How to Make a YouTube Short

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The Ultimate Guide on How to Make YouTube Shorts

Short and snackable video content has become the hottest ticket for social media growth. Viewers can’t get enough of it as it now influences everything from music to news to fashion to cultural trends.

To cater to this raging demand and compete with platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Vine, YouTube recently rolled out Shorts to enrich users with fun and catchy short-form video experiences on the go.

Rolled out worldwide only in 2021, the new format has already surpassed over 15 billion daily average views by July 2021.

With such an exponential growth rate, the question isn’t whether YouTube Shorts is worth your time. The real question should be how do you tap into this huge opportunity to drive your business to the next level.

This guide will show you how to create compelling YouTube Shorts videos to increase online reach and engagement. You’ll also learn how to monetize your content and earn revenue money from them.

YouTube Shorts Length and Format

Creators and brands now have an incredible opportunity to create entertaining short-form videos, reach huge audiences, and boost visibility for their brand. But first, you must make sure you are creating content that meets YouTube’s video size and format guidelines.

The best recommended YouTube Shorts resolution is 2160p (3840×2160). This will provide a quality viewing experience for viewers. Other available YouTube Shorts dimensions include:

1440p: 2560×1440
1080p: 1920×1080
720p: 1280×720
480p: 854×480
360p: 640×360
240p: 426×240

YouTube shorts can be uploaded in a square or vertical aspect ratio. However, since YouTube Shorts is optimized for the mobile viewing experience, we recommend the vertical 9:16 video aspect ratio.

Why Should You Add YouTube Shorts to Your Marketing Plan

YouTube Shorts is still evolving, and the early signs look positive.

Even more, the opportunities are endless because there’s a big appetite for short-form videos. Plus, YouTube Shorts already has massive usage numbers in about 100 countries worldwide.

Therefore, you can adopt this emerging trend to drive brand awareness and grow a massive community on YouTube.

Let’s take a deeper look at other reasons you should use YouTube Shorts for your business.

Lower Commitment From Viewers

The human attention span is shrinking, and this behavior is obvious considering how people use social media.

Nowadays, social media users want instant gratification and low commitment. They are looking to consume content quickly and stay up to date on the latest trending videos, topics, and breaking news.

On the flip side, longer videos require a bigger commitment from viewers regarding time, bandwidth, and money. And since they don’t have the time or patience to sit through a lengthy video, YouTube Shorts is a visually appealing place to go since clips are only about 60 seconds or less.

Keep in mind that viewers watch more videos on their mobile devices. Plus, mobile users have countless distractions, both in their feeds and the world around them. YouTube Shorts is suited to mobile viewing, just the way viewers love it. Hence, it empowers viewers to quickly digest content or get glued to their screens on the go.

When it comes to accessibility, YouTube Shorts ticks all the right boxes. Anyone can create YouTube Shorts videos, and it costs nothing to enjoy these bite-sized, captivating, and valuable clips.

User-Friendly Interface

The YouTube user interface is not overly complex. It’s straightforward, providing quick access to different tools, features, and commands.

Like the main YouTube interface, the YouTube Shorts page offers a modern and intuitive viewing experience. The homepage features are well-organized on both mobile and PC, making it easy for creators to access different features like:

Video recording
Rich library of sound for videos
Adding filters and countdown timer

Viewers can easily like, dislike, comment, and share their favorite videos. These features collectively make up for the platform’s user-friendly interface,which attracts viewers and offers an enjoyable user experience.

Free-To-Use

It’s no news that the video prompts more engagement than other content types. This makes it crucial to digital marketing strategies as those engagements could increase content ranking and bring your brand to new eyes.

While video stands above other content types in driving engagement, short-form videos like YouTube Shorts stacks up even better.

The beauty of it is that the platform is free for brands, creators, and influencers. Since there’s no payment to produce content, YouTube Shorts is a level playing field for content creators. With little or no video production budget, brands can reach a wider audience and drive awareness and conversion for their brand.

You don’t even need a laptop or desktop computer to create Shorts. All you need is a smartphone, and boom, you’re good to go!

Accessible on Multiple Devices

YouTube Shorts is accessible on multiple devices, including PC, Android, iOS, etc. According to Statista, YouTube has over 844.9 million active users just on iOS (iPhone and iPad). The monthly active users on Android are about 23.44 million worldwide.

You may be wondering what these juicy numbers mean for your brand.

Here’s what you should know. YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world, only behind Google. Therefore, building your brand on YouTube Shorts videos opens it up to a huge potential audience.

Beyond the opportunity to showcase your brand to millions of viewers, you can monetize your content and earn revenue for making interesting videos.

However, you’ll need to publish videos consistently to up your chances of success. Therefore you want to create a content strategy that keeps the views and engagements flowing in.

No Entry Barrier for Beginners

Most platforms have extreme barriers for beginners, such as steep learning curves, strict monetization requirements, limited budgets, stiff content creation processes, etc. But YouTube Shorts is an exception to this.

