Episode 51 A Shorts strategy for YouTube.txt
English (US)
01:00:00.040 — 01:00:02.000 · Speaker 1
Stop making this serious mistake.
01:00:02.080 — 01:00:11.440 · Speaker 2
Anyone who is running a podcast or producing video content in YouTube and not using shorts. They are missing out on the opportunity.
01:00:11.440 — 01:00:14.480 · Speaker 1
Their weaker quality content is being ignored.
01:00:14.520 — 01:00:21.320 · Speaker 2
More monetization is very important to you. The use of shorts needs to be part of your strategy.
01:00:24.320 — 01:00:34.880 · Speaker 2
Hi everyone! Today we are talking about YouTube shorts and your strategy for those in your podcast. Richard, what do you have to say about shorts?
01:00:34.920 — 01:00:36.880 · Speaker 1
I’m sad that you left your joke.
01:00:37.040 — 01:00:40.320 · Speaker 2
I left the joke out because it was so cringey. Okay, seriously, what.
01:00:40.320 — 01:00:51.720 · Speaker 1
Do you think? YouTube shorts are important and it’s good to remember that they are not competing with the long form content, okay? They are two separate things, right? They work together.
01:00:51.760 — 01:00:58.760 · Speaker 2
Let’s be super explicit about what a short is compared to a YouTube video I think.
01:00:58.800 — 01:01:16.280 · Speaker 1
I think from five minutes. YouTube considers something long form content. So I think as short as maybe three minutes cost is. So yeah, it’s vertical format. It’s very reminiscent of like TikTok or Instagram Reels, and it is kind of like a top of the funnel thing for your video.
01:01:16.320 — 01:01:16.880 · Speaker 2
Okay.
01:01:16.960 — 01:01:20.080 · Speaker 1
So it’s a discoverability tool, right?
01:01:20.120 — 01:01:32.240 · Speaker 2
So I have got video content. I’m posting that to my YouTube channel. Yeah. And the YouTube short is there so that people who don’t yet follow me on my channel can find my content.
01:01:32.480 — 01:01:41.680 · Speaker 1
Laughs and data two you probably find that people on their phones will be scrolling through short or then long form content so they can see your content that way. Yeah.
01:01:41.680 — 01:02:03.040 · Speaker 2
Um, so they really need to stand alone as a piece of video content. They need to make sense, um, in isolation, but they can basically give a new viewer a snippet or a taste of what your long format video, your your full video, for want of a better word, yes is going to.
01:02:03.200 — 01:02:12.440 · Speaker 1
And there’s quite a cool new feature now. They used to live very they are separate they to your long form video. They’re two separate things but.
01:02:12.480 — 01:02:13.000 · Speaker 2
Two separate.
01:02:13.000 — 01:02:26.320 · Speaker 1
Creations. They used to, they used to live very separately. But now you can actually connect a short to a long form video. So it actually can serve as a full on commercial for your long term video, your long form video.
01:02:26.360 — 01:02:29.040 · Speaker 2
So you can click on it and be taken through to the.
01:02:29.080 — 01:02:46.400 · Speaker 1
You can click on a short, you can click a little plus button or something I can’t remember exactly offhand. And you can select a related video okay. To. And then at the end of your short, it actually has a call to action to watch the full video, which I think is really cool. Now it’s like really is a good commercial for your long term content, right?
01:02:46.440 — 01:03:20.710 · Speaker 2
I think at the end of the day, we are concerning ourselves here with content that is of a video form. So if you have a podcast that has a video element. So it’s not an audio only format podcast. This is a way for you to be found by new audiences. And I think that in the Spotify space or the Apple podcast space, this has been something that creators have been struggling with for a long time is how do they get more people to find their podcast?
01:03:21.190 — 01:03:30.670 · Speaker 1
Yeah, so that’s exactly what Eric was saying in a previous video. Yeah. You in the early days, discoverability was super, super hard.
01:03:31.470 — 01:03:45.590 · Speaker 2
So YouTube, either on purpose or accidentally, has created a way that podcasters or any content creators that have video format content and YouTube can be found now through shorts.
01:03:46.550 — 01:04:01.270 · Speaker 1
Yes, it’s YouTube’s always been a really good search engine. I mean, essentially it is a Google product that’s always had good search ability. Mhm. Um, but yeah this new discoverability angle is pretty cool. And you could always
01:04:02.350 — 01:04:10.870 · Speaker 1
do shorts of your long form, long form videos and put them up and stuff. But I think it’s really cool that you can actually connect them. Mhm.
