The Beginners Short Form Playbook

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I'm putting together my brand social predictions for 2025. And one that didn't make the cut because it's no longer a prediction but a need is short-form video. So, if you're going all in on short-form in 2025 then this is your beginner playbook.

Btw - myself, Colin, and Oren taught 1000+ founders, marketers, and creators how to win with short-form video this year with Cut30. We're kicking off our first boot camp of 2025 Jan 7th. You can join the waitlist here.

And a big thank you to impact.com for partnering with us and letting us create media for a livin’.

Get your brand in front of 200,000+ marketers & founders.

In partnership with impact.com

Here’s How Sephora Achieved a 3x Revenue Growth with Strategic Partnerships

If you’re a brand today you need to be thinking about how you stand out.

Typical marketing channels are saturated and we’re all getting tired of the direct marketing tactics that used to drive easy money.

Even a huge name like Sephora realized it needed to switch it up.

The solution? A comprehensive partnership program.

Sephora used impact.com.

Here’s what happened:

• $7.4 million in revenue generated from 293 partners.

• 3x revenue growth after partnering with impact.com.

• 101% increase in partner growth.

Usually to put together a campaign like this would require hundreds of thousands in staff just coordinating with the different influencers, affiliates, and other partners. Using impact.com they were able to spin it up with a fraction of that time, source and pay partners on the platform, and optimize their funnels.

Colin, Oren, and I spent hours on Zoom brain-dumping everything we’ve learned from growing our personal channels and brand accounts with short-form into a doc. And it was over 30+ pages.

So, I wanted to share some of it here. And create this guide for you.

It’s going to cover:

• Finding content market fit

• Developing a personal playbook

• How to create winning content formats

• The secret to unlocking fast growth

• How to use data to optimize your content

• How to develop a content funnel

• The framework to create valuable content

• How to script engaging videos

Let’s get right into it.

Colin Landforce’s Short Form Quick Guide

1. Finding Content Market Fit

Content Market fit is:

• Content you like to make

• Content the algorithm favors

• Content the audience consumes

How do you find it? You publish 100 videos. Let the data talk. And your audience speaks.

2. Developing Your Personal Playbook

Colin’s playbook falls into two categories:

1. Topics - 3 content pillars that Colin can create endlessly around

2. Formats - The content types that drive shares, growth, and action.

Current Topics: Product Building, Golf, & Brand Building

Current Formats: How To, Factories, School, Brand Look, Who Makes X, and Get Your Brand Right

Now, 80% of Colin’s time is spent refining and scaling what’s working. And spending the other 20% testing new topics and formats

3. Create Consistently Because It’s Math

The above-the-fold is a 3-sec elevator pitch. Where every minor interaction Be consistent. And not for the BS reason everybody tells you.

But, because it's all about basic math.

Every 1/10 videos Colin publishes, he garners 100k+ views. When that happens, he adds thousands of followers and hundreds of subscribers.

The more he publishes, the more he increases his chances of success. And the more data he collects.

Every video is a data point that teaches you:

• What resonates vs. what doesn’t (likes)

• What gains traction vs. what doesn’t (views)

• What’s interesting vs. what isn’t (comments)

• What’s shareable vs. what isn’t (shares)

• What people find valuable vs. what they don’t (saves)

• What drives action vs. what doesn’t (link clicks) - Not Shown

Alex’s Short Form Quick Guide

1. Repeatable, Scaleable, Speed

When I was at The Kollective I wanted to create repeatable short-form shows that bring a 60-90sec TV show to your feed.

And each idea had to answer these three questions:

1. Can we repeat this concept week after week?

2. Is it something we can scale for months on end?

3. Can we execute and ship it fast?

If yes, we tested the series. If not, we ditched the idea.

Example: Our best-performing series was: Cold Hard Truth

We took a Kollective member, put them in a cold tub, and asked them rapid-fire questions.

And we could repeat it week after week.

We could scale it endlessly.

And we could execute it fast.

The perfect recipe for a successful series with a small team.

2. Collabs

Next is using collabs on Instagram as a means for growth.

We did it both with Kollective and Kane Footwear.

For Kollective, we had three buckets for people to collab with:

1. Trainers (all Kollective trainers had large followings)

2. Big name members

3. Outside Influencers

So we traded top-level content, for exposure.

Because when you collab with someone, you’re exposed to their audience. And the algorithm starts to put your content in front of new eyes.

Kane Footwear on the other hand has multiple sponsored athletes.

And so every month we’d shoot a content sweep (a full day of shooting) and it was all centered around using collabs to push product organically.

3. Content Funnels

Our content strategy focused around top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel content.

And we categorized it like this:

Top of funnel = Content that has a wide reach

Middle of funnel = Content that's valuable but includes product placements

Bottom of funnel = Content that drives a specific action

The volume shifted based on our goal that quarter. But usually, the split was 60% TOF, 30% MOF, and 10% BOF.

Oren John’s Quick Short Form Guide

1. Always test

Oren adds video categories to an ongoing list.

And each category goes through a testing series before getting scaled or ditched.

When he first got started, he’d test a video category 4x times before ditching or scaling.

As he’s grown, he reduced the testing number to two posts.

The key is to set a metric to measure that determines whether the video is successful or not.

For example: A 10 to 2 like save ratio. When a video hits this ratio, it’s a clear winner.

2. Think in Slack groups

When Oren makes a video, he thinks about what will get shared in a work Slack channel.

Which is two main metrics: Saves & Shares

Video saves equal content so valuable you want to come back to it.

Video shares equal content so valuable you want others to know too.

3. Script But Don’t Think in Scripts

Script every video. But think in hooks and bullet points.

Use the first 2-3 seconds to set the hook.

Use Bullets to reel them in.

Attention. Then quick value hits.

• Landing Page Heaven: 10 Landing Page templates and a 100+ landing page swipe-file with breakdowns…for free (LINK)

• Roast Session: We wrote three YouTube short scripts then I let a YouTuber with 500k subs rip them apart here (LINK)

• Writing tips: Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for writing. Save this. (LINK)

• Trend Analysis: How Crocs and Claire’s became ‘cool’ again. (LINK)

• More LinkedIn News: LinkedIn wants to be TikTok so they’re rolling out a new feed…(LINK)