Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Digital SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
Growing a small YouTube channel can often be a frustrating experience for up-and-coming channels. The platform is extremely competitive, and the algorithm can often feel almost random, sometimes pushing your videos to achieve a healthy number of views, while other videos underperform, leaving you to wonder where you went wrong. YouTube Shorts can be a great way to help boost channel performance, both in the early stages of content creation and for already established channels.
Why YouTube Shorts are Important
On traditional YouTube videos, it is very difficult to be able to gain traction on YouTube search pages due to the highly competitive nature of most content. Outside of getting your video to appear on Google’s SERP, most people’s views will typically come from a combination of subscribers already following their channel and some new viewers from Google or YouTube. This is what makes YouTube Shorts so important; shorts are much more viral in nature, and don’t require subscribers to get views. YouTube will show your shorts to new users early on if they like similar content, and if your shorts perform well, a snowball effect will take place, which can see your views rise rapidly in a short amount of time.
How to make a Short Perform
There are a couple of key elements to making sure a short performs optimally, and most importantly, the hook. In the opening 2 seconds, your script needs to be able to explain what your video is about and be engaging enough for audiences to want to learn more, making it the most crucial part of your video. Nailing this and keeping people intrigued is probably the most important part of any short, but the pacing is also something that needs to be taken into consideration. If people are watching your shorts in full or on repeat your much more likely to get a viewership boost from YouTube. Pacing your short so it doesn’t lose people’s interest is important, keeping it engaging all the way through.
Turning Shorts into Subscribers
While shorts are great for attracting new viewers, one way in which they are not as reliable as long-form videos is in turning viewers into subscribers. Due to the short-form nature of YouTube shorts, people often flick through from one to the next and don’t have much incentive to stop and look around your channel, which people typically do more often with longer-form content. Therefore, finding ways to use your shorts to attract users to your channel is important. A good way to improve subscriber count with shorts is by including a call to action, such as breaking the short up into 2 parts and explaining you have a part 2 on your channel or linking your shorts to full-length channel videos, thus eliminating the limitations of shorts.
Understanding how YouTube shorts work allows you to accelerate the growth of your channel to new heights, wether your just starting or you’re already an experienced YouTuber.
