Social media platforms are constantly changing. New ways to watch and enjoy videos go beyond entertainment — they can also inform. Our team has heard a lot of questions about YouTube Shorts, and that inspired me to write this blog. I’ll answer common questions (What are YouTube Shorts? Why should we use them in business?), plus discuss how to go about creating them. 

You’re probably already familiar with TikTok videos. To the lucky few who haven’t been consumed by the scrolling addiction, TikTok is a short-form video platform where videos are displayed in a vertical format with limited run times. YouTube Shorts are basically the same format as TikTok videos, but they are housed on YouTube and last a maximum of three minutes. These quick videos are perfect for our ever-shrinking attention spans and are especially popular with young audiences.

The Benefits of Using YouTube Shorts

An important reason to produce media content for your company is to get your message out to prospective clients. The way I’ve always viewed media promotion is like this: Imagine you have a video made. Simply posting it to your website is like having a garage sale: Only the people who walk by your house will see what you have for sale or even know a sale is happening. In other words, the only people seeing your content are the people already visiting your site. But when you put up signs around other neighborhoods, pin a flyer on the public board at the grocery store or place an ad in the newspaper or on the radio, your message reaches a wider audience, and that brings more traffic to your garage sale. Similarly, YouTube Shorts are a vehicle for broadening your audience and bringing in new and prospective customers or clients — but on the internet.

How to Film a YouTube Short

Now that we’ve covered the why, let’s talk about the how. One of the unique aspects of YouTube Shorts (beyond duration) is the dimensional format. Standard, wide-screen format is 1920 x 1080 pixels, but YouTube Shorts are 1080 x 1920 — the dimension of your smartphone. The two standard ways of going about this are as follows. 

1. Convert a video you've already made, framing it up to the 1080 x 1920 vertical format in your video editor. One of the problems with this is that when making the original video, you may not have framed up your video shots to consider the different dimensions, which means some of your visual content will not be seen in the new format. You will have to go through each shot individually and reframe the video, shot by shot. 
2. Shoot it on a cellphone, which is already in the vertical format. This allows you to frame everything correctly the first time and reduces any chance that the viewer won’t see what you're trying to present. 

Here at NBCG, we’ve used both techniques. (Sometimes all at once!) We began creating YouTube Shorts for the HirePaths Cool Career series to help promote them and bring in a larger audience of young people. We took the extra time on a shoot to film vertical content on a cellphone. We made YouTube Shorts using the footage from the cellphone, plus we made some using video shot on fancier cameras. The cellphone shots were certainly better framed and, at times, easier to present because it required less editing after filming. But the drawbacks were that we had to find the extra time on a shoot to create these. Anyone who has been on a video shoot knows you don’t always have extra time. Another drawback is some of the things we wanted to present — such as drone shots or multicamera interviews — couldn’t always be shot on a cellphone.

How to Edit a YouTube Short

Reframing horizontal video to vertical can present challenges. The biggest drawback is losing sight of what's shown near the horizontal edges of the shot, but there are ways to overcome this. The first is to duplicate your image, stack the two images on top of each other, enlarge the bottom layer and put a Gaussian blur on it. You’re able to present the whole image in the vertical frame while avoiding unused blank space on the screen. The second option is to resize and stack different frames on the same screen. This allows you to present even more material in the short-form video while keeping the audience engaged. 

Content for YouTube Shorts

The goal for YouTube Shorts is to make quickly consumable content that gets your message across. The first thing to think about is capturing your audience's attention. My best suggestion for that is to find the most entertaining and visually appealing shots to open your video. Maybe it's a funny line or an odd video shot. The first three seconds are the most important to grab attention, so you need to start with something engaging while also letting the audience know what the video is about. Otherwise, you run the risk of someone just scrolling past, and your video will become lost in the algorithm’s void, never to be seen again. Your YouTube Shorts should also include embedded subtitles, or subtitles already in the video. Make sure they are bold and eye-catching without covering up the important content. Research shows that burnt-in subtitles keep people watching longer. Not everyone uses audio when watching videos, so having subtitles allows anyone to follow the video with or without sound.

Posting YouTube Shorts

You’ve made your video. Now it's time to post! You need to think about several things in this step. 

• Labels: How will you label your video during the upload process? Is it educational, funny, for kids, an advertisement (note: YouTube Ads opens a whole new can of worms) or something else? Appropriate labels help YouTube serve the video to the right audience. 
• Hashtags: Hashtags allow people to search for your video and the content it features. You’ll want to use trending hashtags, along with those that indicate what the video is all about. For example, a funny cat video might have #Cat, #Funny #CatLover, etc. Hashtags can be any words people may type when looking for specific content. 
• Analytics: Visit the Analytics section of your YouTube account to find out when your target audience is watching. This can help you schedule your videos for a time when they’ll most likely be seen by your target audience. 
• Links: One purpose of YouTube Shorts is to bring your audience to your page, website, etc., so make sure to include links to your main video, website, channel or wherever you’d like to send people. These can be added in the video’s description or in the comments section. You can even add a link right in the video during the upload process. 

Now that you’re an expert, get out there and #MakeYouTubeShorts!

And if you need help with setup, video production or anything else, give us a ring.