Brand Hacking with Katt Wagner

The Shortcut to YouTube Shorts: 4K views on a brand new channel.

• Katt Wagner • Episode 2

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Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SLQkitXObqg

0:00 What will this episode teach me?
0:31 Benefits of Repurposing Content for YouTube Shorts
1:27 Best Practices for High-Performing YouTube Shorts
4:15 YouTube Short Titles vs. Regular Video Titles
5:53 YouTube Shorts Descriptions and Tags
7:02 Effortlessly Repurpose Content for YouTube Shorts
8:11 Myths and Maximizing Reach
10:01 Micro Case Study on New Channel Growth with YouTube Shorts



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This is a super fast Brand Hack podcast. If you think you don't have time for YouTube shorts, this episode's for you. In the next 10 minutes, I'm going to tell you exactly why YouTube shorts are worth your time. And I'm going to bring it all together. At the end with a microdissection of a YouTube channel, I launched just 13 days ago that has already passed 18 hours of watch time and within less than 20 minutes of effort. So let's get into it. First why are shorts worth it even if you already have regular videos on your YouTube channel? The answer is simple. It's a different means of discovery and reach with over 2 billion, monthly active users, youTube is the second largest search engine in the world. The shorts format is just another pathway to tap into that audience. Another benefit of YouTube shorts is that they're quick and easy to create. You can use existing content such as blog posts, videos, or podcasts, and turn it into a short 15 second clip that will appear in the YouTube shorts feed. With YouTube shorts, there's no expectation of cinematic high value production. So there's really no barrier to entry. And what might be the biggest benefit right now is that if you're having analysis paralysis about the evolution of AI, YouTube shorts is a great medium for personifying your brand. Creating a YouTube short is something that even though there are AI video tools out there, AI is not you -a real person telling a story and offering insights to the rest of the world. So what are the best practices for creating high performing shorts? First and foremost, let's talk about length and duration. Shorts can be up to 60 seconds long. But I find that YouTube can be pretty finicky when you try to upload clips longer than 58 seconds. I'm not sure why there's that soft spot there for that two second difference, but it seems like anything above 58 seconds. Even if it's under 60. YouTube tries to convert them to a regular video upload. Ideally, even though they can be up to 60 or 58 seconds long. It's probably a good goal to aim for 15 seconds. On one hand. When people are watching shorts, they're looking for short bite-sized clips. It's less likely that someone's going to skip a shorter clip because they probably won't have time to. And also if your content loops and they play it twice or three times or four times, You actually get a view for each play, even if it's not a unique viewer. Visuals are important for YouTube shorts. You want to make sure that your short is engaging with what's on the screen. So whether you want to actually record a video or use some B roll, you have. Or just use text, make sure you create some type of movement on the screen. And music and sound are also important. You want to make sure that if you're not speaking in your YouTube short, you want to have some type of backing soundtrack. You can choose something that's upbeat or energetic or fits the mood of your short. You could even just use sound effects. If you plan to add music using the YouTube library, the duration of some licensed audio might be limited to 30 seconds. That means the rest of your short after that point will not have the added music, which is just kind of awkward, not the biggest deal, but it is a little awkward. YouTube stated in November of 2022, that when they increased the licensed music duration from 15 seconds to 30 seconds that they will continue to work on getting 60 second usage rates for more and more tracks to match what instagram and Tik Tok offer in their library. Another thing worth noting is that if you're making these nine to 16 ratio videos to use on multiple mobile platforms and you want to put songs in the background. It's a best practice to export your video without the backing track from either whatever video editor you're using or if you prefer to use one of the three platforms to create your video. I'd recommend using Instagram's first. It will have the Instagram watermark with your username on it when you export the video, but Instagram will let you export the video without the audio backing track. It will keep any original sound. You include in your video, such as your own voice overlays or any sound effects included in your video footage. But it won't add the licensed music that you've added through the Instagram library. This makes it really easy to pull out and re upload to Tik TOK and YouTube. Without any license or issues with content restrictions. Whichever way you think is easier. Instagram Tik TOK and YouTube shorts all have certain visibility boosts associated with the use of trending audios. So there's no reason not to add the songs directly from their music libraries when possible. And then let's talk about titles. YouTube shorts are different than regular videos when it comes to titles. There's still some of the same principles. Like you want to keep it short and sweet, but shorts get less space in search results and suggestions than regular videos. Only about four to six words of your shorts title will display on the screen. Additionally. More than half of shorts, plays come from. Autoplay which means your video is just going to start playing after another short has ended. This person didn't see your Short in a feed and then decide to click into it because of the title and the thumbnail. they're just kind of stumbled into it because they're just watching shorts on their phone and this one popped up next. However, they will still be able to see your title as text in the bottom left hand side of the screen with your channel's picture. The full title will be visible here. You have up to a hundred characters. We want to use this space wisely. Let's talk about why. If you're short pops up after someone got done watching a different short. Your title can help them decide to either watch your short or decide to swipe past it before finishing it. Since click-through rates aren't as important for shorts as they are with regular video titles, because of the way people come across them differently. It's more important than ever to use your title as a way to create curiosity and make people want to see what your shorts going to be about. You can