Most people prefer and interact best with short-form videos. As a business owner, your goal is to connect with prospects and get them to engage with your brand. Capturing people’s attention, retaining it, and ensuring they favor your content above the competition can be a bit challenging.
However, YouTube shorts make it easy for you to attract your audience’s attention, boost engagement, and help them understand your brand better.
YouTube shorts are videos that are up to 60 seconds long. They make it easy for you to connect with your audience, build brand awareness, boost interaction, and grow your business.
Use this article to leverage YouTube shorts and take your business to the next level.
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HAVE AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY
The only way to see results from your marketing efforts is to come up with an effective strategy that allows you to capture viewers’ attention and easily connect with them. So, know why you want to use YouTube shorts, who you want to reach, and how you are going to reach them.
What is your main reason for creating YouTube shorts? Is it to raise brand awareness? Is it to increase traffic to your website? Do you want to connect with existing customers and advertise new offers? Or perhaps you want to attract a new audience and boost sales? Whatever your goal, write it down to ensure you come up with an effective strategy that will help you reach the desired outcome.
Understand your target audience and identify their interests to ensure you produce the kind of content they are interested in. Look for ways to capture their attention and get them to interact with your content.
Know the sort of information to share, how to present it, and the best way to keep viewers returning to your videos.
Study user behavior to learn more about your audience. If you already have a YouTube channel, identify videos with lots of engagement and find out what users are interested in. Which videos have more likes, shares, and comments?
Go to the comments section and find out what viewers think about the content. Did they find your content valuable? What did they like about your videos? And Did they ask you to share any specific content on your upcoming videos? If yes, use their suggestions to create your YouTube shorts.
Another option is to search for high-ranking keywords around your niche to learn more about your audience, identify their needs, and share content they are interested in.
Use BuzzSumo, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, KWFinder, or Google Keywords to identify popular keywords within your niche.
CREATE INTERACTIVE SHORTS
Keep your content interesting and engaging. Create interactive shorts that attract attention and make it easy for viewers to connect with your brand. Add filters, text, or music for a more engaging experience.
The ‘Filters’ option allows you to change the color, appearance, or lighting of your videos. Making your videos interesting and fun to watch. The ‘Text’ option allows you to add and edit any text you create. You can choose the font, color, and position.
Use attention-grabbing phrases when writing your text to pique interest and get viewers to click on your videos.
The ‘Music’ option lets you add any type of music or sound you like. Use it to add dramatic effects to your shorts and retain your audience’s attention. Your music should blend with your video or voice and make it easy for viewers to understand your main message. So, be careful when making your choice. Browse the YouTube library for music, sounds, and audio clips that you can use on your videos.
The best part about the music feature is that you can choose when the music plays and for how long.
The process of creating your shorts is straightforward. Simply launch your YouTube app on your mobile and navigate to the ‘+’ icon at the bottom of your screen. Click on ‘Create a Short’ from the menu that appears after you click the ‘+’ icon.
Record your video or upload a short video from your library that is 60 seconds long or less. You have the option to add music, text, and other exciting features during the recording process. You can also adjust the speed if you like. That way, you can easily speed up the recording if you have a lot of information to share or slow it down to emphasize a point.
Other great features to experiment with are the timer, flip, and align options. All these features appear on your right-hand side while recording the video.
You can also add filters, edit your shorts, and customize them whichever way you like after you’ve finished recording your video.
Find your editing options at the bottom of the editing screen. Music, text, filters, and timeline are some of the available options you’ll get.
CREATE HOW-TO VIDEOS
One brilliant way to get your audience’s attention is to create how-to videos. People enjoy learning and discovering new and easy ways of doing things. So, take advantage of that.
Use YouTube Shorts to teach your viewers something new. Help them carry out tasks quickly and easily. However, make sure you share content that relates to your brand in some way.
Share useful tips, tricks, and hacks that are relevant to your industry or business. For example, if you are in the food industry, teach your viewers a new recipe. Record yourself preparing a quick and easy meal. Mention how it can benefit them and state that it’s the best way to save time or money.
If you own an accounting firm, share bookkeeping tips with your audience. Use audio clips or video clips to share the information.
If you own a clothing store, record videos of the new clothes that are available. If you have any promotions, use the ‘Text’ feature to tell prospects about them. Keep your videos eye-catching and highly interactive to get the attention you need and increase conversion rates.
Upload educational or informational videos. Share interesting facts about things related to your niche. For example, if you are a software developer, talk about the best ways users can build their careers and make their mark in the industry. Share resources that helped you at the beginning of your career. Mention why you chose the path you’re in, the challenges that come with it, and how you deal with setbacks or success.
The goal is to always provide value with your content and get your audience to favor your videos over the competition.
Add some personality to some of your videos and add a joke or two. Talk about the interesting trip you went on with your team and how it helped you re-energize. Share some of the fun moments you had and how the trip helped promote teamwork.
UPLOAD PRODUCT LAUNCH VIDEOS
Get your audience to connect with your business and understand it better by creating product launch videos. If you want to launch a new product, tell prospects about it to create anticipation and increase your chances of attracting leads.
Mention what the product is, when it will be rolled out to the market, and how customers can purchase it.
Highlight the benefits of using it. Raise interest and increase conversions by emphasizing its unique features and how they will help consumers.
