- It's no secret that short-form video
has kind of taken over the internet.
Critics agree.
According to Google, YouTube Shorts alone
is now averaging over 30 billion views daily.
There's a lot going on here.
Users across YouTube are being bombarded with shorts,
and not just by you,
but from all kinds of people.
So if you would like to stand out,
you have to go out of your way
to capture a viewer's attention.
You want your shorts to be so good that not only
is YouTube willing to share your short
all over the internet,
but people who see it are willing to grab the link
and share it in text conversations
with their family and friends.
If this is something you're struggling with,
there is a recipe you can use
in order to get your shorts
to achieve that level of greatness,
and it starts by using the three Es.
We'll get into the three Es in just a second,
but let me know in the comments,
have you had a YouTube Short take off?
Basically the three Es stand
for entertaining, education,
and emotion.
Your content should embody at least one of these traits
if you want it to have that chance
for somebody to share it with somebody else.
The more ease that you can stuff into this YouTube Short
the more likely it is
that people will find it endearing, engaging,
and be willing to share it with somebody.
Now, let's start with entertainment,
and this really comes from you understanding
who your audience is
and what interests them.
It should be quick and punchy
and overall just intriguing to your audience.
If you can entertain a new viewer
with just one of your shorts,
there's a really good chance
that that new viewer becomes a regular returning viewer.
This entertaining content is going to get them
to perhaps watch the short more than once,
perhaps hit the like button
and all of these signals tell YouTube
that it's okay to send this person
more of your YouTube Shorts.
What you're doing here is forming a bond with them
because you are making content
that they're just inherently interested in,
something that entertains them.
Some examples of this kind of content
could be going over an unusual story with your audience,
or if you have access to something
that not a lot of people have access to,
do some behind the scenes kind of content
and give a unique perspective.
There's also a number of before and after style post
that do really well in this space.
I could probably think of a hundred more,
but at the end of the day,
it's going to come down to the research that you do.
You're going to know what kind of content entertains people
if you really take the time
to put yourself in your viewers' shoes
and understand what kind of content
tends to resonate with them.
But let's move on to educational,
and personally,
I think this is one of the easiest ease to hit.
That's because with educational content,
oftentimes you are educating on something
that you're really familiar with
and really passionate about.
Ultimately, educational content can achieve the same goal
as entertaining content,
but now it's going to help viewers understand
that your channel is one worth sticking to.
Practice explaining something in a way
that's never been explained before.
If you're good at breaking down these subjects
in a way that's actually very memorable,
that's going to play in your favor.
For instance, you might find a short
that's about making banana cheesecake.
That sounds delicious.
I don't know about you,
but if I found that recipe,
and I found it very easy to follow,
this is a short that I would probably go ahead
and bookmark for later.
There's a high likelihood
that I'm going to come back to the short
once I go to the store and get the ingredients
to actually make this thing.
And there's also a good chance
that I share this recipe
with other banana cheesecake loving friends.
Any type of how-to videos, articles, tutorials, guides,
all of these can be very shareable
if somebody knows somebody else
who would benefit from that content.
My personal recommendation here
for educational shorts content
is to go out and try to find the problems
that your target audience
is just constantly running up against.
These can make for excellent educational YouTube Shorts.
The last and most important E
on this list is going to be emotion
because emotions are just part of everybody's daily life.
Your content has the power to appeal to people
on a deep emotional level,
so long as you understand your target audience
and what they emotionally respond to.
Now, understanding your audience in this way
is not something I expect you to do overnight.
It's more of the advanced level of YouTube
and something you kind of pick up along the way.
However, if you want to get started,
I would recommend trying to develop a psychological profile
of your ideal viewer:
what kind of humor do they appreciate?
What sort of problems are they constantly talking about?
What frustrates them?
What pleases them?
What angers them?
To gain these insights in the first place,
I generally tell people
that they need to be spending a lot of time
in the same places they feel like their ideal viewer
is going to spend time.
This could be subreddits,
this could be discord servers,
this could be online forums.
This also means that you put yourself
in your viewer shoes
by literally watching the types of videos
that you yourself are thinking about making.
While you're in these communities.
Pay close attention to the comment sections.
What kinds of questions are people asking
or what kinds of things are popping up over and over again
that everyone's really excited about?
Before you know it,
this psychological profile
is going to start filling itself out in no time.
Once you have this,
it's a lot easier to create shorts
that have a really strong emotional hook
in the first few seconds.
You'll be much better able to put together a story
or take a controversy
and kind of give your take on it
if you understand where your audience is coming from.
Doing your research on this
is going to help you make very well rounded YouTube Shorts
or really long-form videos as well.
The trifecta here, obviously,
is having all three Es in one of your shorts.
But, obviously, that's not going to be easy to do every time
or most of the time.
But I will tell you that you will continue struggling
if you don't have at least one of these present
in every video that you make.
Learning how to stuff as many Es as possible
into your shorts is always gonna be helpful,
but even more so,
now that the YouTube Shorts' algorithm
has seen a little bit of an update.
So click on this video,
learn more about that,
and don't forget to subscribe.