July 3, 2026
Short-form video — think Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts — gets recommended to every small business right now, and the honest answer is that it's genuinely useful for some businesses and a poor use of limited time for others.
It tends to be worth it if: your work is visually interesting to watch (a finished install, a before/after, a process people are curious about), you or someone on your team is comfortable being on camera without it feeling forced, and you can commit to a realistic, sustainable cadence — even one short video a week done consistently beats an ambitious plan that stops after two posts.
It's probably not worth it yet if: your work isn't visually distinctive, you're already stretched thin on the basics (a complete Google Business Profile, a working website), or the idea of doing it consistently already feels exhausting — a few great posts followed by six months of silence usually does less for you than no account at all.
If you do start, the actual content bar is lower than it looks from the outside: a phone camera and natural lighting outperform an over-produced video that took a week to make. The algorithm rewards consistency and relevance far more than production value.
A reasonable way to test the waters without much investment: pick one platform, commit to four weeks of one short video a week, and honestly assess afterward whether it generated any real inquiries — not just views — before deciding whether to keep going.
