The 101 of YouTube Shorts
With entertaining short-form videos being the hot commodity as of late, YouTube Shorts has also grown in popularity. Shorts are YouTube's answer to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and other viral video platforms but since Shorts are limited to 60 seconds and are set to autoplay, they offer an excellent way to get your content in front of the right viewers and subsequently draw them into your channel. You can either create a short to directly post on the channel right from mobile, or upload a short vertical video from desktop. It’s very simple to get started if you haven’t already!
After upload, your Shorts appear in a number of places within the YouTube app, including the Youtube homepage! This makes them highly discoverable and a great way to attract new viewers. But how do you get going? We’ve broken it down to a few best practices to get you on the right track!
Get straight to the point: You want to grab people’s attention right away and stop them scrolling past your content, be sure your videos pack a punch in the opening seconds!
Upload 9:16 vertical videos: You can post square videos to YouTube Shorts but be aware that black bars will appear above and below your content.
Add pinned comments: Video descriptions are hidden in the options menu in YouTube Shorts (the three dots in the bottom right corner!) - give your audience more to discover by adding a link to your channel as a pinned comment.
Thumbnails: YouTube Shorts will still appear with the rest of your videos, so keep your channel looking clean and entice your viewers to watch by adding a simple, enticing thumbnail that fits with your other video thumbnails.
Loop your video: One clever way to keep viewers watching is to take advantage of the fact that YouTube Shorts videos automatically loop. You can find inventive ways of making your videos go back to the beginning from the end to keep your audience hooked!
While other short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram are slightly leaning toward a younger audience, YouTube Shorts are unique in that they have a broader and more diverse audience mix that allows content of any subject, business, or niche a chance at gaining a wider audience. This way, you don’t have to feel intimidated jumping right in! And since they’re short and easy to create, you can maintain a regular publishing frequency and keep your audience engaged in between more complex and lengthy pieces of content or video. Time to give it a try!
If you need some direction or help getting started give us a call! LASK is always happy to assist…
