- How is it that a 58 second video got me 750000 views?
Well, it probably won't surprise you to learn
that it had something to do with YouTube Shorts.
(upbeat music)
Hello, I'm Dan and this is vidIQ.
I made a Short on my gaming channel
and it's doing pretty okay.
I wanna know from you guys
in the comments below have you tried Shorts,
and I'm especially interested if you're a gaming channel,
how have those fit into your video strategy?
If you have heard already
YouTube is testing out a new feature
called YouTube Shorts (bell rings)
and you're mostly gonna see these in the YouTube Mobile app,
but you may have seen us talk about them here
on the vidIQ channel.
Rob has done a whole playlist full of videos
that I recommend you check out.
Basically, though, to produce a YouTube Short
it needs to be in a vertical or square format
and at least 60 seconds long.
It also helps to put hashtag #shorts
in the title or description.
With all that outta the way, let's talk about what happens
when a YouTube Short gets picked up by the algorithm
and explodes.
In addition to the content you see me make here at vidIQ,
I also have my own personal gaming channel
that I like to test some stuff out on.
I get to upload maybe once or twice a week to it.
When YouTube Shorts came around,
as a gaming channel I wasn't exactly sure
how I would make them or how they would work,
but I decided to post a couple and just give it a try.
In the first 48 hours, the first Short I posted
actually ended up in the YouTube Shorts shelf as we call it.
It very quickly gained a lot of views
and then very suddenly didn't get any views at all.
Meanwhile the second Short I posted just kinda sat.
Some of my subscribers saw it,
but other than that it didn't do a whole lot, until it did.
(upbeat music)
The video in question
was a Minecraft tutorial for beginners,
How to Make a Map in Minecraft 1.16.3.
In its first seven days it gained about 337 views,
mostly from people who were finding it through browse
or my current subscribers.
As days went on, though, it exponentially started
to get more and more views.
However, it took about a month
before the video began to skyrocket.
At this point there would be days
where the video would get anywhere
between 50 and 100000 views in just 24 hours.
And now it's the number one video
on my entire channel of all time.
It's three-quarters of the way to a million views
and it's earned me more than 5000 new subscribers.
Now I wanted to share this with the vidIQ audience
for a couple of reasons,
mainly Shorts are a relatively new thing
and there's not a whole lot we currently know about them.
But I also want to help those of you out there
who have maybe, A, seen similar success,
or B, want the success for yourself,
better understand Short form content on YouTube
and how it works.
So there's two obvious questions here.
How did this happen and what have I learned from it?
(upbeat music)
Now if you know anything about Minecraft,
you know that creating a map
is actually a beginner level task,
but I chose this topic for a reason.
As I sat down to determine
what my first two Shorts were gonna be about,
I sat down to a little bit of keyword research,
as everyone should do.
Now there were a lot of beginner level questions
that people had about Minecraft,
and I was surprised to see just how many people
were curious about how maps actually work.
Now of course the goal of this video
wasn't to rank in search for how to make a map in Minecraft,
but rather, to get on the Shorts shelf on YouTube.
So whether you're trying to rank in search
or trying to get on the Shorts shelf,
the same YouTube lessons apply.
Always make content that is valuable to the audience.
Shorts still show up on regular YouTube as well,
so I still went out of my way
to create a proper thumbnail, write a description,
plug in some tags, all for the benefit
of anybody who finds this video outside of the Shorts shelf.
Keep in mind with over 700000 views,
even these smaller percentages of traffic
represent thousands of people finding this video
and not watching it on mobile.
But what does this all mean for you and your channels?
Well, for one thing it tells us
that YouTube Shorts aren't just for people
who dance in front of their phones.
(upbeat music)
Gaming channels can also benefit from these.
Based on everything I've learned
I wanna share just a few tips with you
when you're going out and creating your YouTube Shorts,
and the first one being to actually create Shorts
I record my videos like I always do, in a widescreen format,
and then in my editor I just chop off the sides.
Shorts should pack a lot of value
into a very small amount of time,
so you're going to need to teach people something
really quickly or try and have a really strong hook.
Make people laugh as quick as you can
and your video will get high retention.
That tells YouTube that this is something worth sharing.
Finally some Shorts could take 24 hours to blow up
while others could take over a month, so be patient.
My latest shorts are doing all right,
but who knows where they're gonna be
in the next 20 or 30 days.
No matter what kind of a YouTube channel you have
I do hope this gave you some idea
as to creative ways you can be using YouTube shorts
in your strategy.
And if you already are, let us know in the comments
how it's going.
We'll see yo in the next one.