What’s Working With Short-Form Video Right Now

Short-form video gets a lot of views, but does it actually grow your business? Are you tired of producing vanilla content that fails to build a real community?

In this article, you'll discover strategic tips from two seasoned experts to help you grow your audience and drive business results with short-form video on YouTube and Instagram.

Why Short-Form Video Strategy Matters for Business Growth

Short-form video has become impossible to ignore. YouTube Shorts generates approximately 100 billion views daily, and platforms like Instagram and TikTok continue to prioritize this format. For business owners and marketers, the question isn't whether to use short-form video—it's how to make it work.

​Pat Flynn, founder of Smart Passive Income and creator of YouTube channels Deep Pocket Monster and Short Pocket Monster (which have accumulated over two billion views), and Brock Johnson, Instagram strategist and founder of Instaclub Hub, address the fundamental challenge: short-form video can feel like a hamster wheel—constant content creation with unclear business results.

​There's a difference between making short-form content as a content creator wanting it to directly correlate with revenue versus making it as a business owner where you already have a business that will continue even if your content flops.

​For content creators who depend entirely on views and engagement for income, the pressure to maintain consistent output is much higher. For business owners, short-form content serves as one component of a broader marketing strategy.

​The key lies in understanding that short-form video works differently than traditional marketing channels, requiring both strategic thinking and authentic execution.

How to Make Short-Form Video Work for Your Business in 2026

The effectiveness of short-form video varies significantly depending on your business model and goals. Both Flynn and Johnson advocate for a strategic mix of short-form and long-form content, each serving different purposes in the customer journey.

​Johnson provides a framework for understanding when and how to leverage short-form content on Instagram.

​If you're a business with a product to sell or a service to offer, short form can drive significant awareness. It can help people understand who you are and why you do what you do. However, conversion typically doesn't happen directly from short-form video.

​People won't see your reel and immediately think they need to buy this product. Instead, short-form video serves as the entry point to a larger customer journey. They'll see your reel, start to get familiar with you, see more of your content, and build trust with you over time. It might take months before that person buys your product or service. But that short-form content is what got them in the door initially.

​Flynn describes how his approach combines both formats on YouTube. He publishes a video once a week that's typically eight to twelve minutes long, then chops it up into short-form content he can publish throughout the week.

​This strategy maximizes content efficiency while serving different audience needs. His long-form content provides depth and builds stronger connections, while his short-form content creates multiple touchpoints and increases discoverability.

​Johnson adds that the ratio of short-form to long-form content should align with your specific business goals and audience preferences. If you're a business owner with other things going on, you might not need to post short-form content every single day. Maybe you post a couple of times a week, and that's enough to keep you top of mind.

#1: YouTube Shorts: Maintain Consistency and Repeatable Frameworks

When creators ask Flynn what's working with YouTube Shorts, he tells them two things.

​First is consistency. If you're not consistent on short form, it won't work. You have to stay persistent and continue to show up.

​Flynn runs a daily show called Should I Open It? Or Should I Keep It Sealed? that's now on day 508. It was only after about forty days that he started seeing results. He thinks people are too impatient for results, so his advice is to keep going because every single video becomes a learning moment.

​The math behind daily publishing is compelling. Someone publishing daily has 365 opportunities per year to learn and compound results versus someone publishing weekly. That's six times more opportunities you have to grow, discover, and learn as a marketer.

​The second element is finding a repeatable framework to structure your videos around.

​Jefferson Fisher is a lawyer who uses short-form content strategically to build his practice, and he's casting a very wide net. If he created attorney content and educated people about law-related topics, not many people would care.

​Instead, Fisher creates content around communication, a much broader topic. He has a clear and repeatable format and starts his videos by saying something like “What to say when somebody's mean to you,” and then goes right into it.

​Because the situations he’s addressing are very relatable, whether a person's interested in an attorney or not, when someone in his audience eventually needs one, he's top-of-mind.

#2: Instagram Reels: Refocus on Fundamentals

For Instagram, Johnson has observed a significant shift in what drives results.

​The biggest change over the last year is focusing on fundamentals. Many creators and businesses have been chasing trends, trying to figure out the latest hack or newest strategy.

​What's working is focusing on fundamentals of building an engaged audience, creating strong hooks, honing in on storytelling and captivating people's attention, and being consistent. Those fundamentals consistently drive results.

This shift represents moving away from growth hacks toward sustainable audience building, where quality and consistency matter more than gaming the system.

​Johnson shares the example of Mobility Duo, a husband and wife team that helps snowboarders ride until they're seventy years old through daily yoga and functional strength activities. The business has built over 300,000 followers by creating short-form content that’s hyper-focused on their audience.

​They also do a great job of visually hooking you in. Instead of starting with a home gym workout demonstration, they open with compelling snowboarding footage that provides an aspirational result that can be achieved if the viewer does yoga and other strengthening activities.

#3: The Role of Entertainment in Short-Form Video Content for Business

For many people, entertainment suggests you have to be overly energetic or loud or have some big type of extravaganza. But entertainment simply means you're able to hold a person's attention for a worthy reason.

​Flynn emphasizes that entertainment doesn't require high production values. It's not the effects or the camera quality. In fact, the more something is over-produced, the less relatable it becomes and the more people just move past it.

​Johnson agrees completely and offers some clear advice: Instead of buying a fancy camera or investing in a nice microphone, invest in the authenticity. Invest in the storytelling and embrace raw, real, imperfect content—that's what people really want.

​That said, you do have to stop the scroll and retain viewers to build an audience of customers.

These tactics can help.

Match Cut Edits

Johnson describes an effective editing technique he calls match cutting, which involves creating visual continuity between different scenes to maintain viewer attention and create seamless transitions.

​Perfect matching isn't necessary. Using similar shapes or visuals is enough to make a viewer pause and recognize they're in a new scene.​

Engagement Activities

Many people post their short-form content and then ghost. Active participation in comments and direct messages distinguishes successful accounts from those who struggle.

​You need to sit in those DMs and comments, respond to people, interact, and create conversation. That's where you really start to stand out and actually build relationships.

​The engagement strategy extends beyond just responding to comments. Johnson recommends proactively starting conversations. You can post content and then go into the comments and ask a question to really start facilitating a conversation.

​Flynn reinforces this with his own experience. The people who've been with him for a long time who comment on his stuff—he knows who they are now because they're always there. He always makes sure to respond to them first because they're always there for him.

#4: Platform-Specific Strategies for Converting With Calls to Action in Short-Form Video Content

Different short-form video platforms have unique advantages and limitations when it comes to driving specific actions from your viewers.

​Johnson believes you can have success on every platform, but as a small business owner, he’s a big fan of Instagram because of its capabilities with direct messages and automations.

​In any reel, he can tell people to “Comment the word ‘egg,’ and I’ll send you the link to this full YouTube video.” Viewers comment the word egg and receive the link via a DM automation he’s set up, and his post gets engagement, which makes the algorithm happy, so it shows his post to more people!

​On YouTube, Flynn recommends a more measured approach to promotional content in Shorts because people watching Shorts typically just want to watch more Shorts. Using every Short to tell people to leave the platform to buy something from you won’t help you in the long run.

However, if you have a daily series, you can place a direct promotional call to action in one out of every fourteen videos without hurting your performance too much. Flynn recently promoted a merch drop this way and sold two thousand shirts in two days!

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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