use humor. Questions. And punchlines to entice a viewer to keep watching before they just swipe away. Another thing that you can do with titles and should do, is make them actionable. You can use your title as a call to action, to win engagement when someone has stumbled upon your short. For example, you could say double tap your favorite choice. Or tag a friend who needs this in their life. And that sounds kind of weird for a title, but remember, most people are going to be seeing this as text on the screen while they're already watching your short. Let's talk about descriptions and tags for YouTube shorts. Descriptions and tags play an important role in helping your shorts reach the right audience. However, they can only be added through the YouTube studio app or on the desktop version of YouTube after you've uploaded your short on mobile. So you'll want to keep that in mind. Descriptions give you the opportunity, not just to provide additional context on what your short is about. But it's also a great place to include any links or calls to action. With tags, you can use up to 500 characters to create tags for your video. That's the same as the regular limit for. YouTube videos. And this is a really important place to give clues to YouTube about what your video is about. That way you can put it in front of the right people. Instagram and TikTok are not quite as generous with what they'll allow you to add to your descriptions. Their character limit is much shorter. And you can't add hyperlinks to your instagram reels or your tik tok video descriptions If you take the time to add these extra details, you can increase the chances of your shorts reaching more people. And most importantly, if you want your short to promote a longer form piece of content you have, you should always take the time to pull up your YouTube studio or your desktop app after uploading your short and add the link that people will be looking for to the description. So we know YouTube shorts is worth it, but how do you repurpose content and make it an effortless thing to start using YouTube shorts? You know, creating new content can be really time-consuming and you really don't have to create new content at all. If you just utilize tools like Canva and InShot, which is a mobile app. One of my favorites. You can quickly convert existing content into nine by 16 dimension videos. If you want a shortcut, you can use Tik TOK or Instagram's in-app editor to create videos. And then download those to upload them to YouTube. Keep in mind that your video may have the watermark from either of those platforms. And the quality may be reduced slightly with the export. and again, You want to try to avoid using any licensed music in your export as it can result in copyright issues when you re upload to YouTube. Note that while Instagram does allow you to download a version of your Reel without the added music. Tik TOK doesn't have this feature. If you're not sure how to cut a very short tip from a long form piece of content, you can use shorts as a teaser. Just pull a clip that teases the question and direct viewers to check the description to watch the full video on your channel. Using Shorts in this way is a great way to promote podcasts, deep dives and longer interviews. And all it takes is clipping a snippet from the content you've already produced in full. So what's the best way to maximize reach on YouTube shorts? Because shorts are highly likely to reach users that are not subscribed to your channel, you will likely see some volatility and the engagements from one short to the next. You should also keep in mind that the same video can perform differently on different platforms. For example, one video might perform really well on reels and not so much on Tik TOK or shorts. And then another video might perform really well on shorts and then be kind of lackluster on Tik TOK. But since you're just repurposing content. It only takes a few moments to get something posted to Tik Tok reels and YouTube shorts, There's no reason not to do it. And when you build good habits around doing this consistently, You have a full quiver every time you publish new content that you can fire off to each platform. And see what lands. There are a few common myths and FYIs for YouTube shorts that I want to touch briefly the biggest thing I hear people ask is if they should have a separate channel for their YouTube shorts. You do not need to do that unless your shorts content is going to be meant for a different audience and on a different topic than your long form content. The second thing is. With Tik TOK the quantity of short videos that you upload can give you some preferential weight in being discovered. With Shorts YouTube has stated themselves at the quantity of uploads you have does not give you preferential weight in content discoverability. What matters is whether people. Watch or skip your shorts when they do see them. This is why your title texts is so important again, because it's really the only thing people can see while watching your shorts. So. Maybe if their volumes turned down or they're ready to quickly swipe, what's that reason they should stop and let your short play out and then take whatever action you prompt them to take? And lastly. YouTube has said themselves that their algorithm will not recommend your long form content just because someone has seen a short you posted. However. Shorts are still a powerful way to reach new potential subscribers and remind existing subscribers of long form content that they might've missed. All right. So hopefully you're eager to embrace YouTube shorts. But if that didn't do it for you, let's look at my little micro case study of my rapid growth on a brand new YouTube channel just by using 4 shorts. And if you're catching this on YouTube, I'll have some of this up on the screen, the analytics, but I'll describe them in audio if you're just listening. In just 13 days a brand new channel I had was able to grow. From zero. From zero, everything, zero on every metric, to 2.5 K views. Over 18 hours of watch time. And actually as I'm editing this on day 14, it's now up to 4,000 views and it's about to hit 23 hours of watch time. And nine subscribers now. I feel like I would have more subscribers and less views on a regular video, right? It's easier for people to hit the subscribe button and it's a little bit more difficult to get people to watch a hundred percent of a long video. Only four shorts were uploaded to make this happen. And two of them never got descriptions or tags. They only had titles. And are you ready for this? 91% of people that found this content. Found it through their shorts feed. 91%. Only one video was longer than 30 seconds. And one of the videos was only seven seconds long. But what's really cool is with some of the engagement

