Key Elements of Successful Videos

Today, we are continuing our series for the month of January 2026 on the topic of key elements of successful video. So we talked about last week long form versus short-form video, how you can use that long-form video and content to repurpose it into short form.

But today we’re gonna talk about the Key Elements of Successful Videos, whichever form that it is, but specifically when you’re doing more of a short form video and you’re creating it for the purpose of marketing. So this is going to be using that shorter form video and creating that for the purpose of marketing to get someone’s attention quickly

It’s not going to be so much the long form video or the snippets that you’re using from that long-form. But when you’re wanting to create a reel, a TikTok or a YouTube short and you’re wanting to get a person’s attention, this is what you need to do.

If your intention is to sit down and record shorts or shorter form video. This is what you want to do. These are the elements, if you will, and there are five of them.

Element #1 – A hook that grabs the attention of your audience in the first few seconds.

You can do this with a question, a surprising fact or a bold statement. If you go and watch some Tiktoks or some reels, you’ll see people doing this all the time. They will say, do you know what the number one way to get blood out of your clothes?

But if you sit down and you think about it. You can think about things that you can do. I like to do questions. I also like to do like surprising facts or things like that, but obviously these are the types of things that you want to plan ahead. Sit down and create your examples. You don’t wanna wing it when you’re doing this type of video.

Definitely want to have a very specific strategy. We’re going to talk a little bit more about strategy next week on the podcast. So you need to learn how to do hooks. And in fact, I at one time, and I probably have it somewhere on my computer, I went and was learning about this type of video and I downloaded what was called a hundred viral hooks for any business.

I’m going to give you a few examples of the hooks. Three rules to follow if you want ______. So this is how you incorporate your niche or your element or area of expertise into these hooks is you, okay put that, fill it in the blank.

I wish I knew this sooner. If that’s your hook, that could be for anything that you wish you knew sooner. Did you ever do ______? Never do it again. Okay. Four things to never say to a new mom, for example, or this is a fill in the blank. Four things to never say to a new mom.

If you’re talking about grief, for example. Four things to never say to someone who just lost a loved one. My best five video marketing tips. Okay, so to the topic, the fill in the blank is where I put in the video marketing. Are you really committed to _______? And then whatever, are you really committed to such as losing weight in 2026?

These are hooks that get their attention. One thing I wish I had known about _______ years ago. In fact you can Google or even go to ChatGPT and ask for some hooks and you will find these. But this was something I downloaded from The Creative Social, so I will actually give them credit for this.

Element #2 is captions and texts.

This is essential because there are so many people who watch videos with the sound turned off or very low. My husband likes to watch videos like YouTube shorts before we go to sleep or he’ll wake up in the middle of the night, can’t go back to sleep, and he’ll go through YouTube shorts and he knows I’m asleep so he will do it with the volume, either all the way as low as he possibly can or off.

That’s where the captions and the text come into play because so many people do that. So, captions and texts are a must. In most of these different programs that you’re creating, these reels or YouTube shorts on, they have the option to add captions and, or of course you can add text as well, but I always add captions so that you can listen and people can choose whether they listen or just read the caption.

Element #3 is a vertical format.

Most people are watching your videos on a mobile device, so it needs to be in that vertical mobile device friendly form. So that optimizes it for mobile viewing.

Element #4 is authenticity.

You want to be real. You want to be relatable, and you want the content that will perform better than those like polished ads. It’s okay if you don’t have a fancy studio to record these videos in, it’s okay if you’re recording using your iPhone.

You don’t have to have a fancy camera to record these videos because people won’t relatable people that they feel like they can relate to, they can get to know that sort of thing. So being real and relatable and not having, all this fancy stuff is 100% okay. It is actually better for you to have that when you’re creating these videos.

Element #5 is a clear call to action.

A couple podcasts back, I talked about the fact that you want a purpose for every video that you’re making, and this is extremely important with these short form videos, because people are going to consume them so quickly. What is the end game?

What do you want them to do? You have to tell them what to do next. So before you end the video, you’re wanting to tell them what to do next:

Buy my book now.
Comment below.
Go to the link in my bio.

You have to tell them exactly what you want them to do because otherwise they’re not going to respond to your video.

They’re not going to do something. Next, you have to have a call to action and that is gonna make or break whether or not your video is going to really give you any return on your investment of the time that you spent making that video. So use your time wisely. Make sure you have these five key elements of successful videos

I want to challenge you to this week to make some short form video and let me know how it goes, because I want to see you doing these videos and share that with me. If you’re not already a member of the Christian Business Advantage podcast Facebook group, go over to Facebook and search for that and we can start sharing our videos in there.

I want to encourage you, to cheer you on as you create short form video to market your business.

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