- If you are a struggling YouTube creator,
waking up every morning to no more views
and no more subscribers,
it might be time to try something new.
So, let me pitch this one to you.
You need to start making YouTube Shorts as soon as possible.
Here's why.
Platform wide, YouTube Shorts
now average 30 billion views daily
and YouTube is now actively improving the algorithm,
so that when people watch your shorts,
they might be suggested your long form content too.
In a word, YouTube Shorts represent opportunity,
a massive opportunity, but not for long.
As its popularity grows, so does the competition.
You don't wanna be left behind, do you?
So, how do you do it?
How do you engage an audience like that?
Well, let's break it down into nine
relatively short digestible segment,
and I know this first one's gonna sound obvious,
but really listen to what I'm saying.
Keep your YouTube Shorts short.
You hear this all of the time.
Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter,
because there is more choice and distraction in the world,
but here's how bad it's truly got.
According to "Time Magazine,"
our attention span is now shorter than a goldfishes.
Ooh, that's cool.
And what makes it even more challenging is
that YouTuber have it incredibly easy
for a viewer to swipe off your video when they get bored.
Although you have 60 seconds to make a YouTube Short,
that doesn't mean you should use all of that time,
and with I in mind, let me throw this number at you.
According to "Wired,"
approximately 25% of the most popular TikTok videos fall
between the video length range of 21 to 34 seconds,
and many videos are even shorter than that.
This YouTube Short tells us five things
we'll only find in Japan,
and it clocks in at just 12 seconds in length.
That's a lot of info to pack to such a short space of time,
but it's also one of the reasons
why it's got over a million views in a single month.
Next, consider how your short starts,
how your short finishes,
and if you can bring the two together by creating a loop,
creating a loop, creating a loop.
Unlike regular YouTube videos that play a new video
once the current one has finished,
YouTube Shorts automatically loop back
to the beginning with no pause.
In the most visually hypnotic cases,
videos can loop several times
before the viewer even realizes.
Now, this can have a seemingly impossible impact
on retention.
So much so, that the most successful YouTube Shorts creators
often have an average duration of over 100%.
Let me show you how Dental Digest loop our videos.
This is the start.
- Let's find out which ice cream is safe for braces.
Ice cream sandwiches.
- [Rob] And this is the end good
- Good thing they stopped selling these things,
because they're not approved.
It's time to be brushing, but first...
- [Rob] And this is what happens
when you loop the two together.
- They stop selling these things,
because they're not approved.
It's time to get brushing, but first,
let's find out which ice cream is safe for braces.
- [Rob] It's almost impossible to tell, isn't it?
Also, very cool editing.
The latest buzzword we use here at vidIQ is "curiosity,"
and with shorts, it's no exception.
People always have the urge,
the curiosity to know what, when, where, why and how,
and you can do that to your audience
by creating a gap in their knowledge,
if you can achieve this at the very beginning of a video,
but it's your job to pay off by the end.
- Here's why saving money in the bank makes you poor.
- How does that work?
- So, you give them money.
They give you, like, 0.001% interest,
and then they loan it back to you for 3%, 4%, 5% interest.
- I think this guy's onto something.
What should I do?
- So what do I do?
I invest it, put it into assets
that are going to beat inflation.
- Oh, yeah, time to invest
- For me, I use real estate.
I love real estate,
because I think real estate will always beat inflation,
personally, my opinion.
- Real estate?
- Now, keep enough in the bank for an emergency fund,
but anything above that, invest it.
- If I gave you three dollars right now,
what would you invest in?
Let us know in the comments below,
and that's a very simple way to engage with your audience.
Asking questions are great, casual conversation starters,
and have a very positive engagement impact on your videos.
Think about the type of questions
that spark debate amongst your audience, and ask them.
Which is harder to get,
1,000 subscribers or 4,000 hours of watch time?
Let us know in the comments below.
