If you’re hip to the world of social media and content creators, you might have heard of YouTube Shorts. They are short-form, vertical video content created with a rtp 77 and directly uploaded to YouTube via the YouTube app. Moreover, you can use either YouTube’s built-in tools or an external video maker online to edit, add animated text, and control the speed of your recorded 15-second video clip to create your Shorts. This online tool from Promo.com is designed for creators without any editing experience.
Infact, viewers of your Shorts can like, dislike, comment, share, or subscribe to your channel while viewing the video. Unlike other short-form video apps like Snapchat Spotlight or Instagram Stories, your Shorts content doesn’t disappear and remains on YouTube. Similar to Instagram Reels and TikTok, Shorts provide viewers an easier way to digest one topic through music video parodies, engaging animations, documentary shorts, and brand content.
In this article, we’ll take a more detailed look at this new short-form video experience, strategies to make your Shorts viral, and useful tips (such as customising your videos with video maker online tools).
Why Choose YouTube Shorts?
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There are some reasons why content creators choose YouTube Shorts over any of the other short-form video platforms. Although it lacks some features that Reels and TikTok have, Shorts does have plenty of advantages, such as multiple uploads all at once and a huge potential audience, since YouTube has 774.6 million active users just on iPhone and iPad alone.
Tips and Strategies for Creating Effective YouTube Shorts
What viewers want from social media is fast and accessible consumer content that they can watch on the go. Firstly, this demand has led to a trend in short-form videos with Instagram Reels, TikTok, and more recently Snapchat Spotlight and YouTube shorts.
Secondly, even though the platform was launched less than a year ago, YouTube Shorts has been receiving 15 billion views every single day. Most importantly, like any other platform, if you want to create viral Shorts and pull in your share of viewers, you need to implement effective and actionable strategies.
1. Keep Your Videos Short and Sweet
Needless to say, consumers who are addicted to social media have the attention span of a goldfish. Nevertheless, this means it can be a little difficult to capture their interest to convey your message. You will want your video to maintain an appropriate length while still getting to say everything you want to. Here are some ideas to keep your videos short and sweet:
- Get straight to the point. This can be done even with complex topics. If you have longer subjects, break them down into sections and create a series.
- Customise the ratio and content to your specific audience. You can use a video maker online to personalise your Shorts. Choose a user-friendly yet versatile video maker online.
- Start with a line that grabs your audience’s attention, then follow it up with a story that will keep them hooked for the rest of the video.
- Avoid on-screen noise and clutter, such as too many people talking in one clip.
2. Create Videos According to Your Target Audience
It’s critical to have a clear understanding of the tone that appeals to your target audience. Is it instructional, enthusiastic, or informative? However, there are some brands or channels that use Shorts for instructional or tutorial content, and some for comedic purposes.
When creating content, you will want to know the tone that works for your viewers. Make sure that’s your starting point. But if it’s your first time and you’re unsure, ask yourself these key questions to determine your target audience:
- Do you want to inspire?
- If you want to be educated?
- How do you want to make people laugh?
- Do you want ideas to promote your business?
3. Optimise Your YouTube Shorts Titles
Title optimization is the process of creating the best possible title for your videos. It’s an essential part of how your viewers find you in the YouTube search engine and helps the site’s algorithm discover your content. Here are some quick tips on how to optimise your Shorts titles:
- Research relevant keywords.
- Use relevant hashtags. YouTube recommends you include #shorts in your description, so its system can recommend them to viewers.
- Limit your titles to 50-70 characters.
- Overlay your titles onto captions.
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4. Create Custom Thumbnails for Your Shorts
Although YouTube Shorts doesn’t have a custom thumbnail feature in it yet, you can do some easy hacks to get around it, such as customising via a video maker online. Here are some variations:
- Select a frame from your Short that represents what the video’s all about.
- Use a video maker online editing tool to customise the look of the image by cropping it, adding text, changing its colour, or inserting effects.
- Download your new thumbnail image in high-resolution and upload it to YouTube.
- You can also create custom thumbnails with a free online thumbnail maker such as this one.
5. Repurpose Your Content
Video content has become an increasingly popular way for content creators to share stories and connect with a broader audience. It has also become a critical part of the social media marketing strategy for many brands. Moreover, you can increase the reach of your Shorts by repurposing them. Here are some effective examples:
- Develop your Shorts video into a longer blog post.
- Create an infographic and share it on your social media.
- Share your Shorts content on sites like Twitter or Facebook.
- Add your Shorts content on Instagram Reels.
6. Add Value to Your Video
Creating a Short with your target audience in mind will add value to it. You will want to understand them, the problems they face, and how you can help them.
- Share a useful takeaway your viewers apply to their everyday lives.
- Motivate and inspire your viewers.
- Tell them something they don’t know about your brand or field of expertise.
- Give them a new idea to think about or something relatable to their own life.
- Focus on creating the type of content that resonates with them.
However, you also need to consider if the content adds value to your own brand. What results do you want from your Shorts? More engagement? More customers? Find the sweet spot between what adds value for your market, as well as for your brand.
7. Create Relevant Content
It all comes down to understanding your target audience so you can give them the type of content they want to see. Most importantly, you can determine this by doing the following:
- Talk to your current audience or followers about the everyday problems they experience and ask them what they want to see.
- Draw up your target audience and make a content plan around them.
- Watch Shorts from other brands in your field and study responses, figures, etc.
- To achieve a wider reach, you can also create newsworthy content based on trends, events, holidays, and what’s currently happening on social media.