on these shorts:

the average percentage viewed exceeds 100%. like that's crazy to me but that's how shorts Can work. Now I can try to experiment and see if the next shorts that I upload, if I make the goal to push subscriptions and try certain calls to action that drive that I can see if it works. So. You know we're going to keep going with this case study as time goes on and i'll be happy to share everything i do with you guys I did this just by repurposing content as something I'm doing as a side project, YouTube was not a priority channel in my content strategy or marketing strategy for this brand project. But I'm really glad I did this. The subject matter was gaming news and memes that paired references to video games with current world events. That type of content is humorous and it plays on curiosity and trending topics. I want to say that it took more time to set the channel up through Google than it did to get those four short videos uploaded from start to finish. Seriously, I spent less than five minutes uploading each of these videos. And I only did it at all because it didn't really take any time, but I'm so glad that I did it. It's just a micro case study, but it shows the huge potential for rapid growth that can be achieved by casually repurposing content to Shorts and other 16 by nine platforms, don't underestimate that. And that's a wrap for this brand hack. I hope you found this information on shorts helpful and motivating. There's so much momentum in content you've already created and a little consistency in repurposing it can take you miles. If you'd like to catch up with other brand hacks from this week, such as my "steal this Superbowl sales pitches, and my thoughts on Google's next move in AI, make sure you're connected with the brand hacking newsletter on LinkedIn. Or with our Facebook group brand hacking for small business marketing. As always thank you for tuning in and happy brand hacking. Brand Hacking" is a brand new podcast hosted by Katt Wagner. Katt has helped hundreds of professionals in the music, retail, and real estate space build big brand power with small and simple steps. Be sure to like and subscribe to catch future tips on building an unbeatable brand.

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