704 – Keep it short and profitable: Tom talks Short Form Video

Episode 704 – Short Form Video
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 704 of Screw the Commute Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about short form video. It's all the rage. And guess what? It ain't going away any time soon. So after this episode, you'll be able to start practicing immediately. And I mean immediately and virtually always I do something myself before I teach it to you. So I've done about 120 of these using varying techniques and most of them are on TikTok and then they're repurposed to go to other places. So you get a big bang for your buck by doing these. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 703. That was five marketing tools that I use every day and one method to speed up your work. So anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. That was 703. All right, there's still time to get a free ticket to my screw the commute summit. And I believe we'll have a big surprise for you this weekend. Have an encore. So all the videos will be available for free this weekend. So grab your free ticket and screwthecommute.com/summit2023 and follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and this is where you'll actually see the techniques I'm going to tell you about today.

[00:01:57] And of course make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. This book will let you spend more time making money and less time fighting with your computer.

[00:02:09] Let's get to the main event. Short form video. Yeah, it's all the rage and in some ways it's way easier to create and in some ways it's a little harder. All right. Now we're talking about vertical video here. That means your camera is going to be straight up and down, not sideways. And you really should. If you're interested in this, go back and listen to episode 673 on vertical video that screwthecommute.com/673. All right. What is short form video? Well, the generally accepted definition is the video that's less than 60 seconds. Now, I have some as short as 5 seconds. Okay. 15 to 60 seconds is about average. And some of them, like on TikTok, go up to 3 minutes. And then on some creators, you can go up to 10 minutes. But short form, what we're talking about is the very short ones now, 60 seconds or less. Now, some of the benefits of these are they don't take long to create. In most cases, you don't need a video editor person to produce them for you. They have much greater chance of going viral. Your return on investment of time is usually pretty high because you can reach more people faster because of the short attention spans people have nowadays.

[00:03:30] Now know one thing, though. These short form videos are great at catching people and getting them interested in your stuff so they're more likely to consume your longer content where if you force them into the long content right off the bat, they might say, I don't have time for that. So the short form is good for catching them. And Oh, and one more thing. You can just say one sentence at a time so you don't have to memorize long scripts or use a teleprompter. The tough part for us oldsters is the video move so fast. Now, I've been shooting videos professionally for over 40 years and I had to start from scratch and get used to these really fast cuts in the short form videos. But you can learn it and with a little bit of training and getting the idea of what you have to do. And that's what I'm going to give you here today. All right. So before I show you how to do it, what are you going to do with these short form videos once you make them? Well, you can put them on TikTok and TikTok, I believe, on Snapchat. So it sends them directly to Snapchat for you if you want. It goes to Instagram reels. You can send them to YouTube shorts, Twitter and you can put them on your own website if you want to.

[00:04:48] So creating one video quickly can get you a presence and catch people in multiple platforms. So here are some of the things to keep in mind when shooting short form videos. Now because of where they are seen. You must and this is a capital must. You must hook the viewer who is scrolling through hundreds of videos. That means in the first 2 to 3 seconds, you must grab their attention. There are tons of people out there and you can Google who will give you collections of hooks that you can adapt for your information. And some of the hooks don't need changed at all. You just say them, for instance. Here's. Here's one. This is the hook. Starts with the word here. So that's why when I say, here's one. Here it is. Here's the top five marketing tools I use every day. Now, if you're teaching marketing that hook doesn't need changed at all. You just change what the tools are afterwards. Here's another one. Don't let this happen to your child. Again, the hook doesn't need changed at all. The next part of the content in both of these hooks is where you put your info. The biggest hook I have. And as I'm recording this episode, it's going viral and has 585,000 views. And it took me less than 10 minutes to create.

[00:06:24] The hook was I couldn't stop the money coming into my checking account if I tried. And then I go ahead and explain about residual affiliate programs in the video. And just think of this. I've gotten millions of exposures because of that hook over the past 20 years on radio, TV, podcasts and all that stuff. But look this and only a little over a week I've gotten nearly 600,000 exposures because of the short form video. This is really powerful stuff, folks. So the first thing is the hook. Then most of the experts suggest you switch the look of the video every couple seconds. This is what drives older people crazy. They're not used to this. So here are some of the ways to easily do that. And and keep in mind, I'm only talking about holding the camera by hand or using a selfie stick here. No fancy equipment needed and it will give you a lot more capability if you if your selfie stick has a little small tripod on the bottom so that you can sit it somewhere by itself instead of being forced to hold it all the time. So that's and you're looking at $20, folks, for for this. So back to giving you some ways you can change the background easily. And these are in no particular order. All right. So picture yourself holding the camera at an angle so that your face is coming into the picture from one side of the screen at maybe 45 degrees.

