EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUTUBE SHORTS

This may not come as a big surprise, but it seems like everyone is joining the short-form video movement.

You know what we're talking about. After the rapid growth of TikTok, we've seen Instagram introduce Reels and now YouTube has introduced Shorts.

Now, at The Outloud Group, it's no surprise we’re always working to stay on top of industry developments so we can adapt our own strategies and help others navigate them as well.

And as we pulled together some notes for our own learning, we thought it would be great to share some of those insights with you as well.

What do you need to know about YouTube Shorts? Great question.

Here's our perspective:

In short, more folks are watching videos on mobile, our attention spans are shrinking, and the audience for short-form videos is skewing younger so it's a natural place for YouTube to expand into.

Will they be competitive? We think so. YouTube has the benefit of driving its existing audience into this new channel.

For comparison, YouTube shorts are getting 15 billion views a day while TikTok is only a little over 1 billion a day. That's huge.

Now, what are the important details about this new channel? What does your brand need to understand about it?

A few things. First, these are videos that are only 60 seconds. Second, they run on a separate algorithm. This has led to many creators spinning off a separate Shorts channels so that it doesn't impact the metrics of their main channel.

In addition, YouTube is showing that they mean business and want to attract creators to this new channel. They've created a $100 million creator fund to reward creators that use Shorts.

Curious how your brand can capitalize on this channel? Well, there isn't a paid advertising mechanism yet so you'll need to partner with influencers themselves, but that means there is a great benefit to those who jump in early.

We think YouTube shorts will be a great fit for many brands, but particularly for product-first brands that are seeing value in upper-funnel awareness efforts.

Interested in seeing if this is a good channel for you? Feel free to contact us and let's talk about it.