If you’ve noticed your social feeds turning into an endless scroll of short clips, you’re not imagining it. Video is getting shorter, faster, and more likely to be a slice of something bigger rather than a full sit-down watch.
Our own Mickey Mellen wrote about this recently on his blog: Clips are the main consumption method for the majority of the internet. He pointed to a conversation between Joe Rogan and MrBeast, where MrBeast argued that short clips have become the primary way most people experience video now; even sports highlights get watched more than the full game.
The takeaway for small business owners: if you’re only creating long-form content and hoping people watch it start to finish, you’re leaving most of your audience behind.
So does that mean you need to post constantly?
Not exactly. In a follow-up post, Mickey argues there’s not much of a middle ground on social media. You can post once a week and keep a steady pulse, or you can go all-in like Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s famously posting around 1,000 times a day. He says posting two or three times a week barely moves the needle compared to posting once. For almost every business we work with, “having a pulse” beats burning out trying to go viral.
That’s good news if you’ve been feeling behind. You don’t need a content studio or a team of editors. You need a consistent rhythm and a smart way to turn what you’re already creating into short, watchable pieces.
Where consistency and clips meet
This is exactly why we build affordable marketing around repurposing, not reinvention. If you’re a small to mid-sized business owner already recording a podcast episode, hosting a webinar, or filming a quick customer testimonial, you’re sitting on raw material for weeks of short-form content. You don’t need new ideas. You need a system for cutting them up.
We use a simple model with our own clients:
- 1 anchor piece (a podcast episode, webinar, or long-form video)
- 5 social derivatives (short clips, a quote graphic, a couple of LinkedIn posts)
- 10 smaller lines worth reusing in a newsletter, a sales email, or a proposal
One recording session on a Tuesday can carry your brand through the rest of the week without you touching a camera again.
A word of caution on “average” marketing
As Mickey wrote in an earlier post about AI and marketing, simply showing up consistently with solid, “average” content already puts most small businesses ahead of their competition. You don’t need to chase every trend or match a creator with a full production team. You need to show up reliably, in a format people are actually watching.
What this means for you
If your website hasn’t been updated in a while and your social presence has gone quiet, you’re not behind because you’re missing some secret formula. You’re behind because no one’s turned your existing work into the short clips people are actually consuming.
That’s where experienced consulting comes in; sometimes the fastest win isn’t a full rebrand or a new content calendar. It’s a short conversation about what you’re already creating and how to get five more days of mileage out of it.
Curious what a repurposing plan could look like for your business? Reach out and let’s talk about turning your next recording into a week’s worth of content, no agency price tag required.