There are no requirements for beginners to start producing content. And like we’ve mentioned before, YouTube Shorts is fool-proof for anyone to make engaging videos. Once you’ve got a smartphone and the YouTube app, there’s no limit to what you can achieve.

Let’s say you already have some old yet evergreen videos in your content arsenal. In that case, you can recycle them to reach new audiences using a different format.

You can also repurpose high-performing videos from other social media platforms like Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, or TikTok. Just make sure to adapt the video’s aspect ratio to suit the YouTube Shorts requirements.

Regardless of your niche, you’d be surprised at how much success you can enjoy by experimenting with YouTube Shorts videos.

For example, an attorney with the YouTube Shorts’ name LegalEagle, uses the platform to share his views on legal issues. He also uses Shorts to make law clear and intelligible to the average person. His recent YouTube Short video: Kim Kardashian Fails Baby Bar Exam, has over 132,000 like over 1500 comments.

The requirements for creating Shorts videos are pretty straightforward. Each video must be 60 seconds or less, and you must upload it in a vertical or square aspect ratio. And when it comes to YouTube Shorts monetization requirements, the entry barriers aren’t as challenging as the main YouTube page.

We’ll show you how to monetize your YouTube Shorts videos in the latter part of this article – keep reading.

How to Make YouTube Shorts for Your Business

There are two main ways to create and upload YouTube Shorts to your page.

First, you can record your video with your smartphone using YouTube’s multi-segment camera.
Another option is to upload videos you’ve created from another social platform like TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories or a video-making platform like Promo to create captivating videos that meet the YouTube Shorts requirements.

Upload Videos Saved on Your Devices

Here’s how to post short videos created with other tools such as Promo.

To upload a Short from Android and iOS devices:

Open the YouTube app and click Create (+)
Once done, click on Upload a Video.
Choose your preferred video and click Next
Follow the steps we shared above to add sound, text, enhance your video, and publish.

Here’s how to post YouTube Shorts from a computer:

Sign in to YouTube Studio
At the top right corner of your screen, click Create and then Upload Videos.
Select your video file. Remember your video file must be 60 seconds or less with a square or vertical aspect ratio.
Remember to include #Shorts in your video title or description. This will help the YouTube algorithm increase visibility for your video across YouTube.

Note you can select up to 15 short videos at once. But make sure to click Edit Draft to add video details before posting them.

How to Create a YouTube Short with YouTube app

To record short videos on YouTube Short, you must have a smartphone. Keep in mind that this option isn’t available on PCs or tablets.

Open YouTube

To get started, download, install and sign in to the YouTube App on your Android or iOS device.

Select YouTube Shorts

Next, tap on the Create (+) button next to the Short at the bottom of your screen and then select Create a Short.

Record your Clip

To record your footage using YouTube built-in recorder, hold the capture button to start recording. You can also record your clip by tapping the button to start and again to stop recording.

The default YouTube Shorts time limit is 15 seconds. To make your clip longer than 15 seconds, tap “15”, located above the record button. This will increase your YouTube Shorts length from 15 to 60 seconds.

Remember that recording your clip with music for the YouTube library or original audio from other clips will limit your video to 15 seconds.

If you want to increase or reduce your recording speed, tap the Speed button. You can make your clip two to three times faster or reduce it by half or more.

By selecting Timer, you can set the countdown to record hands-free and choose when to automatically start and stop recording.

Not satisfied with your recording? Use the undo and redo button to remove the previous video clips or add them back.

Add Music and Texts

YouTube Shorts offers multiple customization options, such as adding text overlays or music to your video clip. You’ll find a robust library of sounds from different artists worldwide to make your videos pop.

To add music to your video, click on Add Sound at the top of your screen, search your preferred music track and click the arrow to add the song to your clip.

Select a Filter or a Video Background

Next, improve the look and feel of your clip with effects, lighting, and green screen and retouch feature.

Add a Title and Description to Your Shorts That Reflects Your Brand

After enhancing your video, tap Next to add a video title and a brief description of what the clip is all about. Make sure your title is related to the content of your video.

YouTube recommends adding #Shorts and other relevant hashtags to enable the algorithm to recommend your clip across YouTube and boost its rankings.

Select Your Audience and Preferred Visibility Options

The next step is to select your video visibility. The available options include:

Public: Anyone can search for and view your footage
Unlisted: Anyone with the video link can view the clip
Private: Only selected people can view the clip

In addition, you can publish your video now or schedule it to go public on a specific date and time.

To select your audience, click Yes, it’s made for kids” or “No, it’s not made for kids”. For age restrictions, you can tap Yes to restrict your video to viewers over 18 and “No” if you don’t want to restrict your video to viewers over the age of 18

Keep in mind that the default video privacy setting for creators between 13 and 17 is private. But if you’re 18 and above, your default video privacy setting is set to public. You can change this setting to make your video public, private, or unlisted.

