Thinking about adding YouTube #Shorts to your content strategy?

Over the past few years, consumer behaviour has been shifting towards short-form content. This has led YouTube to rival TikTok and roll out a new bitesize feature of its own: YouTube Shorts.

What is a YouTube Short?

Shorts is a video feature that allows YouTube users to create short-form videos up to 60 seconds in length, both live and pre-recorded. The vertical 9:16 aspect ratio, best suited for the mobile viewer, enables users to create and publish videos on their smartphones using a variety of in-built video creation features.

Launched in 2020 in India, YouTube Shorts has been rolled out in the US, UK, Mexico and Canada with aims to be introduced worldwide in the coming months. With over 6.5 billion recorded daily views as of March 2021, the feature appears to be a hugely popular rival of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

According to Sherman: “the real core of what Shorts is about is enabling that next generation of creators”. With YouTube’s competitive landscape of highly skilled established creators, Shorts offers new creators a chance to break through and showcase their creative skills by enabling easier video creation.

It is important to understand which audiences will engage with YouTube Shorts. According to a study by Google, younger generations were more likely to seek out short-from content, meaning that Gen Z and Millennials will be seeking these short, catchy, user-generated videos.

How does YouTube Shorts Work?

Shorts do not have a standalone app like TikTok, but they can be found on the homepage within YouTube’s mobile app. They also appear in a shelf at the bottom of a channel homepage or under the results for a #Shorts search.

Clicking on a Short brings the user to a vertical video player experience to watch clips which auto-play and loop until they swipe vertically from one video to the next.

Other features of the video player include:

• Thumbs up and thumbs down icons to like and dislike a video

• Commenting and sharing features

• Subscribe button

• Related content with the same audio and sound remixes

• Creator’s channel name to easily access their library of conte

What does this mean for brands?

Shorts is a huge opportunity not only for creators, but for brands too.

The launch of Shorts will allow YouTube to add another string to its bow and tap into the bite-size content world which TikTok has currently been dominating. With YouTube being not only the second largest search engine, but also the largest social media platform, its expansion into digestible short-form content will enable brands a chance to breakthrough in a less saturated flow of content, build awareness, create a community, drive engagement and reach younger audiences from all over the world, on all devices, at all times.

What can brands do?

• Test and experiment: understand the new format, identify a subject to talk about and be innovative

• Use existing content: for the sake of speed and cost efficiencies, use existing footage where possible and repurpose assets across platforms

• Consider your strategy: integrate Shorts into your existing content strategy, but don’t let it distract from your overarching content goals

• Learn and evolve: analyse how Shorts perform as well as how your audiences engage and interact with them

Whilst Shorts is YouTube’s attempt to embrace the new generation of content creators with bitesize, meme-like content, brands need to understand how they can innovate and tap into this new creative format. With Shorts in its infancy, now is the time to take advantage.

Need help?

We are YouTube experts who will help manage, integrate, optimise, amplify and evaluate your YouTube content and channel, ensuring you reach the right audience and drive high quality engagement and action rates.

Get in touch to find out how we can help with your YouTube marketing strategy: stuart@navigatevideo.com