YouTube Shorts – how to use to promote your business

YouTube Shorts is a relatively new product from YouTube, which consists of short (up to 59 seconds) horizontal videos.

The key difference between Shorts and regular YouTube videos is that they are presented to the user in the form of an “infinite feed,” curated by algorithms based on the interests and behavior of each individual user.

YouTube Shorts were initially launched for users in India in 2020, where this format performed excellently, leading YouTube to expand it to other regions.

According to Google’s internal data, the popularity of YouTube Shorts has rivaled TikTok, owned by Byte Dance, which had gathered 1.6 billion users by March 2022.

That’s precisely why this article by the BUSINESS SITE web studio team provides a step-by-step guide to promoting your business through YouTube Shorts.

The Myth about YouTube Shorts

There’s a stereotype surrounding YouTube Shorts and other forms of horizontal content like TikToks and Reels, which suggests that this format is only suitable for entertainment:

Possibly, but the key word here is “watch,” meaning they capture attention!

And attention is the most critical element for business promotion.

Multiply this by an audience of 1.6 billion users per month.

Hence, YouTube Shorts is a substantial and stable source of attention. The challenge is to direct that attention to your business.

How to Get Millions of Views on Short Videos on YouTube

As mentioned earlier, “attention” is a necessary resource, and views are the unit of measurement for attention.

Short videos (YouTube Shorts) are presented to users in a continuous feed based on the platform’s algorithms. Understanding and manipulating these algorithms can make your videos appear regularly in recommendations (the Shorts feed).

If your videos consistently make it to recommendations, they start to accumulate views, and your business gains that coveted attention.

The simplest and most obvious way to achieve this is to monitor trending videos, adapt them to your niche, and create similar content.

However, a significant downside to this approach is its instability. There may be periods when suitable videos from other creators are scarce for weeks or even months.

Inconsistent content can turn your business into a hobby or a niche interest. Therefore, a crucial business process like growing a YouTube channel should be stable and scalable.

That’s why we’ll explore key metrics for YouTube Shorts that enable you to gather regular views.

View Rate and Retention – Key Metrics for YouTube Shorts

YouTube is a commercial entity, and its business model and earnings directly depend on the screen time users spend on the platform. In other words, the more people worldwide use the service and the longer they stay, the more money YouTube makes.

YouTube’s goal is to make billions of users spend as much time as possible watching videos on the platform. Hence, the algorithms are designed to show users videos that align with their interests.

To achieve this, YouTube creates a “shadow profile” for each user, recording segments of the user’s interests based on their behavior and viewing history, such as bodybuilding, astronomy, or history.

Yet, even with reasonably precise user interest profiling, it’s not guaranteed that every video suggested on a relevant topic will be liked and keep users engaged.

That’s why YouTube introduced key metrics for short videos, including:

1. View rate in the context of YouTube Shorts refers to the percentage of views from the total number of impressions. This is a critical metric that helps you understand how effectively your short video captures the audience’s attention. If your video was shown to 100 users in Shorts, and 30 of them didn’t swipe to the next video but stayed to watch it, the view rate for that specific video is 30%.
   View rate = 30 (Views) / 100 (Impressions) = 30%.

   When does a view count? Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t disclose this, but generally, you can intuitively understand that if users don’t swipe away immediately, the view can be counted.

2. Retention is a metric reflecting how long viewers watch your video before switching to another one. It shows the percentage of the total video duration that the average user watches. For example, if the retention is 70%, it means that, on average, viewers watch 70% of the total video duration.

   This is a crucial metric because if your videos can keep users engaged for an extended time, YouTube will recommend your videos favorably and show them to more users.

   Therefore, there are two key metrics for YouTube Shorts that, when worked on, can help your videos regularly appear in the recommendations feed and gather not only millions but also tens of thousands of views, increasing your business’s visibility.

Increasing View Rate: How to Keep Viewers from Swiping Your Shorts?

As we understood from the previous section of this article, view rate is one of the two key metrics that can ensure high views.
Based on the available video analytics from our team, which have gathered from hundreds of thousands to several million views, it can be determined that the optimal view rate should be around 70%.

To achieve this, it’s important to provide maximum value within the first few seconds of a 1-second video. You should offer maximum value in the opening seconds.
So, it’s not advisable to start Shorts with phrases like:

“Hello, my name is…” “In this video, I would like to tell you…”

The first line in your video should be original, impactful, and understandable to a broad audience:

“Bitcoin will be worth $0 by the end of this year.”
“Elon Musk’s new smartphone obliterated the iPhone.”
“$175,000 was lost/earned/found due to a wrong mouse click.”

The opening lines should be formulated like newspaper headlines! To do this, you need to use the main triggers that capture people’s attention:

• Threats to life/health;
• Money;
• Sexuality;
• Betrayal;
• Celebrity names;
• World-famous brand names.

It’s essential not to overdo the creativity, and you must understand that if you want to work for the long term, the topic introduced at the beginning of the video must be elaborated on in the video itself.
Otherwise, over time, users will lose trust in your videos, and they will simply swipe, leading to a decrease in the “view rate” metric.

