Video marketing success in 2026: Best practices, smart tools, and how to scale what works

Key points

• Social media users spend hours daily on TikTok, Reels, Shorts, and LinkedIn, making vertical, engaging, and educational or search-driven video essential.
• Real user content builds trust and scales your video output without overwhelming internal teams.
• AI editing and Emplifi’s unified platform let teams create, schedule, and measure video performance across channels efficiently.
• Clickable tags, shoppable UGC, and Emplifi Live Advisor turn engagement into measurable revenue.

There was a time when content marketing was all about written copy like blogs and landing pages. Now, teams are balancing newsletters, emails, podcasts, videos, and more – often all at once.

73% of marketers say short-form video will dominate their content strategy in 2026. With multiple platforms to optimize video for – including TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn – it can feel overwhelming to build video marketing into your strategy with limited budget or resources.

In this guide, we’ll help you get started by breaking down the video marketing trends shaping 2026, the best practices that actually drive engagement, and the tools social teams rely on to schedule, analyze, and monetize video at scale.

The 2026 landscape: Platforms dominated by video

Video has taken over social feeds, with US users aged 18 to 24 spending up to 73 minutes a day on TikTok alone.

Audiences increasingly turn to video for education, discovery, and decision-making, whether they’re researching products, learning new skills, or simply searching for inspiration. Video indexing, in particular, has become an integral part of SOSEO (Social SEO), helping users discover brands that answer their queries.

Platforms like Instagram have followed TikTok’s lead, prioritizing vertical video in Reels and rewarding creators who win attention in the first seconds. But the trend has evolved beyond viral dances and quick entertainment.

From virality to value

The defining video trends of 2026 are:

• Edu-tainment: short, practical videos that teach something useful while remaining entertaining
• Searchable video: content designed to answer specific questions and surface in social search results

CeraVe’s TikTok turns product knowledge into a fun challenge, teaching viewers about skincare while keeping them entertained. By mixing education with playful competition, it shows how edu-tainment can make learning about your brand shareable and engaging.

Best practices: The new rules of video engagement

You might think you need bigger budgets to create video content. But that isn’t always the case. In fact, authenticity is valued over polish with 65% of consumers saying User-Generated Content (UGC) influences them, while only 14% are influenced by celebrities.

Instead, focus on understanding how people actually consume content. Here are three best practices you should adopt with every video you make:

• The silent majority: Your audience could be watching videos on mute, making captions non-negotiable. Burned-in captions improve accessibility, and can increase watch time and completion rates.
• The 3-second hook: Algorithms and audiences alike demand value immediately. If your message doesn’t land in the first three seconds as recommended by Meta, you risk losing your audience’s attention.
• Vertical-first design: Designing for 9:16, full-screen mobile video is a must. Horizontal video repurposed for mobile can look unprofessional, making audiences switch off.

The 2026 video tool stack

There are a couple of key elements to consider when you’re building your 2026 video tool stack:

• Quick editing & trend participation: You need to be able to move quickly when new trends emerge. Tools like CapCut and InShot are ideal for fast, trend-driven edits that keep brands relevant in real time.

• AI efficiency tools: Platforms such as Descript (text-based editing) and Runway (AI video generation) help teams move faster, repurpose content, and experiment with formats without starting from scratch.

The missing layer: management and measurement

Where most teams struggle isn’t always creation; it’s the admin of publishing, coordination, and reporting on video content.

That’s where Emplifi comes in.

Emplifi acts as your video publishing and analytics platform, allowing teams to:

• Schedule video across TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook, and LinkedIn from one platform
• Maintain consistent workflows across teams and regions
• Analyze performance across channels instead of in silos

Get a demo with Emplifi to see how you can schedule video social posts across all your channels at the perfect time for maximum engagement.

Strategy at scale: The COPE method

The brands winning with video in 2026 are using the COPE method – Create Once, Publish Everywhere.

