Getting Started with Short Form Video using AI

Are you going to be learning Tiktok dances before the week is up?

Nah I wouldn’t do that to you!

Instead I’m going to show you how to leverage short form video for entrepreneurial purposes, regardless of your niche.

We’ll cover:

• Part 1: Small but deadly. Why short form content works.

• Part 2: Format focus. What will we make videos about?

• Part 3: Content channels. How to get inspired for limitless ideas.

• Part 4: Rapid recording. How to create shorts easily and in volume.

• Part 5: Repurposing for fun and profit. Hitting multiple channels using short form.

Let’s get started:

Small but deadly

Short form video is any video under 2 minutes. Often much shorter.

In fact, in the world of short form video: the shorter the better.

Short form video is (right now) one of the most powerful tools you can have in your marketing arsenal.

Right now a whole bunch of you are screwing your face and saying eww no thanks - I’m not doing that Tiktok nonsense.

My goal in this Part is to help you get over this! We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater and dismiss the whole of short form video just because you don’t like platforms like Tiktok.

Because the reality is that short form video kills it on ALL platforms.

So much so that platforms have adapted their whole modus operandi to work with short form:

• Instagram used to be photos only. Now short form Reels and Videos rule the roost.

• YouTube is for long videos right? Nope - Youtube Shorts are massive. There’s even a Shorts tab right in the app.

• Short video video is even tearing up LinkedIn at the moment. Lara Acosta’s work is a brilliant example of this.

And, as of last week, we heard that X/Twitter is introducing a focused video tab:

Twitter - the preeminent text based platform - is looking at video.

So: it’s not just Tiktok!

Why are all these platforms so interested in short form video?

Because it holds attention.

Platforms make money through advertising. Advertisers pay for attention. Attention is generated and held by short form video.

That’s the basic core of the economics at play here.

And because of this the platforms incentivise short form video. They’ll make changes to their algorithm or even their whole interface to make sure people are creating and watching short form video.

If you want to generate attention for your brand and business then we can piggy back here.

The platforms want this format. And will reward us for it by sending views and engagement our way.

Think of it like swimming down a river with the current rather than against it.

Not in my backyard

One objection people will throw up is that short form video doesn’t work in their particular niche.

I can guarantee it does. And if no-one is doing it yet then you’re about to do some serious damage by being first.

Short form video lets you get on camera and authentically deliver solid gold value in a very concise package.

“Yes but my niche is too complex!” I hear you say.

Then you need to do a better job explaining it!

If you can take a complex subject or news item and deliver your POV and expert knowledge bombs in 15 seconds then you are flexing in a major way.

Here’s an example from Tiktok in the AI sphere:

Rachel Woods delivers the latest AI news and updates in short (<1 min) videos.

The subjects aren’t simple - for example some of her recent videos are on:

• an AI ethics litmus test

• a warning about prompt injections

• using AI to alleviate work anxiety

Complex topics but delivered in a short easy to digest package - that’s real expertise.

It’s also a valuable skill that short form video will train us on.

When we have 15-30 seconds to make a point suddenly our language becomes focused, our speech becomes precise. Extraneous fluff has no space here!

Auditing your niche

Before we jump into the rest of the week and start writing and producing short form video let’s get the lay of the land.

We want to see who is already doing short form video and see what is working for them.

We’ll use this to play catch up - we can learn from what they do. If they have certain topics and formats that work well for them then guess what - they will probably work well for us too!

Let’s use this research prompt:

Act as a research assistant

My niche is [business niche]

Collect a list of influencers who talk about my niche using short form video.  Find existing lists online.

Focus on experts who report on updates and news. Not industry leaders / company owners.

For each of these platforms collect 5 influencers:
Tiktok
LinkedIn
Twitter 
Instagram (Reels)
Facebook
Youtube (Shorts)

Provide their name, quick summary and a link to their profile

This will give you a basic audit of who is active in your space.

Important here is the line “Find existing lists online.” This will find webpages that have already catalogued content creators in your industry.

The more specific your business niche parameter here the better your results will be. For example if I put just “entrepreneurship” I get wide wide results like Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

Instead we want to find people whose primary work is creating content, informing and educating online. Not CEOs.

Go ahead and note down creators whose content you think is valuable and well delivered. We’ll be using these moving forward as reference points.

Premium Prompt - Manual override

Pulling it together

Here’s a reminder of what we’re covering this week:

• Part 1: Small but deadly. Why short form content works.

