How to Produce Short-Form Gaming Content

Short-form gaming content is a great way to take larger concepts and top moments from your popular videos, and reframe them so they can reach a larger audience – instantly engaging them with your content, brand, and channel. However, with such a large impact, surely they’re equally as difficult to make?

As it turns out, they’re not – so long as you take the right steps to prepare. At MinMxD, we help content creators like you to enhance the content they produce on every platform. In this article, we’re going to focus on short-form videos: how to make them, why they’re effective, and what to consider when executing your gaming content strategy.

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The first step to putting out short-form content is to make it in the first place. Sometimes it can be as simple as clipping a bit out of a popular video and posting it on various social media platforms, but there is some nuance involved if you want to see the greatest results.

Software

Starting with the right software will help your clips truly shine. Consider using recording software like OBS or Streamlabs, then finish of the clips with editing programs such as Adobe Premiere or CapCut.

Settings

As well as the software you use to record, you’ll also want to ensure your game settings are configured properly. Ensure your settings like resolution, frame rate, and graphics are all optimised to deliver clear and appealing visuals. You should also make sure that audio is clear and balanced against background music and sound effects too.

Content

Short-form videos do, in fact, need to be short. Try to keep clips concise, around 20 to 60 seconds at most, and have them focus on the best bits of your content. Add captions for accessibility, and consider using trending music or sound effects to enhance engagement and help your content reach more people.

Find out more about the importance of accessibility in content creation >

Consistency

The main purpose of short-form content is to let people know who you are and what you’re all about in a bite-size dosage. Not everyone will look at the channel name on the clip, so you need to make your branding clear.

You can do this by adding branding such as logos and colours to the video, and by adding short intros or outros (typically just a still frame), helping you appear consistent and professional across all your clips.

Short-form content is a great way to capitalise on efforts you’ve already made, only taking a step further to drastically increase your reach and visibility. It also offers other key benefits, which include:

• Creating a captivated audience. It is easy to scroll through many clips in a short time, rapidly building an image of you and your content with your audience that will encourage them to watch more videos.
• Higher engagement rates.Concise content tends to attract more viewers and maintain higher engagement levels, which means better growth and returns on your time investment.
• Increased shareability.Short clips are easier to share on social media, increasing the chances of your content going viral – or at least reaching more people than otherwise.
• Platform algorithms.TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts prioritise short-form content, boosting your organic reach.
• Quick turnaround.As the main streams or videos are likely already finished, short-form content allows for faster production, enabling you to post more frequently and keep up with fast-paced gaming trends.
• Build a loyal following.Consistently posting engaging clips helps to grow your audience quickly, ensuring your efforts at developing your channel and brand bear fruit.

You can post your short-form videos to a variety of different platforms. It would be best to post to them all as this would have the greatest reach, but time constraints may mean you’re limited. So, here’s our breakdown of the top options to help you make the most of your time:

TikTok. A mainstay in short-form media, and one of the most popular platforms in the world, TikTok is the perfect place to post gaming clips and should absolutely be in your gaming social media strategy.

YouTube Shorts. If you’re already posting on YouTube, then Shorts are probably the way to go. Plus, YouTube is home to a huge audience of gamers, helping you access this viewer base and drive them to your channel.

Reels. Whether on Facebook or Instagram, you can leverage your following and provide great community engagement through stories or posts, while also having access to monetisation options.

Twitch Clips. Similar to YouTube Shorts, Twitch Clips offer a way for you to post short clips from your longer streams on the platform you’re creating on. This gives you direct access to your audience, while driving people straight to your channel when they come across your clips.

The most impactful short-form gaming videos will be driven by an underlying strategy that’s designed to create the maximum growth for the minimum investment. Your strategy should include a number of different aspects alongside short-form content to ensure you’ve got the greatest chance at success.

Leveraging trends is a good first step to take. With TikTok in particular, trending sounds, challenges, memes, and games are all good things to take advantage of and integrate with your content to ride the algorithm, increase discoverability, and appeal to your audience.

Meanwhile, cross-promotion is another important aspect that involves advertising your main content on lots of different platforms (see above for some examples). Posting to more than just one platform may seem redundant, but not everyone uses each platform, and not everyone on a given platform will see your content. Putting your videos in more places gives more chances for them to be seen, hence increasing growth for what is realistically very little effort compared to making the videos in the first place.

Engaging with your audience can help people feel at home, encouraging them to come back and see more videos or streams. Respond to comments, create polls, use community features, and foster a strong connection with your followers.

Finally, being consistent is always a vital part of content creation that can sometimes go overlooked. By creating a posting schedule your audience can rely on, and being consistent with the frequency and timing of your posts, you signify to both audience and platform that you’re a steady source of quality content.

Short-form content is part of your larger gaming content strategy – and a vital one at that. It saves you time and broadens your reach, helping to boost your growth with what is really a minimal investment.

Build your strategy today with MinMxD. We help content creators like you to achieve their goals, using data and market analysis to form a plan that’s tailored to your needs. To find out more, get in touch!

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