For instance, using a video editing tool like CapCut or OpusClip can turn a single 30-minute webinar into:

• 10-15 YouTube Shorts
• 5 Instagram Reels
• Multiple TikTok clips
• LinkedIn thought-leadership videos

The key is respecting platform nuance. When you’re planning your content, think about the audience you want to reach on each platform, and tailor your videos to suit. For example:

• TikTok: Opt for raw, trend-driven, experimental content that cuts through.
• Instagram Reels: More aesthetic, lifestyle-focused, and brand-polished than TikTok.
• YouTube Shorts: You want to be searchable, evergreen, and value-led for maximum impact.
• LinkedIn: Choose professional, insight-driven, talking-head content over scrappy humorous videos.

Consider your audience and what will resonate with them. 31% of Gen Z are most likely to purchase when humor is used, for instance, whereas only 16% of Boomers would do the same.

Innocent Drinks nails short-form content with playful humor and a quirky skit that spotlights their smoothies. This type of video stops the scroll and feels authentic which can lead to stronger engagement with their target audience.

Community-powered video: Scaling without burning out

Brands must publish significantly more video than they did a few years ago, just to keep up. That’s where the real challenge begins: with over three quarters of marketers saying they’ve experienced burnout at least occasionally, it’s worth finding a way to increase volume without placing extra stress on your team.

This is where User-Generated Content (UGC) becomes a strategic advantage.

UGC enables brands to dramatically increase video output without overwhelming internal teams, while also delivering something audiences trust more than polished brand creative: real experiences from real people.

PowerStop used Emplifi to source, manage, and publish UGC content, including video, at scale, turning community content into a core part of its video strategy.

As a result, they could: 

• Publish around 250 unique UGC pieces per week
• Gain 20,000 new TikTok followers in a single month
• Lean on UGC becoming a primary shoppable video asset

Shoppable video & live commerce: Turning views into revenue

Video can act as a revenue channel for your business in a few different ways, including shoppable video and live commerce.

Live and shoppable video growth

Clickable product tags, livestream shopping, and interactive video are rapidly transforming social platforms from places of inspiration into places of transaction.

Instead of pushing users out to external product pages, shoppable video keeps discovery, consideration, and purchase in the same moment, reducing friction and capturing intent while it’s at its peak.

Beyond brand-owned content, user-generated formats play a crucial role too. Emplifi’s data suggests that shoppable UGC can boost engagement by up to 28%, reinforcing the importance of authenticity in driving action.

Bringing in-store expertise online with Emplifi Live Advisor

Emplifi Live Advisor enables real-time, one-to-one video conversations between online shoppers and in-store experts, directly on a brand’s website.

It delivers personalized product guidance at the point of decision, helping customers buy with confidence without ever leaving the site.

Measurement: Moving beyond views

A view alone tells you very little about impact. On many platforms, a three-second auto-play – often with the sound off and no real attention – still counts as a ‘view,’ even if the audience scrolls straight past.

The metrics that matter in 2026

Instead, focus on metrics that reveal how people actually interact with video content. For example:

• Average watch time: Shows whether content is holding attention beyond the hook.
• Completion rate: A strong signal of relevance and content quality.
• Engagement density (comments per 1,000 views): Reveals how compelling the message truly is.
• Traffic and conversion impact: Connecting video performance to downstream outcomes like site visits and sales.

Together, these metrics paint a far more accurate picture of what’s working, and what’s just creating noise.

Emplifi’s unified analytics platform helps brands understand not just what performed, but why. By unifying data across networks, you can compare performance, spot trends, and link engagement back to meaningful outcomes.

Final thoughts: Harness the power of video, without the headache

The demand for video isn’t slowing down, and neither is the pressure on social teams. But chaos doesn’t have to be the cost of scale.

By pairing smart creation tools with centralized publishing and analytics, brands can move faster without losing control.

Emplifi gives teams the structure they need to:

• Schedule video across all social platforms
• Measure what actually matters in one unified analytics platform
• Turn engagement into revenue with shoppable UGC and Live Advisor

Get a demo to see how Emplifi can help video become an integral part of your social media strategy in 2026.