01:04:11.350 — 01:04:21.429 · Speaker 2
So I think what was also very clever from YouTube side is that we’ve got reels on Instagram, we’ve got TikTok. Yeah. We are
01:04:23.150 — 01:04:57.670 · Speaker 2
trained or have become really, um, comfortable with that form of scrolling through short pieces of video content. Potentially. This was YouTube’s answer to those social platforms. Yeah. And maintaining viewership or maintaining eyeballs for a longer period of time on their platform. But I think that anyone who is running a podcast or producing video content in YouTube and not using shorts.
They are missing out on the opportunity they have of
01:04:59.230 — 01:05:07.350 · Speaker 2
with without having to go and create a whole separate set of content, because you can really just cut down from your your long form video.
01:05:07.470 — 01:05:31.750 · Speaker 1
One of the things you should do is when you form a long form episode, you don’t just cut one short part of it. You need to have multiple shorts of 5 to 10, and you kind of flood the algorithm with your shorts, and then it’s um, uh, it kind of just serves little intros to your content, to everyone’s different algorithm.
Okay. The way it’s all different interests and different audiences.
01:05:31.830 — 01:05:35.550 · Speaker 2
Can we talk about the captions on these shorts?
01:05:36.070 — 01:05:39.950 · Speaker 1
Uh, we can talk about them, but I think you need to talk about that because I don’t know much about that.
01:05:39.990 — 01:05:49.270 · Speaker 2
All right, so the consensus is that there should be baked into the video. So they should be on the video. Nice and bold.
01:05:49.310 — 01:05:50.590 · Speaker 1
Oh. Captions.
01:05:50.630 — 01:05:52.470 · Speaker 2
Yes. Yes. What did you think I was mean.
01:05:52.510 — 01:05:53.910 · Speaker 1
Like a description or.
01:05:53.910 — 01:05:54.190 · Speaker 2
Something.
01:05:54.670 — 01:05:55.390 · Speaker 1
Like, uh.
01:05:55.710 — 01:05:56.310 · Speaker 2
No, I’m talking.
01:05:56.310 — 01:05:56.630 · Speaker 1
About.
01:05:56.830 — 01:06:17.190 · Speaker 2
The speak. Yeah. So the speakers. Yeah. Potentially unmuted. You’re on your phone, you’re in a place that’s public and you are being polite and not, you know, blaring your content out for all to hear. And so those captions are important because it means that you can follow along with the speaker without having the audio on.
01:06:17.430 — 01:06:59.870 · Speaker 1
Yes, you see that a lot. And I think it can actually automatically do that. A lot of the editing softwares as well, which is cool. Yeah. Uh, what is quite difficult is, is cutting the, the short sections out of your long form video, right. Um, it’s almost something like you need to think about when you are filming.
Okay. Because you can’t cut things out that don’t really make sense. You know, sometimes if you’re speaking in a really long winded way about something, it doesn’t necessarily conform well, becoming a short. It’s quite nice sometimes if you repeat the question, okay, in your response so that you could just cut your your reply.
01:07:00.070 — 01:07:06.150 · Speaker 2
Captions for shorts because it makes them legible for a person who’s watching with the with their audio.
01:07:06.190 — 01:07:42.750 · Speaker 1
You can also just put like a description of what they’re talking about as text over the video or something. But we find sometimes that we form a whole video. We’re super chuffed with it. And then it’s quite difficult to pull real snippets. Yeah, no real snippets or they are, but they’re just sort of like, I don’t know, not not spoken about, not concise.
Yeah. And then which is also still fun. You can edit out you can edit it to make it seem concise, but it’s not the best. It’s more editing. Yeah, it’s there’s editing time involved. And you can also use AI
01:07:44.110 — 01:07:44.950 · Speaker 1
as Vo.
01:07:45.070 — 01:07:45.950 · Speaker 2
It’s a pretty good tool.
01:07:45.990 — 01:07:47.910 · Speaker 1
Vo is one. There’s uh,
01:07:49.150 — 01:08:08.030 · Speaker 1
yeah, actually that’s only one. But I think a lot of editing softwares will have it. Um, it’s good. Like, it does a lot of work really quickly. Yeah. Um, but I still even find with the AR ones, you’ve still you’ve got to check it. And sometimes they’ll just clip something out there. Yes. Like not really.
