Why It’s Important To Get Good At Short Form Videos

Welcome to the Freedom Business Podcast. Your host, Siddharth Rajshekhar here. Great to have you here. This is where we are going to be talking about how we can redefine our education system by building vibrant learning communities. Take your knowledge out to the world and be awesome. Let's get in.

Short form videos. Is that the right thing to actually go with or not? I'm going to cover that in this particular podcast and I'll tell you, initially I was somebody who was propagating the idea that you don't do short form videos, only focus on long form videos, only do stuff on YouTube, only post 5 minute, 10 minute videos. And that's pretty much what I was doing until I realized that it is actually important to get good at shorter format content because that's going to help you with the longer format content. So let me explain to you what is a concept first. Then I'll be telling you where all you can apply this idea of short form videos and how you can actually attract the right people to whatever you're doing. And then I'll give you some examples of what are the typical kind of videos and what are the atypical videos, things that can actually cut through the noise in the online space. And I'll be giving you many examples of hooks that I've been using for the short form videos to really get a lot more traffic interaction with the marketing that I'm doing. First of all, before I even start, if you're in my community, please take a lot of notes and share your notes below my blog if you've. You know, because every week I give away awards and gifts and goodies to people who share their notes below my particular blog post. Now if you are not a part of my community, I would highly recommend that you follow my podcast because today I am on podcast number four out of my 90 day challenge that I've set up for myself. And Overall this is 199,000 episode, 199th episode. I'm really excited on this particular journey. So let's get started. Let's understand the concept. First, what is the purpose of short form videos? There are two kinds of people who create content online. You have those who are entertainers and you have educators. Entertainers who create short form videos just for getting more views and getting more visibility. They want to be seen more, heard more, liked more. That's a different category altogether. I'm talking about the educator group over here though. Those who want to use short form videos to deliver a high impact message within a short span of time. So the way I approach this is even in the educator space, there are educators in the online space who do not have funnels, who do not have products to sell, who do not have courses to sell, and you have educators. Like, what I'm doing is even if I'm creating a short form video, there is a purpose and there's a journey to creating a short form video. It is not just to give some value, piece of information and just to entertain, but it is to lead them through a particular journey. So there are four stages. The first stage is what I call as a teaser stage. And that's where all these short form videos come into play. Teaser is, let's say you are, you know, driving in a car, and then you just get into a hotel, like a restaurant, walk into the restaurant, and then you see just on the television, there's some ad on a particular movie that's there. It's like a teaser. And then you're, you're curious, you're like, wow, okay, I want to know more about this. And then you go to YouTube on your phone and you search for that movie trailer. You type in the movie name and you type trailer. And the teaser is just a few seconds, but the trailer is longer. So probably around one minute or two minutes. Okay. And then you're inspired and then you go and buy the ticket and you actually go for the movie, which is a 90 minutes movie. And then once you are hooked onto the movie, then you may want to watch the sequel, the second part, the third part, like if it's a superhero movie, Avengers or DC Comics or whatever may be the case. The same principle happens even in our funnels, in our whole approach. So the teaser content, whatever you do on Instagram reels for one minute, if you can really grab people's attention, you can lead them from teaser to trailer. What is trailer is my long form video. Let's say whatever you post on YouTube, which is above five minutes. Even this particular podcast is an example of a trailer content. So what I do is on Instagram Stories, I actually give a link to this particular podcast. You might have actually come from there, or it might have come from, you know, telegram or through my email or from different places. So the teaser could be any piece of content that leads you over here. And of course, the teaser is more the one minute video. The trailer is the longer format content. The movie is the webinar. Like I invite people to my webinars that I do on a daily basis and then they become my customer and customer for life. So the end goal of what, of why I'm creating this content is to bring people into my world and a journey. And it's not just to acquire a customer, it is to help my customer get a result. So if you're somebody listening to this podcast, I know for sure that you are listening to this because you want to become a knowledge giver. You want to make money online, you want to, you know, build a business from home, you want to spend more time with your family, you want to make lacks and crores with your knowledge. And that's why you're listening to this podcast. Okay? And of course you want to get some new hack or idea or a perspective so that you can grow as a person in the digital realm. So with that being the concept, let's understand why short form videos are important and where it can be used. Now, there are two places where you need to use short form video. The first place is Instagram reels. Of course, you can push it on Facebook as well. Okay.

Instagram and the meta algorithm, it works in such a way where the first three seconds matter. So when you upload a short form video, 45 seconds, one minute video, the first three seconds, if more people are watching or getting engaged or getting hooked into it, Instagram will give a wider reach to that video for the next three seconds.

And for the next three seconds, if, if the whole, if more people are watching those videos without scrolling it up, Instagram will double the reach for the next six seconds.

And then if more people watch till the 12th second, Instagram will again double the reach for the next six seconds. So that is how the algorithm has been designed and that's how it works. And that's why you may, you might have noticed that there are some reels that don't do too well and some reels go viral. So this virality is determined by the number of seconds people watch.

So for that, as a knowledge giver, I did not believe in this even a few years ago, but I now, I believe that we all need to get damn good at capturing people's attention and keeping them hooked for with the short format content because it's actually easy to create longer format content because you can, there's free flowing, there's no planned, you know, stuff you can go unscripted, spontaneous and stuff like that. When it comes to short content, even though I go unscripted, but I want to make sure I can deliver a punch and deliver an impact within a few seconds.