• Part 2: Format focus. What will we make videos about?

• Part 3: Content channels. How to get inspired for limitless ideas.

• Part 4: Rapid recording. How to create shorts easily and in volume.

• Part 5: Repurposing for fun and profit. Hitting multiple channels using short form.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

We’re not going to waste time on multiple formats - I don’t want to give you an excuse not to get started! Instead we’ll stay laser focused, get you started and then you can get all fancy.

Done is better than perfect.

Let’s get started:

Format Focus

Hopefully from the last Part you are now following quality short form video accounts on various social media platforms.

This should give you ideas about what sort of videos they put out.

Amongst the more professional / business related niches it’ll often be news or industry update related.

"Here’s the new AI model and why you should be interested for your business”.

“Sam Altman ousted from OpenAI - what does this mean for the industry?”

As an expert in your particular niche this is the sort of content I recommend you start with.

Why? Simply because we can use a technique called “news jacking” to rapidly get attention and grow our reach.

If something is already in the news or of interest you simply need to, as an expert, relay the information and give your take.

This works well because it’s already a topic of interest. There are likely lots of news pieces, blog articles, newsletter issues and social media posts about this topic already.

You are just using a powerful tool (short form video) to bring audiences this similar content in a more digestible format.

Think of it this way. People in your niche can keep up to date with what’s going on by reading articles, subscribing to newsletters or listening to podcasts. But this all takes time.

You are jumping in and providing a service by giving them the skinny.

You’re like the friend who has all the gossip and can condense it.

“Did you hear about Sam Altman getting kicked from OpenAI? No!? OK here’s what happened and why it’s important”.

I recommend you start with this news jacking format first. You can expand from here later once you become comfortable and get some traction.

But rather than me give you 10 formats to try out we’re going to keep it simple and start here.

Let’s look at how we produce a script:

Act as a scriptwriter. 

Prepare a [15 second] video script that follows this structure. 

Compelling hook to capture attention
Outline of the issue
Hot take

The video will consist of a talking head (me) and a background showing an article or similar news source. 

No image / overlays are needed. Only the text script.

The source is as follows:
[copy/paste news source]

For my example I'll give ChatGPT an article about the recent AI generated phone call replicating Joe Biden telling people not to vote in the upcoming US election.

Here’s the output once I feed in the article:

Seems short right?

This is a script for a 15 second video.

15 seconds is NOT a long time - you’ll see this when you start to record.

You can adjust the script to go longer if you want. For instance here is is at 30 seconds:

Not bad! The exact length will depend on i) your delivery and more importantly ii) what audiences respond to! We’ll get to this.

Test this prompt out on some news articles or updates in your particular niche to see the results.

Get a few ready as we’ll be shooting video soon.

Premium Prompt - Tone shift

Pulling it together

We've now looked at how to generate a basic script for our short videos.

In the next Part I’ll show you how to set up a constant stream of content so that you never run out of things to talk about.

Here’s a reminder of what we’re covering this week:

• Part 1: Small but deadly. Why short form content works.

• Part 2: Format focus. What will we make videos about?

• Part 3: Content channels. How to get inspired for limitless ideas.

• Part 4: Rapid recording. How to create shorts easily and in volume.

• Part 5: Repurposing for fun and profit. Hitting multiple channels using short form.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

We went through how we can take a news story or industry update and quickly convert it into a script for a short video.

In this Part I’ll show you how to have infinite content ideas.

Let’s get started:

Content Channels

The last thing you want to be doing each day is wondering “what shall I make a video about?”

Making videos is hard enough - we don’t need excuses like what the content should be.

We need to be ready to go. No research. No faff.

We agree on the format of news-jacking. So now we need a steady stream of news stories to record short videos on. I’ll show you some solid sources.

First up the obvious one - industry blogs, newspapers and magazines.

Make sure to follow all the top sites in the niche. For example if you are in the tech niche you probably already read the Wired website / magazine. That’s a solid source.

The simplest way here is manually checking sites each day. They are probably ones you are going to anyway. Just start doing so with an eye for what would make a good video: what would be a good article to comment on and give a hot take?

If you want to get more fancy use an app like Feedly to curate your stream of content. You can add all the blogs you want to follow in one place and do through them quickly each day.

Google Alerts is also an amazing source here. You can give it keyphrases and it’ll alert you to content that will interest you.