01:08:08.190 — 01:08:10.070 · Speaker 2
Yeah. It would have made sense.
01:08:10.110 — 01:08:11.470 · Speaker 1
Not super insightful. Yes.
01:08:11.470 — 01:08:12.430 · Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
01:08:12.630 — 01:08:13.150 · Speaker 1
But it does.
01:08:13.150 — 01:08:58.300 · Speaker 2
Work for for people that are finding that the videos are difficult to turn into shorts or to find the bits that would make sense as shorts to record your episode. Naturally. So like we would we have conversations, we discuss things, we ask questions, and the conversation moves kind of organically. Mhm.
If you feel like you’ve done that a number of times and haven’t managed to come out of those episodes with decent bite sized bits that you finish your episode. Let it run like it normally would, and then film some parts that are going to just be yours.
01:08:58.580 — 01:09:02.020 · Speaker 1
That is a good idea. Um, and another thing to do is to
01:09:03.220 — 01:09:18.780 · Speaker 1
kind of like do your shorts for certain ability. Okay. Like, if you, if you a nice thing to do is to have like, I don’t know, answer five questions and then you can have the answer to those questions as shorts. Yes. Um, the.
01:09:18.780 — 01:09:22.220 · Speaker 2
Five best restaurants in Cape Town right now.
01:09:22.300 — 01:09:24.100 · Speaker 1
Something like that. Or
01:09:25.860 — 01:09:35.140 · Speaker 1
different topics. And each one could be a short. Like you wouldn’t do five based restaurants in one town and then have like number two as a separate short.
01:09:35.500 — 01:09:53.500 · Speaker 2
Okay. So on that point, there’s also a lot to be said about creating little serials, um, or series’s within shorts. Um, so that your people can watch 1 or 2 ride off to each other and then find your long form content on those topics.
01:09:53.540 — 01:10:06.019 · Speaker 1
I see that a lot. I don’t think that’s a YouTube thing so much. Okay, um, I find that a lot on Instagram because the only real video content there. There is no long form. No. So
01:10:07.220 — 01:10:19.780 · Speaker 1
they fill multiple parts parties, and then you have to click on the profile and scroll and try and find the one. And it’s very frustrating I find, but I don’t think that’s so much a YouTube thing.
01:10:19.900 — 01:10:24.860 · Speaker 2
Well, on YouTube you can watch a series of shorts.
01:10:24.900 — 01:10:26.700 · Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah yeah.
01:10:26.740 — 01:10:36.060 · Speaker 2
But I guess that’s just a different tactic. You know, if your content isn’t five fabulous strategies for YouTube shorts, then it doesn’t make sense to have.
01:10:36.300 — 01:10:48.140 · Speaker 1
I think I’m just thinking of it in the context of the way we use it, which is the long form and the shorts are ending. I’ve never actually done just a full shorts. YouTube shorts strategy.
01:10:48.180 — 01:11:03.860 · Speaker 2
Well, I think typically they are there as a tool to help the content creator get more people to their their channel and get more subscribers. Um, who you know might not yet know about them?
01:11:04.740 — 01:11:05.100 · Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:11:05.140 — 01:11:21.180 · Speaker 2
Okay. Um, I think the other thing that’s worth discussing when we’re talking shorts is how they can contribute to your monetization of your channel. So last I read, your your views had to be I wrote this down here.
01:11:21.220 — 01:11:21.500 · Speaker 1
Oh, you.
01:11:21.500 — 01:11:57.900 · Speaker 2
Did 3 million views in 90 days on your shorts. That will get you to the first tier of monetization. You also have to have a minimum number of subscribers already on your channel, which is 500. Okay. Um, which is not in my mind. It’s not a really high bar. You can get 2500 subscribers. And without too much difficulty.
And so the the use of shorts. If monetization is very important to you. The use of shorts needs to be part of your strategy.
01:11:59.380 — 01:12:08.099 · Speaker 1
There’s a new thing I’ve read about. I haven’t seen it in action, but I believe it’s a thing. It’s like a shorts cap. So you can you can
01:12:09.980 — 01:12:10.460 · Speaker 1
go back to.
