Transcription
These are the top 10 YouTube Shorts tips that I've discovered by posting to YouTube Shorts for the past 6 months. This video is not a YouTube Shorts tutorial, so we'll save that for another. And if you stay till the end, there'll be a bonus tip that'll guarantee that you'll know everything you need to know about YouTube Shorts.
We all know the basic YouTube Shorts tips: they need to be vertical videos, 60 seconds or less. It helps to have a niche and post consistently. But what about other tips and strategies that you can use when you're posting your Shorts videos so that they could see more success and more results?
Tip number one: Start with throwing spaghetti at the wall. If you have short-form content on your Instagram or TikTok, start repurposing that to YouTube Shorts and schedule it out to post every single day for the next 30 days. This is what I did when I first started posting to Shorts because really, this is going to get your foot in the door. You'll really be able to test to see what videos work well for you and your niche, and specifically what videos does YouTube Shorts like.
To remove watermarks from your TikTok videos, you're going to go to snaptik.app. And to remove watermarks from your Instagram Reels videos, you're going to go to snapinsta.app. And then you could go back, study your analytics for those videos, test to see what was the drop-off point, which videos had the most watch time, and start to recreate the things that were working well.
Tip number two: When writing your YouTube Shorts title, the first 30 to 40 characters are the most important. Why is it the most important? Not because of an algorithm thing, but because of the viewer's perspective. On desktop, when scrolling through the homepage on YouTube, the viewer only sees about the first 30 characters of your YouTube title. Versus on the mobile app, when the user is scrolling on their homepage, they will probably only see the first 40 characters of your title. So really, the first 30 to 40 characters is going to help you capture your scroller's attention and get them to click through to your video.
Tip number three: Put your call to action in the pinned comments of your video. So this is something that I learned the hard way. I'm somebody that I do have a few call to actions in my videos. If you don't know what a call to action is, it is basically when you tell somebody the next step for how to engage with you. You could say, "Double tap this video," "Comment below something that you want to see next," or "Comment any questions you have." You could also say, "Go to the link down below and download this freebie," "Take my free training." So that's a call to action.
My mistake was I was putting call to action links in the description. But we're kind of monkeys trained by TikTok, and when we're watching short-form videos, naturally the audience will go to the comments to scroll through the comments. So when you put your call to action in the pinned comments of your YouTube Shorts, that's going to be one of the first things that somebody sees. Whereas if you put it in your description, it's actually really hard to get to that place and really inconvenient for the nowadays trained user.
So I'm watching YouTube Short, it comes up, I click on it. Naturally, I want to go to the comments because that's where the fun is, that's where we could engage with other people. So your pinned comment is there. If somebody wanted to go to the description, they would have to go out of their way, click the three dots, view description, and then the description will show up. So putting all the goodness into your pinned comment is the best way to go.
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Tip number four: Something that worked really well for me when I threw my spaghetti at the wall was using emojis in my titles. So anytime I had an emoji that started the title, it was like a money tongue emoji, you know what I mean? Or like the mind-blowing emoji. Anytime I had an emoji at the beginning of my title, those videos had better click-through rates and better view times or watches than my other videos. So I thought that was something that was really interesting was incorporating emojis to almost storytelling with the title. Of course, if it has nothing to do with your video or nothing to do with the title, then I wouldn't recommend doing this or overusing it. But because I had videos that were like, "Three tips for making money as a content creator," I would start with the money sign. Or I had a video that was, "Five hacks that'll blow your mind," obviously I'm going to put the mind-blowing emoji in the beginning. So if you could storytellin in the title of your Shorts videos, that could be something that could help your click-through rate.
I also want to mention this kind of ties into tip number one and the current tip we're talking about. When I was throwing spaghetti at the wall, something that I noticed when studying my analytics was like my best performing videos were my casual videos that I randomly picked up my phone and started recording on. They were not my professional videos like this. My professional videos like this actually were on the bottom level of the performance, they just did not perform very well. So if you think like you need to have a fancy setup to have successful Shorts, you are mistaken. My top best performing Shorts were ones that I did on my phone out and about in my house. Like they weren't even this fancy schmancy thing. So I just wanted to leave you with that: don't let lack of equipment or feeling like you don't have the right things stop you from creating Shorts. Just start.
Tip number five: Desktop is key. Okay, hear me out. I know there are mixed opinions out there of success for people who have like, "Oh no, I created my Short on my phone and I posted it and it performs so well," versus people saying like, "Oh, I uploaded it on my desktop and it performed well for me." When I studied my analytics, I uploaded everything through desktop, so I don't really have much comparison for I uploaded on my phone versus desktop. What I mean is, whether you're using your phone or you're uploading a video from your computer to YouTube, finish the posting through your desktop.
So we'll open up our YouTube app. I'm going to hit create. We're going to press create Short. Hopefully it's not my face. Cool. And we're just going to like record a random snippet. Perfect. Wow, looks great. Next snippet. So you can upload your Shorts this way. You can start to do it all here. But instead of pressing upload Short, press save draft and then finish the posting on your desktop. On desktop, you have so many more capabilities and functions that you could do to put your Short at an advantage.