Here’s a quick example which threw up an interesting article on a female led AI-based sewerage management startup! Interesting stuff!

Next, newsletters. 

Make sure you are registered to the best newsletters in your niche. Newsletters do all the hard work of curating the best and more interesting news for you.

For example in the AI niche on the top newsletters is The Neuron.

Let’s say I open up an issue and see this:

Solid - there’s an excellent video that could be made from this.

Importantly don’t just make a video by screenshooting or green-screening the newsletter itself. This is their content - let them make videos using their content!

Instead you can click back to the original source of the article that that the newsletter gives you - in this case The Verge:

This gives you the original source for your to produce a short video script from. The newsletter has just done the job of curation the best and most interesting content for you already!

Third, be a detective. If you see someone else do a short video about a topic you want to cover you can also go find the original article.

This lets you i) cover that exact same article with your own take and ii) add that website as a new source moving forward.

For example on the left of this image is Brand Nat doing a piece on how the OpenAI employees stood behind Sam Altman during the attempted coup:

And on the right is the original article.

How to find? Simple - just copy the headline into Google and it’ll come up. It’s that simple. Don’t overcomplicate things!

These 3 methods will get you a tonne of potential content. Just keep note of stuff you want to cover (I use Notion) and run through your list to make the videos.

Premium Prompt - My favourite source

Pulling it together

In the next Part we actually make our videos!

Why so late? Because we’re removing all the blocks that stop people from shooting the damn videos.

Tomorrow we’ll look at production which, after all this pre-production, is actually very simple!

Here’s a reminder of what we’re covering this week:

• Part 1: Small but deadly. Why short form content works.

• Part 2: Format focus. What will we make videos about?

• Part 3: Content channels. How to get inspired for limitless ideas.

• Part 4: Rapid recording. How to create shorts easily and in volume.

• Part 5: Repurposing for fun and profit. Hitting multiple channels using short form.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

1. Congratulations (they will be given generously!)

2. Feedback (only if you want it)

3. Getting in front of an audience

In this Part I’ll show you the exact method I use to produce my videos in minutes.

Let’s get started:

Rapid Recording

Video production is a HUGE topic.

But the goal this week is to get you started. No excuses.

We’ll continue to focus on one method in order to simplify the process.

We’re removing roadblocks rather than adding more choices and complexity.

Here’s an example of what we’re going to make:

@promptentrepreneur

Political biases of the main AI models Grok is most left leaning? #chatgpt #ai #politicstiktok

Super super basic.

There are a couple of components:

• talking head (you!)

• background image

That’s literally it.

This allows you to have the article you want to talk about in the background and for you to talk about it. That’s all we need for a simple newsjacking video.

This particular one was about the political biases in AIs. It got around 30k views on Tiktok and took less than 10 minutes to make.

Again, this is not the ONLY technique for producing videos (obviously!). Nor is it the best.

But it is fast and will get you producing without delay. Once you are comfortable producing this sort of video you can expand to other types.

Recording your first video

First up go ahead and download TikTok.

You do not need TikTok to be your primary channel for growth.

We are mainly interested in it because it has a great video recording interface.

We are (in the next Part) going to be distributing our short video on:

• Tiktok

• Youtube Shorts

• Instagram Reels

• X/Twitter

• Facebook

• LinkedIn

And anywhere else you want to.

But we’re going to start the video production in TikTok for now.

Boot up the app and press the big + at the bottom. This’ll bring up the record screen and your beautiful face.

Or my weird looking face:

Click on Effects and scroll along to Green Screen.

You specifically want the one in the top left with a picture of a photo and an up arrow:

Tap that and you’ll see yourself again with the Green Screen interface like so:

You’ll be able to see all your most recent photos here or upload a new photo.

What we want to do is i) take a screenshot of the article you want to cover and ii) select it here in the green screen tool.

This will bring the article up “behind you” in the video recording.

You can now tap on yourself and pinch to change your size as well as drag to move your image around the screen:

Now here’s the cool part.

That big red button is your record button.

TikTok has an amazing feature where when you hold that down it records. When you release it stops.

Simple.

But: you can also delete the last part you just recorded - ie. the last button hold.

This allows you to shoot your video sentence by sentence rather than try to memorise it all.

The process is:

• read your script and remember a line. Doesn’t have to be word for word, just the basic meaning.

• Press record button and deliver the sentence. Release the record button to “lock it in”

• No good? Tap delete and do the sentence again.