Now, this next one is super important,
because the first three seconds of your YouTube Short
are absolutely critical, because it pulls triple duty.
Your first three seconds
are basically thumbnail, title, and hook
all rolled into one.
This is because of the fundamental difference
between longform content and YouTube Shorts.
Choice, you almost always pick
what longform video you're going to watch next,
whereas, for shorts, YouTube decides for you.
So, the first thing a viewer sees isn't a thumbnail,
isn't a title, it's your video.
You can do this by teasing something that's about to happen.
Having captivating visuals,
having an engaging question or all three.
- Your brain is broken and I'm gonna prove it to you.
90% of Princeton students
cannot answer the pretzel question.
Let's see if you can do it.
So, if it takes five machines five minutes
to make five pretzels,
how long does it take for 100 machines to make 100 pretzels?
- Don't say 100.
Don't say 100, Rob.
You're nervous as a trap,
but everyone's looking at you, answer.
Oh, 100.
- If your answer was 100, you're completely wrong.
- Ah!
To solve the problem of a viewer
never seeing your YouTube Shorts thumbnail
or your YouTube Shorts title, you can use captions.
At the very beginning of a video,
you can put captions on screen
that create a suspenseful, intriguing title.
For example, let's say you want to make a YouTube Short
about a cheap alternative
to a GoPro HERO10 action camera.
Instead of going straight into the products review,
start with a headline grabbing, attention seeking caption,
titled like this.
With this caption in place,
more people will want to watch your video
through till the end,
in order to find out the answer to the question.
- This is what a salary of $1.5 million looks like
after taxes in California.
- Next up, eye catching visuals.
Oh yeah, we need some of that.
- [Man] Here's what would happen if the Earth was flat.
The center of gravity on a flat Earth
would be right in the middle.
- So, wherever possible, you can use visual storytelling
to get your point across to the audience
in a short amount of time, showing as opposed to telling.
You can incorporate text, animation, B-rolls, and more
to create dynamic and engaging video content.
A lot of this type of stuff can be solved
from places like Storyblocks and other stock footage sites,
and what you may have also noticed in this video
and many of the other shorts we've seen today
are custom captions.
Now, these are not captions YouTube automatically generates.
These have been added during the editing process
before being uploaded to YouTube.
As well as adding a visual flare to your videos,
sometimes captions can be easier to read,
than the crappy audio coming out of your smartphone.
Captions can also help viewers with hearing problems
or when the video is not in the viewers native language,
or if a viewer is in a loud environment
where it's not easy to hear the video, such as on a bus.
Again, there are services out there
that can help you with this type of stuff.
Try descript.
It's pretty awesome.
And then, of course we have the tried and tested strategy,
nothing beats experience.
It may take you 10, 20, 50 even 100 YouTube Shorts
before things start to click,
but the good news is you can make shorts a lot quicker
than you can longform YouTube content.
So, get into the creator mindset.
Use YouTube Shorts as a content playground.
Have fun with it.
Here's five surprising facts you didn't know about YouTube.
So, if you think I would be a good catch
instead of swiping right,
make sure you double tap on the screen.
That pesky Elon Musk, he gets everywhere.
So, go on then, which of these
was the most surprising YouTube fact to you?
Yeah, just like that.
Now, I've got two fascinating points to share with you.
First of all, these lights, throughout the video,
have slowly been running out of battery.
So, rewind to the beginning
to check out the continuity challenge I've got right here,
and far more importantly,
in some way, shape, or form,
monetization is coming to YouTube Shorts
within the next 12 months,
and I'm not talking about
the silly, half-baked creator shorts fund
that's due to expire at the end of 2022.
I'm talking about something more rewarding,
more reliable, more sustainable.
I'm not sure what it is yet,
but YouTube have committed to it.
If you don't act now,
you could miss out on a huge financial opportunity.
So, now that you know all of the strategies
behind making YouTube Shorts,
you've gotta actually create them.
This is where you start.