How to Keep Viewers Engaged in Your Short Videos?

Retention is the second but equally important metric that will help gather views for your videos.
As mentioned earlier, the better your videos hold the viewers’ attention, the more beneficial it is for YouTube to show them to as many people as possible.

For YouTube, a video retention of over 43 seconds is acceptable. However, it’s essential to understand that achieving 100% retention throughout the video is not possible.

To do this, you need to follow a set of important rules:

1. Create a script in such a way that every 8-10 seconds, a new idea begins in the video. In a 59-second video, there should be 6-8 theses.
2. The script itself should be written in text form, word for word, which will be read by the narrator to avoid “umming” and inappropriate pauses.
3. The text narration should be energetic and expressive. The narration style can be compared to radio DJs, who need to hold the audience’s attention for a long time using only their voice.
4. Maximally dynamic editing. Change frames no less frequently than every 2 seconds.
5. If there’s a mention of something (an object, a famous person, an image), it’s desirable to highlight the text with an image of that object. It’s essential that the object isn’t static but has some movement.
6. You can highlight important thoughts with captions. Their appearance should be accompanied by a distinctive sound upon arrival and departure. This is called the FSX effect.

Following all these rules, along with a bright and unconventional title, will capture the viewers’ attention, preventing them from scrolling. In return, YouTube will give more views to your videos, and your business will gain a larger audience.

How to Make Money with YouTube Shorts?

We’ve discussed how to get views for your videos, but views don’t always translate to money!

We need YouTube Shorts to attract attention, gather traffic, and then convert this traffic into customers and money.

Unfortunately, when following all the requirements for successful YouTube Shorts videos, it’s impossible to complete all the steps of the sales formula. If you stick to the video structure capable of gathering many views in the shorts format, a 59-second video leaves only 2 steps: problem identification and solution proposal.
In the format of short videos, you can easily include a call to visit your company’s website, which can be placed in the header of your YouTube channel or in your longer videos, where you can further engage the target audience and encourage them to place orders on your website.

This allows you to build a sales funnel consisting of:

1. Short videos that gather traffic and redirect it to your long videos.
2. Long videos that allow you to showcase your expertise, provide more detailed demonstrations of your products/services, build trust in you and your company, and redirect the target audience to your website or online store.
3. Landing page – a page on your corporate website or a separate landing page where the client can submit a request or even make a payment for the product or service you advertised in your long video.

This way, you get a combination that will bring your business traffic measured in thousands, and in some niches, hundreds of thousands of unique users at virtually no cost.

Why is this type of traffic called “virtually free”? Because YouTube does not charge you for website clicks, but to attract traffic, you need to regularly publish new high-quality videos.

The production of quality videos will require certain resources.

The Cost of Promotion in YouTube Shorts

The costs of promoting through YouTube Shorts are solely related to the production of the videos themselves.

To calculate these costs, you first need to understand how many videos you need to create to see results.

But if you don’t set the ambitious goal of getting the YouTube golden button within six months, then it’s quite sufficient to publish 1-3 videos per day. This will be enough to grow your channel to 50,000 – 100,000 subscribers over a period of 10-15 months, which is more than enough for a business channel.

Thus, for cost planning, it’s essential to consider about 60-70 short videos per month.

For video production, you need:

1. Script – the most crucial part because, as discussed earlier, the success of your video, whether it ends up in recommendations or not, depends on well-crafted phrases and storytelling dynamics. This part of video production is not the one to skimp on.
2. Shooting – in reality, it’s not obligatory, as you can easily overlay the script’s voiceover on cutouts from ready-made videos or even images. But if shooting is necessary, there’s no need to go overboard. In most cases, shooting with a regular phone is sufficient; it’s not worth renting an expensive studio and equipment for short videos.
3. Voiceover. The sound must be of high quality, energetic, non-monotonous, and clear. It’s advisable to hire a professional voice actor for this.
4. Editing – a crucial part of video production, as mentioned earlier, the editing dynamics directly impact the retention rate, which is crucial for views.

Thus, the cost structure looks like this:

It’s important to understand that after 1-2 months of regular publication of YouTube Shorts, you will receive traffic measured in tens of thousands of unique users. This means that the cost of a unique visitor to your website will be approximately 2.5 – 5 cents.

In the 2020s, neither Google nor Facebook can provide such traffic volumes at such a low cost!

The costs listed in this table are for the scenario where you fully delegate video production, but you can do some or all of the video production work yourself to save on the budget if it’s insufficient at the initial stages. Later, when your channel starts generating returns, you can gradually delegate the work.

Conclusions

1. YouTube Shorts is a powerful tool for attracting substantial volumes of traffic in almost any business sphere.
2. Unlike other sources like Google Ads or Facebook Ads, where you must pay for traffic, YouTube Shorts allows you to choose. If you have more time and less money, you can create videos yourself; if it’s the other way around, you can fully delegate the process.
3. Thus, YouTube Shorts is an effective and flexible tool for business promotion.