• Good? Move to the next sentence.

This little feature (+ the easy green screen functionality) is why I recommend starting in Tiktok. It makes recording your short videos so much simpler than if you were having to deliver in one take.

It also means you do not need to edit. You are editing are you go along by removing bad takes.

So simple, so effective.

Continue like this until you’ve recorded the whole script. And you’re done.

Go ahead and publish. And make sure to share your video in the AI Entrepreneurs Community.

If you are not part of this yet it’s free to join here : AI Entrepreneurs Community.

Premium Prompt - Levelling up green screen

Pulling it together

That was nice and simple right?

As promised we’re covering one method. Keeping it focused. Making sure you act!

In the next Part we’ll look at how we take that one video and distribute it over 5+ platforms.

Here’s a reminder of what we’re covering this week:

• Part 1: Small but deadly. Why short form content works.

• Part 2: Format focus. What will we make videos about?

• Part 3: Content channels. How to get inspired for limitless ideas.

• Part 4: Rapid recording. How to create shorts easily and in volume.

• Part 5: Repurposing for fun and profit. Hitting multiple channels using short form.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

TikTok may or may not be a channel you want to focus on. But it has great video production tools so we started here to simplify production.

In this Part we’re going to take that video and get it out on multiple platforms.

Record once, publish many.

Let’s go.

Let’s get started:

Repurposing for fun and profit

Repurposing is the act of taking a piece of content and adapting it to other channels.

We’ve already done the hard part - we’ve made a short video!

That short video will work on multiple platforms.

For instance:

• YouTube Shorts

• Instagram Reels

Are specifically made for short videos.

As well as these though shorts work well on pretty much any social media platform:

• LinkedIn

• Facebook

• X/Twitter

Where should you be posting? It depends on your market and where the audience hangs out!

Thankfully reposting to multiple channels is nice and simple using the method I’ll show you.

Therefore if you are unsure of the best platform I’d recommend posting on all of them and seeing where the videos work well!

Download your video

Step one is to get a copy of your TikTok video.

Now, you can download directly from TikTok but your video will have a TikTok watermark on it.

Personally I don’t really like it so I use third-party downloading tools.

The one I use is https://snaptik.app/ which works well on phones.

This tool will allow you to download the video file without the ugly watermark.

Add subtitles

I now like to take my video and run it through another app to add subtitles.

This is particularly important for X and LinkedIn where people tend to have their audio turned off.

Having immediate subtitles will let the viewer watch silently or let them know whether it’s worth turning the audio on.

I personally use an app called Captions. It’s free with some premium options.

All you need to do is create > import > select the video and Captions will use AI to transcribe your audio into text and add subtitles.

You select the style of the subtitles (they have some neat looking animations) and then export. Very simple, no fuss, no manual work required.

Uploading to other platforms

For simplicity I’d recommend having all the social media apps on your phone. You just go through one at a time adding the video (now subtitled) and uploading.

Each platform will have slightly different requirements for the title and description.

Thankfully Captions also helps here. Once you’ve transcribed and added captions you can automatically generate a title and description using AI:

Grab those and either use directly or adapt them into your social media posts alongside your video. Either way you’ll save time.

Word of warning on the hashtags - they tend to be a bit crap! Instead enter these manually as required.

Do this on as many platforms as you can, at least initially. And repeat for a couple of weeks - seeing what platforms seem receptive.

You’ll also find that some videos just do better on certain platforms because they resonate for whatever reason. You’ll spot patterns as you post more and more.

For example I find that anything with a vaguely political bent does well for me on TikTok whereas educational tutorials do best on YouTube Shorts. The only way to know this is to post and observe.

Once you have a good feeling of what seems to be working on what platforms you can start to i) focus on those platforms and ii) experiment with formats.

Worry about that later though. For now just get started!

Premium Prompt - Bonus Boost

Pulling it together

You now have ONE tactic to produce short video.

No research, no additional reading, no complications needed.

It’s enough to go ahead and shoot the darn thing.

So…what are you waiting for? Shoot!

Here’s a reminder of what we covered this week:

• Part 1: Small but deadly. Why short form content works.

• Part 2: Format focus. What will we make videos about?

• Part 3: Content channels. How to get inspired for limitless ideas.

• Part 4: Rapid recording. How to create shorts easily and in volume.

• Part 5: Repurposing for fun and profit. Hitting multiple channels using short form.

Keep prompting,

Kyle