I have worked directly with many YouTube creators recently and by directly I mean access to analytics real conversations with these creators and I keep seeing this happen so I'm going to request that before you comment just hear me out here howdy howdy everyone Nate here I have been very interested in YouTube shorts since the beginning of YouTube shorts but as I've been working with creators like yourself I kept seeing a few concerning patterns so imagine my Intrigue when recently I came across this video from the channel the game theorists with a video titled why everyone
hates YouTube shorts and you should too naturally it piqued my interest now while this channel run by Matt Pat typically covers games and gaming occasionally we'll get a diamond like this one that's commentary on YouTube as a platform and this video perfectly summed up a few things I was also seeing just outright pay people to make them no one really took them seriously still which is why this year in 2023 YouTube started pushing them hard now when you open your homepage on desk top you see shorts when you open your phone to pick a video
oh you just randomly showed up in the shorts feed sometimes when you're watching Youtube on the TV and it's like here would you like to watch a short on a TV with a totally different aspect ratio sure why not YouTube as a platform has been making a huge push for shorts recently by making it appear in a lot of different places they show on the home screen of YouTube on desktop and mobile not just in the shorts feed as well as and this one is very weird to me in search results now this first point
Matt Pat is making is that YouTube shorts seem to be kind of taking over over the platform and pushing down long form creators videos if for no other reason than the UI or the user interface of YouTube is being dominated by trying to get these shorts seen to creators this sech has had some devastating Ripple effects when you go to the homepage and suddenly 50% of the screen is dominated by short form video it means your long form content gets shared less at the top of the Year YouTube basically mandated that if you want your
channel to continue to be successful shorts have to be part of your video strategy and that's kind of an issue when it's a format that takes time time and effort to make but basically earns you0 I have seen these effects firsthand also as I have worked with YouTube creators especially in the Realms of the mid to large size creators or what I might call a momentum Zone when a channel is finally starting to reach their pace and seeing some real growth YouTube shorts seem to be translating into almost no benefit for these creators now a
bit more on what I mean with that here in a moment first I wanted to play one more clip so what is the big issue well outside of the fact that they lose money don't translate to long-term viewers very expensive long form content and feel like a pay to- win model on YouTube yes yes and yes with that last point of feel like a pay to- win model being chance they feel like chance you see after analyzing this and having many many conversations with creators just like yourself the first issues crop up on the Creator
side of things not even the people watching the shorts so for you as a Creator creating effective YouTube shorts represents a very different skill set in most cases from standard long form YouTube content because what it takes to win with you YouTube shorts is very different than long form content and that alone isn't really a big issue because we're always learning we're always acquiring new skill sets that's kind of the name of the game you get good at one thing and then you acquire the next skill and that's what creates that Snowball Effect or that
constant Improvement for us as creators the big issue comes in when you start to look at the other side of the equation which is the viewer Dynamic of YouTube shorts this is what I view as the Crux of the problem with YouTube shorts on the platform right now on the audience side of things there are two very distinct viewing behaviors and again this video from Game Theory put it very well you see with long form videos it's an active experience meaning you are actively choosing what videos to watch and then when you watch that video
you say that was interesting maybe you look at the suggested videos and you choose to watch another video or maybe you say I'm going to go back and refresh go back to the homepage what is YouTube serving up for me so that again you're choosing which videos to watch on the shorts feed just like other short form content platforms it is not that way it is a passive viewing experience you are not choosing which videos are are queued up for you your behavior is indirectly whether you like the video or you swipe away quickly but
from my experience YouTube shorts in most cases the audience that want to watch those YouTube shorts are in a very different state of mind than an audience that wants to watch long form now let me explain what I mean by that when I've considered the primary reasons why someone watches YouTube shorts I've distilled it down to three things one to laugh learn or see something new two to get a dopamine hit or distracted because you're bored or three and this is much less common to keep up with a Creator as an influencer someone that they
like they would just want to know what's happening for them now the important thing to note here especially with point one is they're not looking for a long experience with either with learning or entertainment they just want a micro experience so this goes down to the fundamental differences between shorts and long form videos because the strategy you as a Creator are looking to implement is diametrically different in fact as I've worked with these hundreds of creators oneon-one I have been developing strategies primarily for long form if I'm honest that you absolutely do want to be
aware of which I'm going to put a card for you to watch after this if you'd like but that brings us to what I consider to be the big problem here as I'm advocating for YouTube creators like yourself the big problem I am seeing is three-fold number one YouTube shorts do not fit most content types or Channel niches it's not to say that a Channel about repairing cars for example couldn't make an effective YouTube short it's just very different a person that wants to know how to fix their car is not necessarily a person that
wants to know how to fix their car on the shorts feed so what ends up happening for many creators is when they add YouTube shorts to their content mix it feels forced next major issue is they require an entirely separate skill set which is why I've already said here on this channel if you are starting off or if you don't feel really solid on one or the other just choose short or long form and don't try to do both at once I've seen it distract the efforts of most people I'm working with and with that
I need to acknowledge that I have some awareness bias because many of the channels that I work with are not in a heavily entertainment space on YouTube they're often times more in skill sets or sharing stories and that brings us to the third major problem I am seeing with YouTube shorts right now you might remember a while back I published a video to the effect of YouTube shorts are way more useful for all creators at this point because they added this feature of linking to another piece of content on your channel and it was in
the UI they could just tap that other piece of content and you could direct them anywhere else on your channel and on the surface that seemed awesome it seemed like it was finally going to accomplish a thing that wanted YouTube shorts to do and that was build the channel as a whole like raise the entire tide of the viewership they watch YouTube shorts they find you with YouTube shorts and then they say hey I'm going to watch your other videos I'm going to watch your other YouTube shorts this is awesome however that isn't matching the
reality yet I'm very hopeful that it will but up to this point I am not seeing that happen in fact as I've had these discussions with YouTube creators they seem to only slightly affect long form viewership at best most of these YouTube shorts viewers are not converting to other types of viewership on most channels and again I need to acknowledge here that I do not have access to all of YouTube's data I I wish I did that would be awesome I just have to operate off of working in this space where my big priority is
helping creators like yourself to be successful on this platform and I'm simply not seeing the value yet I'm hopeful but it's not happening yet all right now we need to talk Solutions because I don't just want to leave everybody in the Lurch of oh this is terrible thing here so in terms of a big answer to this issue I actually don't know at this point what I would recommend that the YouTube platform do to solve this because the issue here is more tricky than you might think I don't think it's just some little UI chain
which is what we've seen attempted previously that didn't seem to be really changing things I think the core issue here is the difference in the behavior and preferences of the two audience consumption models because here's what I'm going to recommend we talked about all of this what do I recommend at this point as a publishing this video number one be conscious of where you're allocating your efforts don't just do YouTube shorts because that's what you think everybody should do and number two YouTube shorts still work remarkably well for certain sectors of YouTube and if that
is your experience I would love to hear what you are doing and how it's working for you because there are probably many people watching this that that is absolutely their experience and if that's you then I want to hear from you among all these hundreds of Creator conversations that I've had recently I have seen a strategy emerge that is very effective for growing primarily long form content on your channel sometimes supplemented with YouTube shorts which I'm absolutely going to recommend you watch next because there are some pretty darn valuable insights that I have found and
I share in [Music] that
