Does my business need to post video?

Some, yes — and almost certainly not the kind you are imagining. The reason most small businesses post no video is that they have set the bar at "advert": a script, a presenter, decent lighting, editing. Ten seconds of work happening, filmed on a phone with no edit at all, outperforms that and takes no preparation.

Why it is worth doing at all

Two reasons, and only two. Video is the format platforms currently promote hardest, so it is the most likely thing you publish to reach people who do not already follow you. And it shows competence in a way a photograph cannot — a still shows a finished result, a clip shows someone who knows what they are doing doing it.

That second point is the whole argument for a service business. Skill is visible in motion and invisible in a photograph.

The bar is far lower than you think

The clips that work for small businesses are, almost without exception, unedited phone footage of something ordinary: the render going on, the cake being filled, the dog before and after, the panel coming off, the machine doing the satisfying thing. No talking, no music decisions, no script.

What kills it is treating each clip as a production. Something that takes an afternoon gets made once. Something that takes fifteen seconds gets made weekly, and weekly is what actually matters.

Formats that reliably work

• The process. The middle of the job, not the end. People will watch a surprisingly boring thing being done properly.
• Before and after, in one clip. The most reliable format there is, and it requires you to film the before — which is the bit everyone forgets, because it has to happen on arrival.
• Answering a real question. Twenty seconds, phone propped against something, the answer you give on the phone twice a week.
• The walkthrough. A slow pan across finished work with a sentence about what was involved.
• The satisfying moment. Every trade has one. You have stopped noticing it; nobody else has.

Three technical things that matter

1. Hold it still. Brace your elbows or rest the phone on something. Shake is the fastest way to look amateur and no editing repairs it.
2. Mind the sound. Phone microphones pick up wind indiscriminately, and wind noise ruins more clips than poor picture ever has. If it is blowing, film it as something to caption rather than something to listen to.
3. Shoot vertical, and caption it. Most people watch with the sound off, so anything said out loud needs to be readable. Vertical because that is how the platforms display it and how phones are held.

Beyond that, a modern phone camera is better than most equipment sold for this purpose ten years ago. Clean the lens — it lives in a pocket — and that is genuinely the whole equipment list.

The first second decides it

People are scrolling. A clip that opens on a slow approach or a title card is gone before it starts. Open on the thing itself: the mess, the mid-cut, the interesting frame. Whatever the most arresting moment is, that is the first frame, not the ninth second.

This is the single change that most improves small business video, and it costs nothing but the decision of where to start.

You do not have to be on camera

Worth saying plainly, because it stops more people than anything else. A great many of the best-performing small business clips never show a face — they are hands, tools, materials and results. Being on camera helps if you are comfortable, and being uncomfortable on camera helps nobody.

If you do want to appear: one point per clip, said once, looking at the lens rather than at yourself.

A realistic amount

One a week beats ten in a burst followed by nothing. The value is cumulative and the habit is the hard part, so pick a moment that already exists in your week — the end of the job, the morning prep — and film there.

And keep taking photographs. Video reaches further; photographs are quicker to produce and easier to reuse. A feed of only video is a lot of work for a business of one.

The bottom line

Post some video, and make it the easy kind: ten to twenty seconds of real work, filmed steadily on a phone, vertical, captioned, opening on the interesting frame. Once a week, from a moment already in your day. The businesses getting value from video are not producing adverts — they are pressing record on the job they were doing anyway. See also photographing your own work and what to post when nothing is happening.