I spent $1500 USD experimenting with AI short-form videos so you don’t have to!

TLDR: This post is not AI generated and provides a tonne of value if you are looking to start your AI-based social media channel. This post is not about AI tools for content creation because that depends on the content style and niche; one performing better than other in specific styles. English is not my native language, so pardon me for any grammatical mistakes.

I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated short videos for social media for past 1 year and wanted to share a few observations.

1. 8 to 12 second videos perform best. Anything longer and people swipe.

2. Engagement metrics has changed from likes and comments to more watch time, shares and saves.

3. Uniqueness is the dominating factor. In my opinion, it accounts for 70% of the content but relatability (30%) should not be ignored. Too much uniqueness without relatability also doesn't work.

Golden rule I follow is that first identify relatability and use your own creativity to push uniqueness in the content.

4. Humans are still the most creative machines in the world and can outperform any AI chat platform in creativity aspect.

Golden rule I follow is use ChatGPT for relatability, and your own imagination for creativity and uniqueness.

5. Consistency and a clear niche should be adhered to strictly for a social media channel. Random posting doesn't work.

6. A lot of AI slop being posted these days. Classic example is that of female AI influencers. Yes, the algorithm may push them initially. But after a few months, engagement reduces drastically since content style gets copied quickly and many similar channels appear.

Golden rule I follow is that the consistent character or setting one uses for a social media channel should be hard to replicate. If you can't figure this out, don't start.

7. Simplicity beats complexity in social media which is especially true for AI-based social media content. Current AI works best with slow movements, subtle facial expressions, with mostly static environments. Ideally, this is the gold standard for AI-based social media today.

8. AI-based social media channel requires 10X to 100X effort in the beginning. But once you have figured out your settings (character, style, prompt structure, workflow) something which I spoke earlier, effort drops drastically.

Obviously, creativity effort will always be there. But you don't have to constantly figure out "how" to create. You only focus on "what" to create.

9. Scaling thus becomes much easier with AI. One can test multiple ideas quickly, instead of spending months guessing a strategy, which eventually maximises your return on investment in trying various AI video generation models and identifying which works the best for your content.

If things are done correctly, you can find a winning format in 1 to 2 months (if not, then you might be doing it wrong).

After that, you can batch-create 50 to 100 reels at once. This is where AI becomes powerful. Working professionals can continue their normal jobs. Camera shy people can also start channels. Social media can slowly become a passive or semi-passive income stream.

10. One other realization I had through this journey was this. Owning even one social media page with 100k followers is quietly becoming a real digital asset. And path becomes easier from thereon in creating multiple such pages and digital assets.

Brands want distribution. Creators want audiences. Algorithms reward established pages.

Personally, I also believe that starting today is much easier than starting 10 years later. As AI improves, creating content will become easier. But building an audience may actually become harder because competition will increase in an AI-age. Early adopters could be rewarded later as is mostly the case.

Older established pages might even become real tradable digital assets in the future.

11. AI is still far from replacing real personality-based creators. Those will always have a special place.

But AI can already produce surprisingly good content within its current limits and constraints. And it's only been a few years since these tools appeared.

And also, real personality-based accounts only lasts a lifetime or till the time, one is in good physical health; this could be another thought many people might be having while rooting for AI.

Anyways, these are just my personal observations from my experience. And happy to help if someone is starting out.

So do you agree with me or I got this wrong? Curious to hear your thoughts. And if you have been experimenting with AI content too, would love to hear what has worked for you. Thanks for reading till the end.

Comments

Equivalent_City_7625•4 months ago•2

The big unlock in what you’re saying is that AI doesn’t save work at the start, it just changes the shape of the work. People think “type prompt, get channel,” but the real grind is iterating on format, character, and constraints until you have something that’s both weird and familiar enough to stick. Your 70/30 uniqueness/relatability split matches what I’ve seen: the stuff that works feels slightly off from the norm, not fully alien.

