not only will viewers stop watching your video the moment they realize the mismatch between what they thought they were clicking on and what they got, they will ultimately hate you and your channel for the deception. Over time, your channel will earn a low average watch time, bad like to dislike ratios, and low subscriber interest on new videos — all of which will hurt your channel.

Click bait may seem like a good way to get views, but even in the medium-term, it’s a losing proposition. Don’t do it.

So You Got ‘Em to Click… Now What?

Holding the audience’s attention for more than 60-90 seconds requires the ability to bounce between themes and plots (kind of like TV writing where you’d juggle an A plot, B plot, and C plot to keep the story fresh), but writing a great short is more like telling a quick joke.

It’s all about your ability to be clear, concise, and pithy while:

Delivering a clean set-up
Developing the idea; and then
Paying it off with a punchline.

Remember, this is content designed for a low-attention-span viewer, and you’re competing with a massive universe of other content on the internet — all available at the extremely low cost of one swipe across a phone screen.

More challenging still, most short video apps have been designed to encourage users to swipe to the next video as often as possible, often nudging them to action by pushing a sliver of the next video into view after only playing a few seconds of the first one. These systems make it extremely easy for viewers to bail on a video for something they like more.

This is important. The app developers’ goal is to keep users on the platform. It is not to get people to watch your video. So you must be entertaining.

If you’re writing for YouTube Shorts, the total length of the script will be limited to around 150 words, and within those parameters, you’ll want to:

Start with a strong hook;
Be punchy and impactful; and
Get to the point immediately.

If you haven’t captured the audience’s attention in a couple of seconds, they’re probably already gone.

Always remember that you’re not writing an essay or a book. All you can do is set up a clear premise and deliver on the promise of that premise as quickly as possible. The stronger your ability is to write for impact, the more effective your shorts are going to be.

So let’s be clear: You only have time to make ONE point. Make it a good one.

Ideally, that point is going to be contentious and interesting enough to spark debate and get people thinking & talking about it. Stoking controversy can be risky, but I’d argue that it’s actually an essential aspect of capturing people’s attention. This doesn’t mean you need to court controversy for controversy’s sake, or produce videos that are intentionally divisive or enraging.

Outrage sells, but it can also very easily backfire. One likely result of creating tribal content that’s designed to make your ideological opponents mad is that normal people who see it will not only not be persuaded toward your point of view, the content might actually be anti-persuasive — that is, it might push people in exactly the opposite direction from where you want them to go.

This is a tough needle to thread, but there’s a difference between creating content that takes a bold, debatable position that will be of genuine interest to large numbers of people on both sides and making content with the intent to be divisive. Both will get clicks and views, but the former is a good kind of contentious that will get people talking in a potentially constructive way, while the latter is just red meat, preaching to the choir.

So with all that in mind, here’s a structure I find that works pretty well for writing shorts:

Opening Hook: This must grab attention and express what the video is actually going to be about extremely quickly. Don’t be coy. Come right out and state your point as simply and concisely as possible. This is your one shot at capturing viewers’ attention after they’ve clicked on your title / thumbnail, so the hook should be bold, novel, and contentious. The hook must make the viewer want to stick around for at least 60 seconds.
Examples:
- “Paw Patrol is the most libertarian film ever made.”
- “Top Gun made $1.5 billion at the box office by not being woke.”
- “Arcane is a good show, but its characters are all horrible people.”
Deliver the Goods: State your thesis / argument and then bring in evidence that proves your point. This is also an opportunity to connect the hook to ideas that viewers are already familiar and comfortable with.
You have extremely limited time, so skip set-up and don’t worry about providing a ton of additional context. For shorts, especially, it’s ok to assume that the viewer is at least relatively familiar with subject — e.g., If you’re talking about a movie like Top Gun: Maverick, you don’t need to list the cast or explain that it’s a sequel, and you should avoid recapping any more of the plot than is absolutely necessary.
Synthesize the Lesson: End strong by tying the hook to your evidence and challenging the viewer to agree or disagree.

One other note I would add here is simply to remember that you’re writing videos for human beings to enjoy, not trying to win an academic essay contest or pass a grammar exam. Your writing should be imbued with personality — and that will often mean using more casual, colloquial language and common idioms; speaking ironically, satirically, or sarcastically and employing other forms of humor; and you will always rely on tonal inflections in the narration itself and the associated imagery to convey the full meaning of what you’re trying to communicate.

Although, yes, you are writing these scripts, the final product is not a written medium.

Your audience won’t experience the words as you put them on the page, but as they are spoken… So write like your audience talks, not like you’re trying to impress an English teacher. And whatever else you do, make sure your writing has personality.

Final Thoughts

Writing and producing great Social Media Shorts can be a tricky endeavor.

You’re trying to nudge up against things that are already known (familiarity) and then pivot in a new direction (novelty). You can be referential, but can’t be confusing. You want to introduce your viewers to something you think is cool — new content to enjoy, new ideas to think about, etc. — but they won’t listen unless they see how it’s relevant to them.

People gravitate towards other people, not channels, not brands, and not even ideologies, so your goal should be to write content audiences are actually excited to watch.

To that end, it’s not enough to just dryly riffle off a bunch of information. You need to express your personality through your writing and through your delivery in the final product. It also helps tremendously to have a great sense of humor and a deep well of knowledge about pop-culture & memes, as well as having your finger on the pulse of current trends.

From a mission-driven standpoint, my advice is to get comfortable with using this kind of content to make small, incremental gains instead of expecting big leaps.

You’re planting seeds, not changing minds instantly.

Try to present your ideas so they can be adopted by the viewer and incorporated into conversations with their friends and loved ones. Try to create content that is memorable and interesting enough such that your audiences will recall the story 15 or 20 years later. Accept that you’re going for an effect that will take root over time instead of trying to change people’s ideology today.

Technical and political jargon does not bring people through the door. Neither does philosophical gobbledegook — no one really cares about “philosophy” in a meaningful way. So bring your content and your arguments down to earth and focus on entertaining and enlightening people in ways that connect to what they want, not just what you want to say.

Sean's Guide to Social Media "Shorts"