YouTube is an entertaining platform with over 2 billion active users. In 2020, the platform came up with a fun way for its users to engage and interact with each other. YouTube Shorts is similar to Facebook and Instagram Stories. Shorts are short-form videos that can be created using the YouTube Mobile App.
Some call Shorts YouTube version of the Tiktok app. These vertical videos can be recorded for up to 60 seconds and show up in YouTube’s search results. Let’s walk through the detailed steps on how to optimize YouTube Shorts that capture your target audience’s attention and attract more views to your long-form videos. But before we dive in, first, let’s learn why you must optimize YouTube shorts.
Why Optimize YouTube Shorts?
Investing time to optimize your YouTube Shorts can help you exponentially grow your channel in the long term. A few key factors for optimizing YT Shorts include.
Higher Visibility
YT shorts are the gateway to enhance the reach of your long-form videos. Industry reports state that YouTube Shorts had gained an estimated 70 billion views in a single day, indicating the rising popularity among the audience on YouTube. Optimized YouTube Shorts have higher chances of appearing in the Shorts feed of your target audience, thus increasing their discoverability.
Attracts More Engagement
Creating interesting short videos with intriguing titles and trending topics or audio keeps your viewers hooked and attracts more likes, shares, and other engagement. This encourages the platform to push your content further to a larger audience segment.
YouTube Shorts Pulls in More Potential Subscribers
If your Shorts videos are optimized to resonate closely with your target audience, they are more likely to convert into loyal subscribers from casual viewers. Why? Because they are constantly scrolling through content. When something engaging and interesting comes up, it immediately grabs their attention.
Increases Overall Watchtime
What is the single best way to increase the watch time of your YouTube videos? Constantly getting more views on your videos helps to get higher watch times and positively impacts your performance. Besides, it can also help you get closer to your YouTube monetization goals.
Better Algorithm performance and higher growth
Constantly putting put videos on YouTube Shorts helps the algorithm better understand your content, your channel’s active status and accordingly pushes your content to your target audience.
Overall, knowing how to optimize YouTube Shorts can give you a better advantage to grow YouTube channel.
How to Optimize YouTube Shorts?
Optimizing YT shorts is critical to consistently attracting long-term viewers to your videos and channel. Here are a few strategies you can implement right away.
Right aspect ratio for YouTube Shorts Videos
When creating them, use the square aspect ratio, i.e., 9:16, in the vertical format. This practice will help YouTube categorize your videos as Shorts automatically.
Length Restrictions
While recording Shorts, remember to trim your videos to 3 minutes in length. However, with a longer duration, ensure the content is engaging enough to retain the viewer. This will help you optimize your videos in a better way.
Hashtag for YT Shorts Video
While writing titles and descriptions for your YouTube Shorts, remember to include the hashtag #Shorts in both places. Although optional, this step will help your Shorts appear on YouTube’s Shelf, which is the YT Shorts home feed section on the app. Once you start attracting viewers to your videos, you will see ‘Shorts’ as the new traffic source in YouTube Analytics.
Use Customized Thumbnails
Ideally, creators customize their video thumbnails on YouTube to make it visually appealing to viewers. Usually, YouTube Clips selects a random frame from your video as a YouTube thumbnail, but you can customize it using tools like Canva. Customized thumbnails increase your click-through rate, which will result in more views on your videos.
Include Trending Audio
Your shorts tend to perform better if you use trending audio or copyright free music from the YT audio library. Ensure that the audio is of high quality and clear. Clear audios engage the viewer more and is critical to higher viewer retention.
Analyze the Performance
Consistently monitor the performance of your shorts in YouTube analytics. The insights gained help you to adjust your content strategies and refine them to suit the needs of your audience.
Conclusion
Learning how to optimize YouTube shorts is the key to standing out in a crowded niche. Follow the strategies in this article and watch your shorts views soar with time. However, to ensure the success of these strategies, you must consistently implement and adjust them according to your niche and target audience. Embrace this exciting new format of YouTube and use it as a tool to grow your YouTube channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How do I get a lot of views on YouTube Shorts?
Focus on creating engaging, entertaining, short-form content with a strong hook, add the right hashtags, utilize trending audios, and leverage trending topics to create YouTube Shorts that attract a lot of views from your target audience.
Q2. What is the best time to post YT Shorts?
It is best to dive into YouTube analytics to discover the best time to post YT shorts that reach your potential audience. However, per statistics, you can post Shorts between 2pm to 4pm on weekdays and between 6pm and 1pm on weekends to attract maximum viewership.
Q3. How do I boost my Shorts video?
Here are some tips to increase YT Shorts reach:
- Participate in trends and challenges.
- Create an appealing thumbnail.
- Craft compelling content.
- Engage with your audience.
- Collaborate with other creators.
Q4. How do I promote my YouTube shorts with Veefly?
Here’s how you can promote YouTube video Shorts with VeeFly:
- Open VeeFly and sign up.
- Copy and paste the URL of the Short that you want to promote.
- Choose your budget.
- Select the location or the countries you want to promote your Short video.
- Enter the keywords or phrases you want to target
- Finally, finish the check out process.
Q5. Can we buy YouTube views to increase my Shorts Visibility?
Yes, you can buy YouTube views from YT promotion services like VeeFly to increase your Shorts’ visibility.