Where a lot of AI creators blow it is they optimise for volume, not for a repeatable “world” that viewers recognise in 0.5 seconds. If someone can’t describe your page in one line, it’s not an asset yet. I’d add: track series-level performance, not individual videos, so you know which worlds are worth scaling.

For testing ideas, tools like Opus Clip and Descript are decent for chopping and remixing, and I’ve been using Pulse for Reddit mainly to see what concepts actually resonate in niche subreddits before I sink time into a new short-form series.

pirsumify•4 months ago•1

Really interesting breakdown. The point about 8-12 second videos and uniqueness vs relatability matches a lot of what I’ve been seeing too.

One thing I’ve noticed from the advertising side is that short-form content like this also works surprisingly well when used as ad creatives.

Many businesses still think ads need highly polished videos, but in reality simple, native-looking short clips often perform much better in the feed because they blend into the platform.

The challenge though is that once a creator or business starts testing multiple formats, things become fragmented very quickly across different platforms.

Between launching campaigns, testing creatives and tracking leads, the workflow becomes pretty messy.

That’s actually something I kept noticing across many accounts, and it’s one of the reasons I started building a platform called Pirsumify to simplify how businesses launch and manage Facebook, Instagram and TikTok ads while testing creatives like the ones you described.

Curious though: have you tried using your AI-generated short videos as ad creatives yet, or only for organic growth?

Smart-Fly-6500•4 months ago•1

great breakdown. most people focus on the AI tool and ignore the creative strategy.

a few things i've seen that match your observations:

- channels that develop a "character" or visual identity perform way better than generic stock-looking AI content. the skeleton anatomy channels are a perfect example. weird character + blunt emotion + repeatable format

- the 8-12 second sweet spot works on tiktok and reels but youtube shorts rewards slightly longer (30-60 sec) because of how monetization RPM works there. worth testing both

- consistency beats quality early on. posting daily for 30 days teaches you more than spending a week on one "perfect" video

for anyone looking to test this without spending $1500, aituber.app does the full pipeline (script to finished video) so you can iterate fast without switching between 4-5 tools. free to try.

i'm the founder, so biased. but the biggest lesson from your post is correct. the tool matters less than the creative strategy behind it.

No_Procedure8667•4 months ago•1

good stuff. the 8-12 second thing tracks with what i've seen too, anything longer and you can literally watch the drop-off happen.

i'd push back a little on the simplicity thing though. simple visuals yes, but i think the first half second matters way more than people realize. a weird or unexpected opening on a simple video beats a polished one with a standard hook pretty much every time.

curious about one thing though. have you noticed any difference in who actually follows you from AI content vs stuff you made yourself? i keep going back and forth on this because views are easy to get but if the followers don't stick around or engage with anything else it's kind of hollow.

Traditional-Tax-7455•4 months ago•1

AI avatars can work, but only when the format feels repeatable and clear. I would test 10-15 posts around one persona and watch retention before touching monetization. That usually makes the next step a lot more obvious.

just_jazzy1020•4 months ago•1

How long did it actually take you to set up each tool before you got something usable? Like the setup and prompt engineering time to get output that doesn't look like generic AI slop haha

Chance-Nebula7164•4 months ago•1

the uniqueness thing is what most people skip straight past, they just want to know which tool to use. been running veo 3 + sora 2 through genviral and the output is noticeably better but concept still carries it, a weak hook is a weak hook. 8-12s stat matches what i've been seeing too.

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Cheap_Parsley_8679•4 months ago•1

honestly this is one of the better posts i've seen on this topic, most people just say "AI content is the future" without actually putting money behind it to find out

the uniqueness vs relatability split is something i've been thinking about a lot lately. too many people go full AI slop mode and wonder why growth stalls after month 2. the hard to replicate angle is real, that's the part nobody wants to do the work on.

the batch creation point hits different once you actually get there. i use Creatify for a lot of my ad creative batching and the "figure out the what not the how" thing is exactly why it works, once your workflow is locked in you're just feeding it ideas and scaling fast.

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