Keep reading for more tips about how to use YouTube Shorts and ways to take advantage of this feature.
How to monetize YouTube Shorts
As a business owner or creator, you may be thinking, “how can I earn money with YouTube Shorts?”. After all, utilizing YouTube to bring in extra revenue is standard for tons of creators and brands.
Unfortunately, here is the bad news for you. The length of YouTube Shorts is shorter than it is of other standard YouTube video content. So, you can’t run an ad on Shorts, which makes them hard to help you earn money.
The good news is that to counter Shorts being ad-free, YouTube introduced the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million endowment that anyone is eligible to take part in by creating unique Shorts that “delight the YouTube community.” YouTube will reward creators depending on “whose Shorts received the most engagement and views to reward them for their contributions.”
Tips to Use YouTube Shorts
Get straight to it
Make the first few seconds of your video compelling and catch the audience’s attention right off the bat.
Keep it snappy
Shorts aren’t a full-blown video and work best if the content isn’t only one continuous sequence. Instead, play around with different edits to keep your viewers engaged.
Think about replays
Shorts are played on a loop, so think about how your content will come across if it’s continually repeated.
Add value
Don’t just create for the sake of creating. Instead, give value to your viewers via your Short and align the content with a target, e.g., gain engagement by 10% or get 1,000 more subscribers.
What’s your hook?
What will make a viewer come back for extra? Think about how you can hook in your viewers to view your Shorts repeatedly.
Get the vibe right
YouTube Shorts isn’t where to add the shortened versions of your long videos. Much like Instagram Reels and TikTok, Shorts is the place to provide your audience short, compelling, and easily digestible content, for instance, hot trends or behind-the-scenes looks.
7 ways to use YouTube Shorts
Ideal for reaching consumers with shorter attention spans, YouTube Shorts is the right way to gain extra engagement for your channel, increase your subscribers, and showcase your brand’s authentic side.
Just below 40% of businesses are already utilizing short-form videos to promote their product or service. If you still hesitate, you may fall behind. So, be creative!
Promote your regular channel
Use YouTube Shorts to advertise and grow your regular channel. Each time you post a Short, it’s a chance for your content to get a view. And that view may turn into a channel subscriber or someone who engages along with your major channel content.
The subscriber box is all the time visible when you post a Short, making it simple to subscribe if people like what they see.
Shorts also allow you to navigate YouTube’s algorithm because your channel will see a rise in engagement, one of the key ranking elements for how YouTube prioritizes content. This should improve the number of people who are exposed to your channel.
Showcase less polished video
Not every video you create for YouTube must be pre-planned and polished to perfection. Behind the scenes (BTS) video footage will give your viewers a sneak peek into the background of your channel, brand, and products or services.
Behind the scenes, footage can take on many kinds. Follow these a couple of ideas to get started:
- Company events
- Product launches
- Product updates or coming soon
- Office updates, e.g., a renovation
BTS videos help establish your brand as authentic (an enormous plus to tapping into the authenticity-driven Gen-Z) and help deepen consumer belief. After all, people buy from people, and showcasing your brand’s human aspect with BTS is an effective way to establish a strong relationship with your potential customers, subscribers, and viewers.
Popular US singing shows The Voice used Shorts to show exclusive behind-the-scenes footage.
Tease your audience
Think of Shorts as the amuse-bouche of video marketing and use the format to whet the appetite of potential leads. For instance, you might post a 30-second Short about an upcoming product release, along with a CTA to drive viewers to a longer YouTube video that goes into extra detail and directly send your viewers a landing page to sign up for early access.
Dental Digest is, without a doubt, one of the most successful Shorts creators. Here, they’ve created a short teaser review of a well-known toothbrush line. The Short works because it’s snappy, engaging, related, appeals to youthful viewers, and positions Dental Digest as an authority in its field.
Create engagement on the fly
YouTube Shorts allows your viewers to engage with your brand on the fly rather than commit the time to watch a full-length video. And because 5% of viewers stop watching videos after the one-minute mark, snappy, short-form content ensures that your audience watches till the end, receives all your messaging, and engages with your CTA.
Jump on trends
In 2021, the world-famous K-pop group BTS partnered with YouTube and introduced the Permission to Dance Challenge, and invited audiences across the world to record and share a 15-second version of their new hit song.
YouTube’s global head of music, Lyor Cohen, said: “We are humbled to be partnering with them [BTS] on the ‘Permission to Dance’ challenge on YouTube Shorts, helping to spread happiness and build lasting connections amongst their followers on YouTube across the globe.”
Shorts supplies brands and creators with a chance to jump on a trend, e.g., a dance move or challenge that’s doing the rounds on social media. We’re not saying that you could commit to every dance challenge that does the rounds on social media. Nonetheless, keeping on top of video trends will position your brand as current and up-to-date and enhance your chances of going viral.
Level up your user-generated content
YouTube Shorts are a simple format to ask for user-generated content (UGC) as a result of Shorts can be created by anyone, anywhere, with access to a smartphone. So, for instance, you might send your new product to a group of brand loyalists and ask them to create YouTube Shorts that showcases the unboxing experience to help increase your brand reach.
Save money
Creating YouTube Shorts is a cheap video marketing technique. Anyone can create this format with a smartphone and eliminate hiring an artistic agency or video marketing company to create your video content.
YouTube Shorts should be an essential part of your video social strategy, not become your entire social strategy. Work with your social and content teams to uncover opportunities to include Shorts into campaigns, and always have a purpose for your video. For instance, to retain and delight current customers, push your audience to subscribe to your channel and generate extra YouTube engagement.