01:12:10.460 — 01:12:10.580 · Speaker 2
The.
01:12:10.580 — 01:12:25.340 · Speaker 1
Wardrobe. Shorts cap. Yeah. Um. It’s, uh, you can you can limit the amount of shorts that you are served in a period of time on YouTube. It’s like a wellness feature. Just stop. Just endless doom scrolling.
01:12:26.700 — 01:12:40.060 · Speaker 1
Uh, what it kind of means is that when people have that feature on, it’s going to limit the type of content you see because it wants to show you the most relevant stuff. So garbage shorts with no points.
01:12:40.380 — 01:12:42.700 · Speaker 2
Um, or maybe outside of your interests and.
01:12:43.060 — 01:13:03.580 · Speaker 1
But generally just like poor, weaker quality content is being ignored more okay by the algorithm. So it is important that you have like a satisfactory payoff, like actual key people engaged. Um, if you do that, you will probably make it into people’s cap limits more often.
01:13:04.060 — 01:13:10.580 · Speaker 2
Okay. I think we need to maybe have a whole separate episode about that. Yeah. Once we’ve done the relevant research.
01:13:10.620 — 01:13:27.060 · Speaker 1
Yeah. And just read about it. Yeah, but I haven’t seen it in action. Okay. But I actually think it is something quite cool as well. I think to limit that kind of doom scrolling is quite, quite good. We’ll just filter out the absolute garbage. Yeah. Brain rot stuff.
01:13:27.460 — 01:13:31.500 · Speaker 2
Um, what will get a person to stop on your short.
01:13:33.140 — 01:14:25.700 · Speaker 2
So that whole pattern interruption discussion. So, you know, we’ve done a few recent edits. on of of our episodes, and where we’ve taken small snippets of a of a video and placed them one after the other. And it creates quite an interesting, um, a cadence to the content. And we’ve put that in as an intro to the video as, as a hook.
So I think in terms of your shorts, you should still consider, um, what is going to be thumb stopping? Yeah. So the, the hook, um, the design of the short. So the visual elements, something needs to exist there to get the person to stop on that piece.
01:14:25.740 — 01:14:47.050 · Speaker 1
Yeah. You can use different sounds. You can use local sounds to give it a local flavor. You can, uh, start off with a question that people couldn’t possibly not find out what the answer is, and it is actually quite hard to do. And that’s why I say, like when you’re filming your long form stuff is to think about your shorts much more than I think that people do.
Yeah.
01:14:47.410 — 01:15:04.010 · Speaker 2
Well, it’s a habit that you now need to build and that you’ve got to think about not only what you’re talking about in the moment, but also what is the structure of this bit of information going to look like, and how is it going to be built into the creatives that we put out there?
01:15:04.090 — 01:15:32.930 · Speaker 1
I think a good example of what I was saying about trying to cut stuff from your long form content. Yeah, is that you’re not going to, in the middle of a sentence saying, stop making, stop making this serious mistake or something. No, you. But it is a good start to a short. Um, so it’s just that kind of thing. I like the idea of filming all those kinds of things at the end.
So, yeah. And also, if you have a podcast like ours where the conversation kind of flows is no, like.
01:15:32.970 — 01:15:33.970 · Speaker 2
Sometimes.
01:15:34.010 — 01:15:43.290 · Speaker 1
Sometimes, um, there’s no like actual script. It’s quite nice at the end to film your short content, because you also know what you’ve spoken about.
01:15:43.330 — 01:15:46.050 · Speaker 2
You know what the bits that came out of.
01:15:46.090 — 01:15:48.450 · Speaker 1
That good that you might want to summarize for.
01:15:48.610 — 01:16:05.010 · Speaker 2
Yes. Also hot tip. If you film your intro at the end of your video, that’s another nice way to make that feel less awkward. Um, and for the intro to actually speak to what you spoke about because it’s already happened.
01:16:05.090 — 01:16:14.730 · Speaker 1
Yeah. We often intro an episode and then talk about something completely different and have to keep sort of like, training like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
01:16:14.970 — 01:16:35.530 · Speaker 2
Thanks. Richard was, uh, good to discuss the shorts strategy with you. Those of you who are starting out with, uh, video content of any kind, let us know in the comments if you have developed any clever strategies for your thoughts on YouTube. We’d love to hear about them.