First things first, if you have a Chrome extension that's connected to TubeBuddy or VidIQ, your desktop is going to generate title recommendations based off of SEO and keywords. So you could really do a lot of keyword research multitasking on your laptop and then plugging those in into your title. You have the full description option. You also can do tags. Another thing that people overlook is the category section, making sure you're selecting the proper category of your video. So for my educational videos where I'm like, "Here's three tips for making money," I categorize that as education. And then when I do like lipsyncing or funny voiceover stuff, that's not an educational video, I categorize that as entertainment. And then you could also do people and vlogs. So making sure you're categorizing your videos correctly before they're uploaded so they're pushed to the right people.
As for hashtags, you can literally Google #use policies on YouTube, and there's a whole policy section teaching you, "Hey, don't overuse the same hashtags over and over." So take a look at that for hashtag guidance. And of course, scheduling your Short out. Again, if you're doing the throw spaghetti at the wall method and you have a bunch of videos to start scheduling, it's so much easier to batch do that task on a desktop versus your mobile phone.
If you're just uploading the Short through your phone, there's no option to add a description to your video. So you wouldn't be able to put hashtags. You would have to put hashtags in the title, which takes up room of character space. And you also also won't be able to categorize your Shorts correctly. So there's just a few things that are missing from the mobile phone option, which is why I prefer to finish posting and scheduling on the desktop.
Tip number six: While we're talking about the differences between posting through your phone versus desktop, there's something that I do want to touch on as of filming this video, which I don't think this is going to happen for forever, but as of filming this video, you can only select a thumbnail for your Short via phone. I know Millie, you just said desktop is the best, but I can't even choose a thumbnail for my Short on desktop. Oh my gosh, it was not always this way. I used to be able to select thumbnails on desktop. They removed it and then they started bringing it back so that you have it on your phone. And rumor has it, they'll roll it back out for desktop as well. So they tried it, they took it away, they're bringing it back.
So I will say, if you are curious for how to choose a thumbnail, what you're going to do is when you go to post your Shorts, you'll see on the top left, there's this little pen icon next to to the video preview. You click that, and then you'll be able to scroll through the video and choose what you want your thumbnail to be. So that's how you choose a thumbnail with your Shorts videos.
The reason I added choosing a thumbnail for your Shorts as like tip number six, as an exciting thing, a good thing, is because this gives you as a creator more of an opportunity to get somebody to click your video. Because there was a time where you couldn't choose a thumbnail for your Shorts, and YouTube would auto-generate that for you. And for me, it would pick like the worst moment of my Short that wasn't even clickbaity, wasn't even attention-grabbing. And YouTube's reason for removing that feature was because in the Shorts tab on the YouTube app, people aren't seeing the thumbnails. They just scroll to the next video and video and video, just like on TikTok. But most people, for me, I don't go to the Shorts tab. I need a Short to capture my attention, and then that's what gets me to the Shorts tab, and then I end up scrolling.
So having a thumbnail on your Short can be extremely detrimental for your click-through rate because that's what somebody's going to see on the home screen. They're going to see like the title that says, "Three ways to make money as a creator with the money emoji," and then in the thumbnail, you're like this, and then there's like cash money falling all around you, you know what I mean? So you're able to be a lot more creative with it, just like you already are as a YouTuber with your long-form videos, creating thumbnails for those. So it adds that creative freedom to the creator and gives us more of an opportunity to give our videos the best chance possible.
Tip number six seven: Using Google Trends to figure out what's trending on YouTube. So Google Trends is such a fun little trick. In case you don't know, Google owns YouTube. So when you go to Google and you type Google Trends, there's a website specifically that shows you what is trending on Google right now. Google Trends literally shows you what searches are currently trending, what people are looking for on the internet, on the interwebs. And then that puts you at an advantage because you know what people are searching for. So then then reverse engineer, you're going to make videos on that topic.
So then the question is, Millie, how does Google Trends help me? Because when you go to the explore section, I think it's called explore section, you can choose the drop down and instead of searching Google specifically, you can search YouTube. So you can see what trends and search terms are currently happening on YouTube right now. What are people actively looking for on YouTube? In the past seven days, in the past 30 days, in the past three months. What I like to do is I like to type in my niche or my content pillars. If I'm not seeing anything that's relevant to me, so maybe I'll type in TikTok. And then sure enough, past three months, the top search is TikTok ban. So what am I going to do? I'm going to make a video on the TikTok ban. So that is such an opportunity for you to come up with cool content ideas. And it doesn't have to be any fancy schmancy long-form video. You're able to see a trend, whip your phone out, talk to the camera, and make it right then and there so that you could be fast adapting with the trends. So you're welcome.
Tip number eight: Now that you know how to capture your target audience's attention because you're using emojis every once in a while in your title within the first 30 to 40 characters, your thumbnail is capturing their attention, you're doing proper content research so that you know it's trending so that you could get ranking on the homepage and search results, so you know how to get in front of people's eyes, you know how to capture attention, how do you keep the attention now that they've clicked your video? Tip number eight is to maintain the audience's viewer retention. Make sure they watch your video beginning to end. That's going to give your video the best chance at success in reaching more people.
