The Skinny On (YouTube) Shorts

Even if your business isn’t yet using YouTube as an advertising vehicle, you’ll gain a lot from how to implement Shorts to improve performance.

And if you’ve been at the YouTube game for awhile, you should know the value that Shorts offer.

What are “Shorts”?

“Shorts” are YouTube’s version of short-form content.

Or their attempt to compete with shorter video content that’s available on Instagram and TikTok – and watched by millions of people.

These videos, in fact, have been viewed by 1.5+ billion people on YouTube monthly.

So they’re worth paying attention to.

Numbers to pay attention to

And stats are backing up the idea that Shorts are valuable for content creators.

• Performance. Channels creating Shorts and longer videos are out-performing channels that aren’t generating Shorts.
• New Audiences. Shorter content is attracting a different audience than longer-form content, which should help assuage fears that generating Shorts will hurt long-form content performance. That’s primarily because the platform separates short- and long-form content recommendations on the user’s home page.
• Algorithm Insights. YouTube has provided some insight into how it gauges Shorts performance. Instead of connecting metrics to the number of Shorts videos on a particular channel, it’s dictated by if people are watching – not skipping over – the Short.

Getting started

If your brand is ready to start creating Shorts, here’s what you should know.

1. Experiment with different formats and how you use them.
2. Try using Shorts to convey certain types of information.
   For example, your Short could act like an advertisement to increase awareness and drive new customers who are problem-aware to your YouTube channel.
   Then, your longer-form content can dive deeper into topics that appeal to consumers who are further along in the customer lifecycle, such as solution-aware or product-aware.
3. Just make sure you follow the same rule for creating content as you would with any medium: Offer value.

Here are a few additional details to know about creating these videos:

• Videos are limited to 60 seconds in length. This can be one continuous video, or a few 15-second videos together.
• You can use your own music with the video, but if you use YouTube’s music library, you can only publish a 15-second video.
• Shorts disappear in the user’s feed, unlike content in other platforms like YouTube Stories, Snapchat or Instagram Stories.
• Shorts’ viewers can perform all of the same actions as they can with longer videos, like comment, dislike or like, or subscribe.
• You must include “#shorts” in the video’s title or in the description.

If your business needs help creating a YouTube strategy or investing in Shorts, give us a call.

Our marketing experts are ready to help you gain exposure on YouTube, quickly scale channel growth and increase engagement.