We dismiss what makes us uncomfortable even before we try it.
I’d always been against short form content on all platforms.
It was why I avoided Twitter(or X now). I never saw the value in shorts, tiktoks or reels. As an education-based creator, I’d always found them too short to pack any educational value. They worked really well if you were in the entertainment space though.
This had been my perspective up until I started seeing what some of the ones I look up to had made. The likes of: Ali Abdaal, Dan Koe, Matt Gray, Tom Noske, Naval, Peter Mckinnon etc.
After watching them, I didn’t come away feeling like anything was missing.
Rather, I was bewildered by how they were able to pack so much impact in a single minute.
It was different from their long form stuff for sure, but it also held its place.
However, I still couldn’t see how to include this as a strategy in my creating journey.
This changed in July of 2023.
I decided to jump in and give it a short. The worst thing that could happen would be that I’d learn something right?
So for the next 6 months I made short form videos and decided to run an experiment on all the platforms. But I wanted to do this in a slightly strategic way to avoid burnout.
I started with YouTube. For 2 months, I posted consistently. 3 shorts every week for 8 weeks.
When I started this, I had around 80-ish subscribers.
3 shorts in, I got my first 1k-views-video. That shocked me because it was a really simple video that barely took much time to make.
About 8 shorts in, 1 of the shorts hit 2.5k views and again I was confused by the kind of video that took off like that. But this gave me something to go on.
I’d take those 2 and test them on different platforms to see if they’d garner the same kind of traction.
After 2 months of this, I hit 113 subs on YouTube. That’s around 1 new person per short yeah? It wasn’t astronomical but it wasn’t nothing.
I then did the same thing for Instagram:
Same 30 videos
3 days a week
Only now accompanied by some writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays(days without videos)
I started at around 1050 followers, grew to 1082.
I won’t lie, this was a bit of a blow for me. It felt like no one actually cared anymore. And I lost myself quite a bit there. I completely forgot why I’d started this in the first place and even as I write this, some guilt still haunts me.
I had started chasing numbers so much that I’d forgotten that if all anything I ever made did was help one person, then I’d be okay. That was my resolve back when I started all this in 2018.
But it’s hard to just want to help people when you’re broke yeah?
If you know me then you know that creating is not my bread-winner. At least not yet. I also do freelance design and videography. So I went back to that to fill the pockets a bit more.
Once some bills were taken care of I decided to give this thing a shot again.
Same 30 videos, 3 days a week, but now on Tiktok. And man… Did my mind get blown…
A video that barely got 300 views on YouTube and IG combined hit:
10k views in 3 days,
583 saves and
around 150 shares.
It’s now sitting at 17.5k views.
But coming from the previous experiences, I didn’t make much of this. I thought it was just an accident so I just continued sharing what I thought was helpful.
A few weeks later a second one popped off:
Now sitting at 14.5k views
156 saves
1052 likes
45 shares
In 2 months, I grew to 600+ followers on Tiktok.
But again, I’d learnt my lesson earlier, and I was just happy that people were finding what I was making that helpful.
What this mostly accomplished was restore my confidence in what I was trying to do, and I really really needed that.
I know that as creators the only thing you can control is giving what you’re making everything you’ve got with the tools available to you, but if you care about the ‘vanity metrics’ here’s my current standing:
YouTube - 113 subscribers
IG - 1004 followers
Tiktok - 615 followers
X - 38 followers
Short form video does have a place, and especially after seeing how fast I grew an audience on Tiktok, I do see their value.
But I think I might have made my last video like that. I just don’t have it in me to keep going in that particular direction.
Would I recommend it? If you just want to give this creating thing a try, sure!
But if you want to build something around it. Something more long term(like I do) then start there but evolve into long-form content.
This year I want to try my hand at something I know will have a longer-standing impact, writing. Turning my writing into a newsletter, and turning that into long-form Youtube and tweets(both long-form and short form).
And to do this in a sustainably consistent way.
Later I want to make this a business that takes care of me and my loved ones in a life-changing way.
But that’s a story for another day.
I’ll post back in 12 months with how it went.