Shorts vs Long-Form Content | Which is Better?

YouTube shorts or long form content? Which one should you be doing the most? We're going to talk about it right now. So when I coach students, they're always asking me, lauren, should I just be focusing on YouTube shorts? Ever since YouTube has brought in shorts, it has been a great way for new content creators to get some visibility and get discovered. But I don't want students to think you should be ignoring long form content. There's pros and cons to both. So let's talk about it. YouTube shorts. It's a new thing that YouTube's doing. So they're sending a lot of traffic over to shorts. They want people to be uploading shorts, so they're giving a lot of organic reach. This is a really great thing for new content creators because I've worked with some content creators who have less than a thousand subscribers and they've gotten thousands of views on a short. So you can see how powerful it is to upload shorts. Now, the thing with YouTube shorts, you know, if you're a bigger creator like I am, and you know, my other channel has over 200,000 subscribers, if you're uploading shorts, it's going to make your watch time go down. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing because it's going to help make your watch time hours go up. So just be aware that your average watch time, because shorts are, you know, they're under 60 seconds. So it's going to make the watch time on your channel go down. But that's not necessarily a bad thing because the overall watch time of the full channel versus your videos is going to go up. Now the thing that a lot of YouTubers are finding hard is they're like, okay, how do I get people, people from the short form content over to the long form content. And usually you have to have a good call to action. But I want you to think about your experience using YouTube. I know my experience, you know, on Instagram using Reels or YouTube using Shorts, you know, I start, you know, you go down the wormhole and you start scrolling through videos and you find one that you like and then you watch it and then Instagram knows, or YouTube knows that you watch that short piece of content and start showing you more stuff from that creator. And usually for me, my process is after I watch maybe a half a dozen to a dozen of someone's videos and I like a few of them, I'm going to all of a sudden go over to their profile and I might follow them or I might subscribe. Okay, so that's what's going to happen. And that's what I tell people. Think of shorts as brand awareness. It's a discovery method. It's a way for people to find your brand. You're not really going to build a relationship with a custom customer through a YouTube short. So I think they're important to do. I'm getting more on board with YouTube shorts. I have primarily focused on long form content, but I'm realizing they're a great way to have, you know, brand awareness and get my name out there to people who may not know who I am. Now on the flip side, the long form content is where we're really going to dive in and start building that relationship with our audience. Listen, speed dating, you know, 60 seconds, you're not really going to form a relationship with someone in little 60 second tidbits. Okay? Where are you going to form a relationship with someone when you sit down and you have a conversation with them? So think of your long form content is the way of you finding your audience, your tribe of people who's going to want to interact with you and buy things from you. Okay, can you sell from shorts? Can you sell from short form content? Absolutely. I, I know some people who do it, but I think the real relationships are built around the long form content. Because I can tell you a little bit more about myself, right. You know, I can tell you what I'm doing. Hey, you know, I'm Lauren Bateman. I have a YouTube channel. I'm a successful guitar teacher and I help other educators be successful on YouTube and use it as a lead generation tool to sell courses. That's what I do. And you know, I can't really do that. I can't really tell people that all the time. And in a little 32nd short or 62nd short. So the long form content helps you deliver your message better. It's a way for you to share your values with people. You see my little personality? I call my personality corner over here and I've got my Ninja Turtles. Okay, got my Ninja Turtles, I've got my Camaro, I got my guitar. So a lot of times when people watch my YouTube videos, they're like, is that a Camaro? Is that, you know, because my audience, my audience is an older audience, people in their 60s and 70s and it's a male audience too. So I know when they see that Camaro, it's going to catch their attention. They're going to be like, is that a Camaro? Over there and then I respond and say yeah I have a 68 Camaro. I also have, you know, I have a 2019 SS Camaro. I love the Camaro so it allows me to start having a relationship with that person and connecting with them on a different level. Bottom line I think you should be doing long form content and short form content. This way you get the brand awareness and the discovery from the short form content and then you get to build the relationship, foster that community so that you can start making more sales on your courses through the long form content. So if you're a YouTuber that sometimes gets caught in that rut of not wanting to make content and you need that extra motivation. Lauren, what do you do when you're not motivated to record content? Well I'm going to share you my tips and my process how to get out of my rut to make sure I record all my content. Go check out that video right over there Sam.