[00:08:05] All right. So you shoot a video once you do record one sentence like that and then pause the video. Now. Then you think about your next sentence and you hold the video, say, upright. So it's just normal. Your head's in it and you you shoot that one and then pause it, and then the next sentence you could look up and hold the camera over your head and shoot that sentence. And then the next sentence you could be at an angle from the other side of the screen. Just turn your your phone the other way. And remember, we're pausing the recording after each sentence or sentence or two maybe, and then starting the recording with the camera position differently each time. So the viewer is going to see boop, boop, boop, you know, quick, different cuts and it's exciting and keeps them keeps them watching. So now another thing you can do is move the camera quickly towards your face while you're recording. And then another one is the opposite is move the camera quickly away from your face. Okay. Now we're not always shooting our face. All right. I'll get to that in a minute. Now. Next thing is, you can shoot a scene and change your physical position. In other words, you could be at your desk for one shot or two and then be outside or in your car the next shot because you just paused it and saved it as a draft and picked it up later.

[00:09:34] Now, another thing I do is shake the camera somewhat mildly, wildly, not mildly wildly, and then come to a stop on my face. Or let's say for some of the shots, you aren't shooting your face, but you're using the opposite cell phone camera lens to show something you're looking at. This is called POV or point of view. And when I say shake wildly, I don't really mean to wildly, but the concept I want to convey is that movement creates excitement. And sometimes you'll see me shooting my computer screen and you'll see my other hand come into the shot pointing at something on the screen. This is so much easier than than doing this for long form videos and using screen capture and all that stuff. Now, another way to change the background, especially on TikTok, is to use their green screen effect. And guess what? You don't have to have a green screen. It's all electronic inside the TikTok app. With the many different green screen effects they have, you can easily switch the background to a picture or a video from your camera roll. So in effect, you're on top of the video or picture, and that makes an interesting effect. Now, the best way I can illustrate all of these techniques, since this is an audio podcast, is for you to simply watch a bunch of my TikTok videos at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire.

[00:11:12] A lot of people don't realize you can put an ad sign just like in an email address in a URL so it's tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire. And when you're there, please comment like share them and I'll do the same for you. And then please hit the follow button. Then you'll know my videos are going to be sent to you when they they when I put a new one up and they have a bell there, just like on YouTube, that'll give you notice a notification bell when I go live or when I do something on TikTok. Now you can start practicing these very short segments with your cell phone and I encourage you to do so. The problem is, is that every time if you're just using your regular video app. On your cell phone is that every time you hit the stop button, you have created a new video file. If you go ahead and get an account on TikTok, you can shoot the first segment and then if you're not happy with it, you can delete it and shoot it over again. Keep shooting it till you're happy with it, and then you go to the next segment. And you shoot it and it gets and you shoot it over and over till you're happy with it.

[00:12:30] And a lot of times you just shoot it, you know, and they're done. And then it's pasted on top of the first segment and so forth. So you don't have to go and get a video editing software and put a bunch of different files together and keep track of them. It keeps track of them for you one on top of the other. And then if you decide later, right in their app that you want one scene moved somewhere else, you just touch it and slide it the other way. So it's way different than than shooting it in your regular camera video app. But it's okay if you want to practice some short getting used to these 2 to 3 seconds very quick. One sentence or two sentence scenes you can practice without the TikTok app. It's fine. Fine with me. Okay, let's see. Then when I have the video completed, we use a program called Repurpose IO, and it sends the video to all the other places like Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, Twitter, or wherever you want to send it. All right. So that should get you going to start practicing and benefiting from for this form of video that's going to be here for a long while, folks. So. So grab your free take it to the summit at Screw the Compucom forward slash Summit 2023. And you do get two free ebooks when you sign up.

[00:13:57] And we do have the videos available. I mean, this was some people were saying that this is the best summit they ever attended. I did five master classes myself where I went deep into email marketing, podcasting from both the guesting side and from the having a podcast that got me invited to the White House. And you're listening to it right now and pro speaking How to Make Fortunes. Only the top pro speakers in the world know the tricks I revealed and that techniques, not just tricks, techniques that I revealed, they're just tons of great material from the other speakers too. And then I did a segment I've never done before called How to Become a Multimillionaire Girl Guy Next Door, which is what I am. I didn't even come up with that. Some student of mine called me that. So anyway, get your ticket to that. Screwthecommute.com/summit2023 for free. Go do it right now. And then, of course, if you want help with all of this stuff, I have the longest running, most successful, most unique Internet and digital mentor program ever, and nobody dares put their program up against mine because they'll be embarrassed. Right. So anyway, check that out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and shoot those short form videos that it'll really pay off with. All right. Catch you on the next episode. See you later.