Lauren Bateman breaks down whether to make YouTube Shorts, vertical videos up to 60 seconds. Shorts get roughly 3x the views of long-form content but require consistency and may attract a different audience. The real choice depends on whether you can keep your channel promise and hook viewers in the first second.
Questions this video answers
60 seconds.
No — YouTube will auto-detect vertical (up/down) videos as Shorts; the hashtag is not required.
Vertical (up/down) video.
About three times as many views.
October 4, 2021.
Chapters
Hey, content creators, a question I get lots from youtubers is should I be focusing on shorts or should I be focusing more on creating long form content? Going to answer those questions in this video.
Now, YouTube Shorts isn't a brand new feature. It's still kind of in beta testing mode, but it's basically YouTube's answer to Instagram's Reels and TikTok. Now the great thing about stories is the content is only 60 seconds in length. So you really don't have a lot of time to do a very long form content. It has to be short, quick and to the point. And the great thing is you can just do it with your phone. If you have the YouTube app on your phone, you can easily click the plus button at the bottom of the app and click on the reels button and start recording your reel instantly and have it uploaded to your YouTube channel. Now a question a lot of people are asking, is this something that I should create a separate channel for? Should I just do it on my regular channel? And I think that's really going to dep on your audience. Now for me, my guitar teaching channel, I have 125,000 subscribers and my content, I do educational content. So I'm really focusing on long form content. And what my students like about my channel is that I take my time, I go slow and I explain things clearly. So for that channel, I'm not quite sure if shorts would be a good option for them. I might try by doing some really quick motivational, inspirational things about guitar practice and seeing if it works on my channel. Because the thing you have to be careful with with shorts is what kind of audience are you attracting to your channel? Are you going to get subscribers? And if you do get subscribers, are they going to be the ones you want subscribing to your channel? Are they going to watch your other content? So that's the thing you have to weigh with shorts. If you feel like you can deliver the value you can deliver upon your promise for your channel to your subscribers, to your audience, then give shorts a try. Because right now shorts are seeing three times as many views as long form content on YouTube. And right now, this the demand, the demand for these YouTube shorts is way above the supply. So this is a really great opportunity, particularly if you've got a newer channel, a smaller channel, to get into this YouTube shorts maybe breakthrough, get some views, get some visibility for your channel. Now, for my full time tubers channel, I'm definitely going to start uploading some shorts because I think I can deliver really Valuable tips in a short period of time. And I think my audience would be more receptive to those little shorts. But things to keep in mind when you're doing shorts don't just like when you're doing your long form content is you need to have a good hook. You got to get right to the point. And if you want them to do something at the end, like subscribe or go watch another video, make sure you tell them to do that at the end so that you can really gain traction with your shorts. Now, when uploading shorts, you have to make sure that you're doing it vertical. It is not horizontal. YouTube will automatically detect the that is horizontal video. You don't have to put hashtag shorts into the video for YouTube to recognize it. Okay? If you have an up and down video, YouTube is going to recognize that it's a short video, 60 seconds, all right, Vertical. And it's going to mark it as shorts. And now there's a whole separate section of YouTube that is just dedicated to shorts. So shorts isn't going anywhere. It's providing a great opportunity for a lot of you newer youtubers. But you really have to decide if you're going to be able to uphold your promise to your audience with these shorts. What kind of an audience are you going to attract? Understand that your view durations are going to go down because they're only 60 second videos. But hopefully the goal is that your watch time is going to increase. And remember, watch time is the number one factor with YouTube. So if you can increase your overall watch time, it should be beneficial to your channel. But overall your you have to decide if YouTube shorts is going to add benefit and value to your audience and your subscribers, don't do it just because you have to do it. If you're already having trouble keeping consistency with your YouTube channel on the long form content, you might not want to try adding shorts into the mix. Or if you're someone who is having consistency issues, maybe every other week you're going to switch it up. You do a long form and and then you do a couple shorts. All right? They're 60 second videos. They're really easy to get done. So if you're having trouble being consistent on YouTube, try popping up some shorts every once in a while and that will at least be able to get you out there to get some content. You could even cut out little snippets from your long form content and use those as little shorts on your channel. If you guys are looking for more YouTube hacks and ways to grow your channel on YouTube. You can go check out the videos over there, and I'll see you guys real soon.
