Balancing Long-Form and Short-Form Gaming Content on Social Media

Short-form media is a powerful way of marketing your YouTube or Twitch channel. Capable of condensing key moments from your gaming content into a short, engaging clip, it’s easy enough for short-form content to go viral on social media – and provide you the associated benefits.

The challenge comes in finding the right balance between your short-form and long-form content, the right platforms to put it on, and the right clips to use. All this starts with having fundamental long-form content that’s good to work with. As a consultancy for gaming content creators and studios, the experts and MinMxD have all the tools you need to find the balance that’s right for you and bring your channel’s growth into the stratosphere.

To start with, it’s important to have a solid understanding of the difference between long-form and short-form content. From there, you can build out your awareness of each, and hone your skills in producing quality outputs.

Long-form content refers to content that’s generally longer than a couple of minutes, and can go up to hours long. The main way to identify it is where it is located, however, as long-form content takes the form of YouTube videos (not Shorts), livestreams, and videos on demand (VODs). While it can be good to share links to your long-form content, this won’t make as big of an impact on people who aren’t subscribed as short-form content will due to the time investment required.

Short-form content tends to be a minute or less, and is typically made from edits or clips of your long-form content. It will most often be found on platforms like TikTok, Reels, Shorts, or Threads, and can build up online traction or go viral through social media. From your short-form content, you can link off to your main channel or full videos, providing an enticing snippet and showing people where they can find more of the same.

To make it easier to produce both long-form and short-form content, you need a good basis to work off. Long-form gaming content can be time-consuming and challenging to perfect, but with the right plan and structure in place, you will find it far easier to achieve the results you’re after.

1. First, consider your current situation in your market. Find out what other content creators are doing differently, and learn how you can incorporate their techniques into your videos. Pay attention to things like titles, descriptions, game choices, and even their balance of long-form vs short-form content, as these can all play a crucial role in your ultimate strategy.
2. Adopt the practices you’ve learned from your explorations in step one and see what works for you. Not everything another creator does will be something valuable to you, but it’s good to experiment with the options and find out what sticks.
3. Create schedules and templates that make it easier to work. Keeping up with your long-form content production cycle requires you to keep your processes and goals in mind throughout the process. This means preparing beforehand, segmenting out your time, and applying the successful content creation formula you uncovered in step 2.
4. Continue to adapt and evolve. Even after you’ve found a comfortable way to produce quality long-form content, you don’t want to let yourself stagnate. The most successful content creators are constantly evolving, paying attention to shifting market conditions and leading techniques for attracting viewers and producing videos.

If you’ve followed these steps, you should have a great basis to work off for creating long-form content and preparing for your future growth.

What’s most important about balancing short-form and long-form content is having enough variety.

Focusing too heavily on long-form content over short-form content may be better for your active viewers, but you will likely find it harder to gain new ones – resulting in channel stagnation.

Likewise, too much short-form content may make it easier to draw in new viewers, but without enough content to entertain them, they’ll quickly fade away. What’s more, not having enough long-form content could hurt your monetisation.

The right balance between long-form and short-form content is different for each creator. For example, if you make long videos or stream regularly, then more short-form content is recommended due to the density of your long-form content. On the other hand, having lots of shorter long-form videos (yes, we get the irony!) will help you work the algorithm and keep people hooked – meaning fewer short-form videos are required.

Find out how to plan your gaming content >

If you’ve already got some quality long-form content you want to repurpose, then great! You’re already well on your way to making short-form videos that captivate and convert. Using your existing content not only cuts down on the creative process, but acts as a hook into your longer videos, improving your overall performance while drastically increasing production efficiency.

Here are some tools and techniques you can use for editing short-form content:

• Use a quality video editor. Examples include:
  • Adobe Premiere
  • CapCut
  • VEED
  • Opus
• Capture highlights. Take a look at your best moments, and consider metrics like “most replayed” on your YouTube videos.
• Add subtitles. These make it easier for viewers to follow along, and improve your retention.
• Position content strategically. Adding other content or value to your short-form content like branding, imagery, meme edits, or background footage can help improve its success.

Now that you know how to balance and produce high-quality short-form and long-form gaming content, the next step is to put it into action. Working off a robust strategy with all the latest insights will make it much easier for you. At MinMxD, we offer a partnership to help your gaming channel succeed, with expert strategies and cutting-edge techniques to put your content on the top spot. To find out more and get started, contact the team today.

Find out more with our guide to making short-form video content >

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