How to find video formats that already work
Stop guessing what to post. Look at what your market watched to the end.
First brand read free. No filming.
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The short answer
To find video formats that already work in your niche, look for outliers: Posts that did far better than the account that published them usually does. Collect ten from accounts that serve your audience, group them by structure, and keep the structures that worked for at least three different accounts.
Updated
What an outlier looks like
Illustration, not real data: one account’s last 20 posts, each as a multiple of its typical post. The 3× line is the rule of thumb from step 2.
Finding them, step by step
- 01
List accounts like yours
Competitors and neighbours: anyone whose viewers could be your buyers. Five to ten accounts is enough.
- 02
Look for outliers
On each account, find the posts that clearly beat its usual views. A rule of thumb, not a statistic: about three times the account’s typical post. A post that beat its own account tells you more than a big account’s ordinary post.
- 03
Collect ten
Save the links. Ten outliers from one market is a better sample than a hundred random viral videos.
- 04
Group by structure
Ignore the topic. Sort by how they are built: myth and fact, ranked list, before and after, price reveal, a day in the life.
- 05
Keep what repeats
A structure that worked for at least three different accounts is a format. One that worked once may have been luck.
- 06
Test on your topic
Make one post per format. The formats your audience finishes and saves are yours to repeat.
By hand, or done for you
By hand
An hour or two a month scrolling competitors and keeping a list. It works, and it is the part most people stop doing.
With Percify
The brand read finds who you compete with. Composer, Percify’s daily round of post ideas, then starts every idea from a real post that performed, rewritten in your tone.
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Your questions, answered
Short answers to what people ask next.
A post that performed far above the usual for the account that published it. It signals that the format, not the size of the account, did the work.
Three to five is enough to post every day without repeating yourself. More matters less than using the ones that work.
Break it into hook, beats and payoff. Percify does this from a TikTok, Reel or Short link, or a clip of up to 2 minutes.
They wear out as more accounts use them, which is why the search is never done once. Percify reads each post’s numbers and leans the next ideas toward what your audience responded to.