10 YouTube Shorts Ideas For Business

Have you got a minute? YouTube channel growth is only 60 seconds away. YouTube Shorts are vertical, and in some cases you can even do square videos that are less than 60 seconds long, and they are designed to go toe-to-toe with TikTok and Instagram Reels. This is YouTube's answer to competing with those mega platforms. Sheryl Plouffe, your video strategist. In this video, let's talk about some ideas. What can you do as the business owner, the coach, the consultant, the entrepreneur to use this powerful opportunity to create YouTube Shorts for business? So I've got 10 ideas for you and you can do them all. I plan to do them all and you can too. So here's number 1. Number 1 is to do a comparison video. A this versus that. That might be, let's say you're a consultant and you're comparing this strategy to that strategy. Maybe you are a coach and you want to compare one way of doing things to another way of doing things. Maybe you want to compare different tools or software depending on what your niche is and what your industry is. So a comparison video of this versus that. Remember, these videos are very short and a minute goes by pretty quickly. The second type of video is a behind-the-scenes video. So this is, for example, I'm in the process of turning one of our bedrooms into a video studio. So I could do, and I likely will do, a behind-the-scenes video showing the process and the location where I'm going to be designing this new video studio. So what is a location that you could show your viewers and really invite them in a behind-the-scenes look of your environment? Number 3 are tools of the trade. Now, as a video person, I can speak to this because there are so many tools of the trade. And really, I could dissect each and every one of those tools and create individual videos for them. You might choose do maybe a series of 3 different tools of the trade depending on what they are. Remember, short videos, less than 60 seconds long. So tools of the trade. This could be something that you utilize in your business, either to run the business or to do the work and fulfillment work with your clients. So tools of the trade may be a great option for you to create YouTube Shorts. Number 4, myth-busting. These are thought reversal type videos. This is really big because One of the things that you want to be thinking about as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, is positioning yourself as an authority, a leader, a resource in your industry. And that's really largely what I do is help offline authorities to build their business online with video. How we do that is with expert positioning. So a thought reversal or myth busting type of video can be really beneficial because it shows off your expertise. It shows off your knowledge and your insight as a thought leader in your space. Number 5 are point of view videos. These are videos where you share an opinion or some advice on something that is really a problem that your ideal clients and customers face. This could also be a micro review of, of something in your industry, like So it's really thinking about this more from the standpoint of your belief system. What do you believe? What is your point of view about your industry? I'll use myself as an example. I really believe that, especially in the post-pandemic world, that entrepreneurs should really think about using live video first and get that rolling before they start to embark on learning how to edit, because that's a skill set that requires more practice. So that could be an example of me, you know, busting the myth that you need to start with learning how to edit videos. That's not necessarily true. So what is something in your industry that's a point of view that you hold, a belief system that you hold that you can share in under a minute? Number 6, this is fun. Personality. Actually, just maybe sharing some humor. Showing your personality is not a bad thing to do, even from a business perspective. Sometimes I think as business owners we feel like we have to be in the box and that we can't show who we are as far as human beings, you know, as people. I think that it's great to add just a little dose and a little sprinkling of personality in there. Maybe you're telling a joke, make it industry-specific, don't make it just sort of this random thing. You do want it to tie back to the value proposition of your overall channel, but humor personality and fun do have a place in YouTube Shorts. Number 7 is a before and after. So this is, it's like a testimonial but not as overt. So showing a before and after, maybe results-driven before and after video in a short-form format. So it's so-and-so, you know, I started working with so-and-so and her problem was this, and then what we did was this, And so before she was at this stage and then after she was at this stage, that would be effective in a short-form video. You might even be able to show the results on screen as a next level of that. Showing the visuals of the before and after would be especially effective in a YouTube Shorts format. Number 8 is facts. Just the facts, ma'am. Facts and figures and compelling statistics or startling statistics from your industry. That can be really effective. And again, you could even show that on the screen. It might be a screenshot that you could get that demonstrates that, or it could be you adding text on top of the screen depending on your video production system. So facts, figures, and statistics can be— especially startling statistics can be really effective and can be relayed in a short-form type of video. Number 9 are experiments or demonstrations of something. So perhaps you have done something in your business that you could truly demonstrate on camera how it works. You know, so thinking about how we could show something or demonstrate or show an experiment that you did. It's like maybe it's some kind of metrics that you could show on screen even and say, okay, Let's— we did an experiment that showed that X number of things had to happen before X and Y and Z happened. You know, so thinking about experiments and demonstrations of some kind in your industry could be really effective in under a minute. And number 10 are compelling clips, maybe even interview clips or excerpts from interviews that you have had, maybe longer form, but you're just taking a little portion of that. And extracting it out and turning that into a YouTube Short. Maybe you record some sections and some, some narration on camera before and after the clip. But utilizing those interviews might be an effective way for you to, again, position yourself as an authority, as a leader, and really be able to drive people to subscribe to your channel. So let's talk about the subscription piece here. This is one of the big benefits of doing YouTube Shorts because of the way that it shows up in your, in your feed. So if you're on YouTube and you're watching YouTube videos on your phone, you would scroll this. So next time you're watching a video on YouTube on your phone, do this. You're going to scroll down a little bit and you'll see a section. It's called the shelf. And on the shelf, you'll see a series of vertical videos in a carousel format. That's the shelf. And that's where you ultimately want to get. If you can get your videos and YouTube's algorithm decides it's not something that you can do with hashtags or any kind of other strategies. It's really up to the algorithm to decide if they're going to push your video onto the shelf or bring it onto the shelf. But that's ultimately where you want to get and where a lot of creators are seeing the most growth, because when it's there, the little subscribe button shows up. That's the biggest benefit that you will gain from a business perspective as far as YouTube Shorts goes. So do think about that as you create your, um, videos. A couple of things that you might want to think about in terms of not, uh, things that you don't want to do with your YouTube Shorts. This is not the place to do— well, you can't do long form, but this is not the place to do tutorials at length, because a tutorial, by in, in essence of what it is, is that it is a longer form type of demonstration, a walkthrough, step-by-step process. So it's really challenging to do that in a short form. So tutorials is really not the place to do this. Another thing to note is that when you're doing YouTube Shorts, you don't want to start— you don't want to use YouTube Shorts to tease. Sometimes people think that, oh, the YouTube Shorts are short videos to tease other videos on my channel. You want to be thinking of YouTube Shorts as standalone content that they can stand on their own two feet. We want people to subscribe to our channel and be intrigued enough from the videos that we've created in, in this format to be able to want to subscribe and watch some of the longer form content. But don't use YouTube Shorts to drive people as a teaser toward the long form content. It needs to be a standalone piece.