How do you do that? Make sure you're talking right away when the video happens. If it's a voiceover, there's an audio playing, something happens right away. There is no awkward pause where you pressed record and now you're going to breathe and the first thing they hear is you going like, "No." We don't want a millennial pause, the millennial breath. Get right to it. Once they press press the video, you're yelling at them. Okay, maybe not yelling at them, but there's something happening as soon as they watch your video or press your video.
Using closed captions is really important. So you have the text popping up at the bottom mimicking what you're saying. And when you're doing closed captions, a little tip is to only do a few words at a time. So instead of doing like a full-on sentence explaining what you're saying, do two to three words popping up every two to three words that you say. This is going to have the effect that your video is moving at a really fast pace because their eyes are able to move fast pace with the words constantly changing. And having some sort of change happening consistently is going to keep them watching.
Next, you have the 7-second rule. I like to do more like a 5-second rule where every 5 seconds something is changing. So instead of just talking to the camera and your D D speech to text, it's like, "Hey, you said your intro hook. Now you're going to do a green screen where you point to something. Now you're going to go back to the camera and then back to the green screen." Like every five to seven seconds, there's something visually changing about your video that keeps them watching. And also, show, don't tell. So if you're talking about this whole experience or this whole story, if you have b-roll to back up the story that could play while you're talking, or if you have screenshots that you could show behind you and like point with the green screen effect, that's going to be super powerful. Utilizing show, don't tell more than just like sitting and talking to the camera is going to be super helpful.
So I guess I kind of bled number eight to number nine. Number eight was keep the viewers' attention. Start with a strong hook, capture their attention. And then number nine is make sure they watch all the way to the end. So the best way to do that, you can loop your videos. You can start with asking a question that you don't answer until like the last second or two of the video. That's not to like do a false promise, but an example of that would be like maybe you're in the fashion niche and you hold up like a pair of skinny jeans and it's like, "How do you style skinny jeans when they're out of fashion?" So it starts with the question, "How do you style skinny jeans when they're out of fashion?" and you're holding the skinny jeans. And instead of showing you styling the skinny jeans first, first you're going to start with the rest of the outfit. So you have your skinny jeans not on yet, they're like in the background hanging or on the wall, I don't know. And you have your shirt, you do your shirt, you do your hat, you do you get your shoes out, you have your pants, and then you do it, and then you style it all. And at the very end, it shows the complete look. So kind of leading people to the answer. And then yeah, that 5 to 7 second rule of like, try to have something visually change every few seconds is going to help keep the viewers' attention and hopefully getting them to watch to the end.
And then finally, don't tell somebody your video is ending. Don't say like, "So make sure if you like this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel." Like that whole spiel is a spoiler alert as like, "Hey, video's over." If anything, keep that ending spiel short, saying something like, "Follow for more tips," like really quick. Don't lead people into guessing, "Hey, video's over now I can scroll past."
Tip number 10: Adapting to trends. Now, we already talked about the Google Trends hack that you can do, which is a super fantastic way of adapting to trends. But there's also a YouTube Shorts Trend Report that is created by YouTube themselves. So if you sign up for YouTube's Shorts Report, then you'll be emailed twice a month with the latest updates to Shorts, any new features that were released. You'll also be emailed inspiration and even content ideas of what's currently trending on Shorts right now. This is something that I personally love because we don't see a lot of platforms giving its creators straight up answers so that they can see the most success. That's why I love YouTube as a platform is they're very transparent and helpful for helping creators have the best results. So they have their own email list. You sign up for their trend report, and you'll be emailed twice a month to stay up to date on the latest YouTube Shorts trends specifically.
Now for the bonus tip that I promised you at the beginning of this video. Bonus tip number 11: Is to educate yourself. I know I said this is going to guarantee you'll know everything you ever need to know about YouTube Shorts, but trying tips and tricks from watching a bunch of gurus' videos is one way. Or you can like get your hands dirty, roll up your sleeves, and get into it. Educate yourself from the source themselves. So there's this playlist that YouTube created. Fun fact, this playlist, YouTube created this. It teaches you everything you need to know about Shorts. It's a playlist on YouTube of YouTube Shorts from YouTube, uploaded from other creators. They've put everything in one place so that you could scroll and find an answer to almost anything Shorts related. And that's going to be like your YouTube FAQ resource. Any question that you have about Shorts will probably be found on that playlist. So utilize that playlist to your advantage. Educate yourself.
And don't forget to download my ultimate YouTube starter workbook. This again is over 20 pages of goodness to help you start a successful channel from the very beginning. If you've made it this far and you're not already subscribed to my channel, what are you even doing? Subscribe to the channel. It's a fun time around here. I post every week. I give you the latest tips and tricks on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Give this video a thumbs up. Hug that subscribe button and turn on the bell notification so you don't miss when I post my next video. I'll see you in the next one. Follow your joy. Bye.