Learn 19 tips to level up your video content from Shootsta's Manager of Shootsta Academy.
This is a recording of Shootsta Immerse workshop in Melbourne. Watch for all the tips and tricks. A high level summary is below.
🚀 Level Up Your Video Content: 19 Essential Tips from 10 Years Experience in Video
It’s no secret that video is the preferred communication method for modern businesses. Data shows that companies are producing video content more frequently than ever, with 33% creating videos weekly and 10% daily. Furthermore, over 50% of video production is now handled in-house, highlighting a massive trend in upskilling non-videographers to meet this demand.
However, simply creating more video isn't enough. Despite the surge in production, video engagement rates have dropped—especially for short-form content. This isn't due to shorter attention spans; it's due to higher expectations.
The challenge is clear: How do we raise the bar and meet this growing expectation?
After a decade of working with businesses across the globe, here are 19 distilled tips, broken down into three crucial categories—Planning, Filming, and Sharing—to help you transform your video strategy.
🎯 Part 1: Strategic Planning Tips
Planning is the foundation of effective video. If you skip or rush this step, the rest of the process becomes exponentially harder.
1. Plan Purposeful Video (Start with the 'Why')
Never start creating without a clear goal or objective. A well-produced video that lacks purpose will go nowhere. Ask:
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What is this video for? (Objective)
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Who is this video for? (Target Audience)
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What’s the single most important takeaway? (Key Message)
Asking these questions helps everyone align and ensures you capture the right content.
2. Embrace Your Niche
The more general your target audience, the more general your information has to be—which can render it unhelpful to anyone. Niche down. Cater your content to a specific subset of your audience so they feel the video speaks directly to them. Your content can only be as specific as your audience.
3. One Key Message Per Video
Avoid confusing your audience by trying to cram multiple messages into one video. Instead, separate your videos and give each one a single, focused key message. This makes the content more targeted, easier for viewers to consume, and simplifies the editing process.
4. Plan Once, Create Lots
Find a consistent video format (e.g., interviews, testimonials, explainers) and stick to it until you master it. The more you repeat a format, the easier, faster, and more polished your videos become. Maximize your efforts by batching content—if you have a room and talent booked, film multiple separate videos in that session.
5. Make it Valuable to Your Audience
Your audience is trading their time for your video, so your content needs to be worth every second. Be ruthless—if a shot, joke, or section isn't valuable to the audience, cut it. Your video should be judged on value per second.
6. You Need Volume (Consistency is Key)
A single video will only reach a tiny subset of your audience (typically 3-8% on social media). You need consistent, multiple touchpoints to reach your entire audience and drive action. Don't judge success based on one video; create a steady stream of content to reinforce your key objectives.
7. Use Video to Advertise Video
If you create longer content, use short-form social cuts to advertise it. Crucially, don't just tease. Make every social cut valuable on its own, offering a nugget of entertainment or education. If they find value in 30 seconds, they’ll build trust and be more likely to commit to your longer content.
8. The Perfect Video Structure
Most effective videos follow this five-step structure:
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Hook (0-3 seconds): Grab attention with a question, pain point, problem, or excitement. Do not start with a logo or a generic introduction.
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Promise: Clearly state what the audience will gain from watching the video ("In this video, you will learn X, Y, and Z...").
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Plan: Deliver the core content.
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Payoff: Fulfill the promise made in step 2.
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Ask (Call to Action): What do you want your audience to do next? (e.g., "Sign this form," "Share your suggestions in the comments," "Give me a wave").
9. Story-Driven or Message-Driven?
Determine your video’s purpose:
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Message-Driven: I have information you need to know (e.g., updates, educational content). Get to the point quickly.
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Story-Driven: I have a narrative that will resonate with you (e.g., case studies, testimonials). Ensure you have a relevant, compelling story and character.
10. Craft Engaging Interview Questions
Move beyond generic questions like, "What’s it like working here?" Write down your questions and the ideal answer you want, then rewrite the question to prompt that answer. Narrow, targeted questions make your talent more comfortable and give you highly usable content.
11. Connect with Your Story (The Human Connection Scale)
To elicit deeper, more emotional responses—essential for compelling stories—progress beyond facts.
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Facts: (Context) What’s your job title? What challenges prompted you to engage?
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Others’ Feelings: How did your team respond to the proposal?
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Personal Feelings (Past/Present): How did you feel when you saw your team succeed? How do you feel right now looking back?
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Goals/Ambitions: (Desire) What do you feel you and your team can now accomplish?
Part 2: Effective Filming Tips
Filming becomes significantly easier when your planning is solid, but a few simple filming habits can vastly improve your output.
12. Use Inspiration
Keep a library of video links and screenshots of setups you like—the music, the editing style, the background, the chair arrangement. This serves as a quick, creative spark when you're under deadline pressure and provides an easy brief for your editor (e.g., "Make it look like this link").
13. Avoid Overshooting
Be mindful of the length of your script or the number of questions. A 60-second video is about 125-150 words. If you have 25 questions for a 90-second video, you are overshooting and wasting time in post-production. Sense-check your content quantity against your target length.
14. Save Great Filming Locations
Find the one or two best spots in your office (good natural light, quiet, simple background) and reuse them constantly. You will get sick of the background long before your audience does. Familiarity in video often equals comfort and trust for the viewer.
15. Keep It Simple
Master the basics before adding complexity: good natural light (face the light), eye-level camera, mid-shot framing, and clear audio. Only add more cameras and lights when you've mastered the fundamentals. Start simple, then build slowly.
16. Go from Doing to Teaching
To scale your video output, you must enable others. Move from being the sole video gatekeeper to an educator. If you need someone to film for you, be specific: "Find a quiet room with natural light, have the subject face the window, and prop the phone on a book so it's eye-level." Use the Team Uploader link in your platform to easily collect footage from anyone without requiring them to sign up.
📈 Part 3: Sharing and Iteration Tips
The goal of video is to reach your audience, and success is measured by what happens after they watch.
17. Choose Your Success Metric Wisely
Avoid the "vanity metrics" (likes, shares). Focus on what truly matters to your business objective. My favorite metric is watch time. This reveals engagement and drop-off points, allowing you to learn:
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Did you have a good hook? (Watch the first few seconds)
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Did you ramble or fail to deliver the promise? (Watch the drop-off point)
18. Momentum is Real
The more regular you create content, the easier it gets. You establish a routine, build trust with talent, and your audience gets used to the cadence. Set an initial goal to create 10 videos before you start critically judging performance.
19. Always Make Small Improvements
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel for every video, focus on small, iterative improvements—get 1% better each time. Try a new hook, shorten a section, or use a new background.
Adopt the 75/25 Rule:
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75% of your effort should go into the video formats and content types that you know are working.
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25% of your effort can be dedicated to exploring and testing new ideas or formats.
🔑 The Secrets of the Best Producers
Over the last decade, I've seen four constants in businesses that have successfully transitioned to being video-first:
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Consistency: They have a regular cadence of content creation and sharing.
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Prioritizing Education and Enablement: They invest in training and internal champions to continuously improve skills across the business.
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Lots of Video Creators: They leverage hundreds of people across their global business to contribute to video content, reducing the burden on a single team.
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A Desire to Communicate Better: They treat video as the best tool available to communicate with their audience and stakeholders.
By focusing on these principles and making small, consistent improvements, you can not only meet but exceed the growing expectations of your audience and truly level up your video content.