Keep your viewers looking forward to the launch date. Share links to your product launch shorts with your email subscribers and social media followers to reach more people. Talk about it on your website and encourage site visitors to subscribe to your channel.
On the launch day, teach consumers how to use certain features and get the most from the product. Mention all the available features but emphasize the most exciting ones. Explain how they will benefit from the product and state why they should choose it over the competition. Depending on the nature of your product, you can focus on how it simplifies their lives, saves time, and enables your audience to carry out tasks with ease.
Upload videos of the production process and take your audience on a journey. Show them how it started, what your team went through to get it to the final stage, and how it came out as expected.
Share behind-the-scenes videos and take your viewers on a tour. For example, record your work area and show your viewers where the product was created. Doing this allows you to connect with your audience and get them interested in what you are saying. It keeps prospects engaging with your content and is the most effective way to retain attention, get more subscribers, and attract leads.
Another great way to capture your audience’s attention and convince them to engage in business with you is by providing social proof. Use YouTube shorts to share projects you’ve worked on or client testimonials.
Ask happy clients to record themselves using your product or just explaining how it helped them reach certain goals. For example, if you sell makeup, your customers can share a video of what they looked like before using your product, what they look like now, and how long it took them to see the desired results.
LEARN FROM OTHER CREATORS
Learn from other creators to ensure success. Search for creators who share content that’s relevant to your niche and learn from them. Identify what they are doing wrong, where they excel and find out how you can incorporate the same strategies into your video creation process.
Watch YouTube shorts from your competitors and improve your content. Search for your top 5 competitors and watch some of their shorts.
Look at the number of views that each video has and concentrate on ones with more views. What’s interesting about the video? How did the creator capture people’s attention? What sort of value does the content bring into people’s lives? Is it meant to entertain or educate?
Answer these questions and decide how you want to structure your content. What do you want your viewers to see? What do you want them to benefit from your video? Do you want to sound interesting, informed, or formal? Consider your audience when answering those questions to ensure you captivate their attention and speak to their needs.
Watch Shorts from your laptop or by going to ‘Shorts’ at the bottom of your mobile app’s homepage.
Use the icons on your right to like, dislike the video or leave your comment. The shorts also have a ‘subscribe’ button just in case someone wants to follow the creators. These are all great features that make it easy for you to understand your audience, see what they think about your content, get them to subscribe, and determine whether or not you are meeting their needs.
PARTNER UP WITH INFLUENCERS
Getting the attention and views you want can take some time. You may have to put in lots of effort before you start attracting people to your channel, especially if you are only starting. So, partner up with influencers or other creators.
Influencers already have a huge audience that trusts and values their advice. So, use that to your advantage. Work with someone who will make it easy for you to reach your target audience, get more views, and easily connect with your brand.
Search for influencers within your niche or people who cover topics related to your niche. Approach them and send in your pitch. Mention who you are, what you do, what you want to accomplish, and how you think they can help.
Talk about your target audience; who they are, what they are interested in, and mention their challenges. Especially if it’s related to what you want the influencer to help you with.
Provide social proof to convince the influencer to work with you. Share your website URL and links to your social media profiles. Doing this makes it easy for the influencer to trust and consider working with you. By giving her access to your social profiles you show that you are dependable and have been in business for some time. You make it easy for the influencer to learn more about your business, your followers, and how engaged they are with your content.
If you have a business blog that publishes quality content regularly, then you have a higher chance to succeed. Send your blog URL, list what you blog about, and mention how your content is helping your readers reach certain goals. Talk about the value you bring into your audience’s lives with your content. Mention how long you’ve been blogging, what you have accomplished, and what you want to accomplish.
Give the influencer a reason to accept the partnership. Mention how he or she is going to benefit from it. If you sell a product that you think the influencer will enjoy using, offer it for free. If you offer certain services that you think he may find helpful, offer them for free. This may sound costly, but it’s worth the investment. It gives you more exposure and increases your chances to not only reach a big audience but turn them into customers.
If you want to launch a new product and want the influencer to talk about it, give him the product for free. Ask him to test it and then share his experience.
Share the video with your followers and ask the influencer to do the same.
ANALYZE PERFORMANCE
The best way to determine whether or not your shorts are performing and ensure a return on investment from your efforts is to analyze performance and make the necessary changes.
Use YouTube Analytics to get a full report on user behavior. Find out how many people liked or disliked each video. Collect data on retention and views. Find out how many people watched your video and how long they watched it. Identify the moment that received the highest engagement in your video and understand your audience better.
Find out how people engaged with your video by viewing the number of clicks, likes, dislikes, and comments. Determine how many people subscribed to your channel.
Use YouTube Analytics to find out how people found your video. Go to ‘Analytics’, ‘Reach’ then scroll down to the bottom of the page for the information you need. You can easily identify the websites and channels that suggested your videos to users from this page.
See how many people find your videos through their feed or searches and how many people clicked on the videos after they appear on their feed.
Go to the ‘Audience’ section for demographics research and to understand your audience better. Find out who watches your videos, where they live, their age, and so on. See the types of videos they watch to identify their interests.
Use all the information you gather to create engaging shorts, present your brand right, attract the right audience, boost engagement, and get more conversions.
BONUS
Use targeted YouTube ads for more visibility and to reach a wider audience. Invest in paid ads to accelerate the entire process and see the desired results. You can start with Search ads, Outstream ads, Video discovery ads, and Remarketing ads.
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