So the first area is to get more organic reach on Instagram through reels so that you can reach out to more number of people based on the skill that you have when it comes to creating that video. What do you say in the first opening line? I'll give you some examples at the end. Okay. Now if you know that a particular video is gone viral, whatever you said it connected an emotional cord with your market or whatever, you can actually use that same concept to run ads. Video ads, performance marketing. I'm running a lot of ads on Facebook and Instagram and I'll give you an example of all the different kinds of ads that I'm running right now. Before I was just depending on my ad agency, giving to them, telling them what to do and they would just do it or whatever. But now I realize the importance of recording that 45 second ads, 30 second ads, so that I can really connect and grab their attention and make my ads swim like dolphins. In this ocean of the Internet where there's rising tides, sometimes the cost per lead suddenly goes up, sometimes cost per lead goes down. So that is why it is very important for all of us to get good at short form videos so that we can cut through the noise and make our ads swim like dolphins in this ocean. So let's look at the typical ads. The typical ads are. Are you struggling with your weight? Hi, my name is so and so. I'm a health expert, I'm a weight loss expert. Come for my webinar and I will teach you how to do this. Or come to my workshop and it's only 99 rupees or whatever. Like just these are very typical ads. Now what I've done is if you go and look at all the different ads that I'm running right now on Facebook, it's all atypical. It is not the typical stuff. For example, I'll give you at least 10 different hooks that I use in my ads. Okay. When I open the ad, I'll say something like this. The biggest mistakes I made as a Coach are these three things. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hi, my name is Darth Rajshekhar and I help coaches launch using AI. If you want to know more, come for my webinar. Okay, so the biggest mistakes I made is a hook. Next is.

The three things that you need to make 3 lakhs per month are this. You need a good product, you need a good sales process and you need to use the power of AI. Hi, my name is Darth Rajsekhar. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, second part, another one. The fastest way to grow in a Coaching business is dash. The reason why coaches cannot scale is dash. AI cannot help you grow. You need to add your heart and soul into it. Success is simple. Next is don't complicate growth. If you want to grow in digital coaching business, you need this. Another one is my top three values in my life are freedom, family and service. If you're able to resonate with these three values, I would highly recommend you come for my webinar. So it's a completely different hook. You can see that, right? I'm not even talking about my main topic. I'm actually talking about my personal values. Another one is, do you want to be a part of a 350 billion dollar trend? This is the best time in the history of the world to become a digital coach. Now that's another hook. And the one more hook can be like, do you want to run a business while you're traveling and you don't have to have an office or employees? Imagine that. Now that's my first three seconds. Next I can do something like I cracked the code.

Okay? Like I cracked the code on how to build a business without any office. Hi, my name is Dharat Rajan and I'll teach you this is this okay? So I've actually shared with you at least 10, 15 different hooks. And these are the hooks that are running for me right now. And I'm continuously coming up with so many different kinds of hooks in my ads. And if you look at the design of my short form videos is like the first part is the hook. The first three seconds, the next three seconds is the value or six seconds is the value. So if I say the three mistakes that most coaches make are this. Mistake number one, dish. Mistake number two, dish. Mistake number three, dish. Okay. I mean I just give that value bomb. So within nine seconds I want to cover the entire value piece. So people are watching it. They don't feel it's an ad. They feel it's an educational piece of content. Okay? And then I close the loops with my, you know, earning the right saying that I'm Saath Rajshikar, I've helped so many number of people and then I close the loop with a call to action. Say, if you want to really overcome these three challenges, come for my webinar and I'll teach you how you can do that. Now here's the main thing. I have 30 to 40 different hooks like this that I'm testing on my ads library right now.

And that is getting distributed. And in a span of two to three weeks, I know exactly which hooks are getting me sales, which hook is giving me the lowest cost per lead, which hook is attracting an audience that is willing to buy. Because there are some ads where I'm getting a low cost per lead, but nobody's buying from that particular hook. So that's not the reason why I'm recording an ad. The purpose of the ad is to get a sale out of out of that particular hook. And this is the reason why every single coach, every single trainer, every single expert in the world needs to get good at short form videos. I've done more than maybe thousand videos on YouTube that are there interviews and long form and I'm going to continue to do that. Those that's my trailer video. My movie is a webinar. But this is going to be the year where I'm going to focus more on the teaser content. And the best part is it's so easy to create. Now if I have to share with you the tools I use is I just use my phone, iPhone, Cinematic mode, just record on that. Then I pull my video into Inshot. It is an app that you can just download, you can do all the editing on Inshot itself. You can add the text and all of that and you can also add captions. There's another app called Captions which you can search for where it'll auto generate the captions for the video. It will auto correct in case you're looking here and there. It'll make sure that your eyes are sticking on the camera lens and it's got a whole bunch of other features. It also generates text and through AI and things like that. There are many tools like this, but these are the tools that I can use that I recommend for you to use. Use your regular phone camera and use Inshot. Use captions, start getting good at short form videos. Okay? Now if you are already a part of my community, I would highly recommend that you register and come in for my orientation that I'm going to be doing on my three year digital code certification. Imagine you're going to be getting into a world like a Harvard or a Stanford and you're going to get evaluated. Where we have a point system, we have gamification, we have certification, we have national recognition, we have a platform called Polestar where you'll be able to track your habits, track your tasks, track your business and basically have your own control center. Now if you are keen on that, I would highly recommend that you attend my next showcase by going to Sidz, Sids Co diamond and register for that showcase. And I'll be giving a special offer where you can actually embark on a journey for the next three years where by the end of the three years when you get certified as a Masters Club member, you would truly be a master of digital coaching. I'm evaluate going to evaluate you based on your attendance. I'm going to evaluate you based on your achievements. And it's a proper certification journey, which is one of a kind in the world. And it's the only certification journey that is that has been proven to get results for thousands of coaches in India. So if you're really serious, get on that journey and I'll see you in that. So I'll catch you in the next episode. I hope you found this one useful. Share your notes below. Bye Bye. Sam.