Upload Video to your channel

Once you’re satisfied with your video settings, go ahead and click Upload to publish your Shorts.

How to Watch YouTube Shorts Videos

To binge YouTube Shorts, all you need to do is tap on the Shorts tab. Then scroll through random videos Shorts feed just like Instagram Reels and TikTok. If you find any videos interesting and want to watch more videos from the creator, here’s what you should do. Simply tap on the creator’s profile picture or name to view all of their uploaded videos.

Ways to Improve Your YouTube Shorts Videos

Although viewers want accessible content, they won’t just jump on any video on the YouTube Shorts shelf. If you’re going to attract viewers, boost engagement and optimize your success, you need to create watch-worthy videos. Here are a few tips to help make your YouTube Shorts videos successful:

Create Immediate Engagement

With YouTube Short and other bite-sized videos, engagement is the name of the game. Viewers love it because it caters to their declining attention span.

Not only that, YouTube Shorts are more suited for fun and unserious content. Since it offers immediate satisfaction to viewers, they’ll most likely dig right into the next video to enjoy more satisfying moments.

With that said, you might be wondering. How do you turn this opportunity into quick wins for your brand? Well, the fact is that you’ve got a limited amount of time to capture audience interest and convey your message. So you want to engage viewers quickly; else, they’ll move into the next best video.

And the best way to drive swift engagement is by making your video short, sweet, engaging, and impactful.

Here’s how to make this happen:

Start with eye-catching headlines followed by a storyline that keeps them hooked into your content.

Remember the YouTube Short example we shared earlier: Kim Kardashian failed the Baby Bar? Although the video talks about Kim’s journey to becoming an attorney, you’ll agree the headline is enchanting enough to draw more eyes into the video.

That right there is how to create a captivating headline with style.

Create Relevant and Interesting Content: YouTube amasses over 5000 hours of video every minute from creators globally. If you want your content to stand out, it must be compelling and relevant to your target audience. Else they’ll skip your content whenever it appears on their feed.

While crafting your content strategy, you need to answer these questions:

What are your content goals? Do you want to educate, entertain, inspire or sell?
Who is your target audience?
What type of content or topics do my viewers care about, and how will it help them?
How will the content help grow your brand?

Answering these questions will help you create content that resonates with your audience and keep the views, likes, and shares flowing in.

Keep it Short and Sweet: This is a no-brainer because that’s why they are on the platform in the first place. Go ahead and do these things:

Cut out the irrelevant stuff and get to the point.
Break longer subjects into subtopics, sections or create a series.

Tailor your video to the platform requirements: We recommend that you stick to the 9:16 aspect ratio while creating content that works for your specific audience.

Create Eye-Catching Thumbnails

YouTube Shorts thumbnail is the first thing viewers see when they visit your page. So remember to make it catchy enough to grab their attention and attract clicks.

Once your thumbnail can nudge viewers to click your video, having watch-worthy content will make viewers watch, like, and comment on your video. This could, in turn, boost your visibility, increase engagement, and up your chances of hitting the top spot on YouTube Shorts.

Avoid using clickbait or misleading headlines to deceive people into thinking they’re about to watch something you haven’t covered in the video.

Clickbait will draw viewers into your content loop, but they’ll leave as fast as they came. It could increase your bounce rate, affect your rankings, and hurt your reputation. Also, YouTube could penalize you and take down your content if you violate their thumbnails policy.

If you’re looking to create catchy thumbnails that attract clicks and views, we recommend using an intuitive tool like Promo. It provides a broad selection of incredible YouTube thumbnail templates to get you started. You’ll also find thousands of fonts, stock images, icons, and other design elements to help bring your ideas to life.

Be Energetic

Another great way to keep your audience truly engaged is to make your videos energetic and enchanting. Vibrant and bubbly videos are a hit for many creators. They bring excitement to your scenes and make your videos fun to watch.

It doesn’t matter if you’re creating gaming, sport, training and workout videos, or dance challenges. The goal is to keep your viewers right at the edge of their seats.

Energetic creators have a bigger chance to grab viewers’ attention and make them feel more valued. The important thing here is to make your content authentic, consistent, and valuable to your audience. When you do this, viewers will keep coming back for more.

Creativity is the Key

Whether you’re creating comedy videos, how-to videos, lip sync videos, or jumping on a viral challenge, it’s important to think outside the box.

Sometimes it can be tough to get that much-needed spark of inspiration. But adding some elements of freshness, creativity, and inspiration will make your video stand out and impact your audience positively. YouTube Shorts offers different features like music, filters, captions, and a timeline to jumpstart your creativity.

However, it’s important to understand the tone that appeals to your target audience and create videos that resonate with them. Is it informative, enthusiastic, or demonstrative? You can make this your starting point.

Feel free to move away from the traditional and experiment with new content types. For example, you can start viral challenges or jump on a viral challenge to showcase the fun side of your brand.

Some brands use YouTube Shorts for promotions, instructional videos, comedy, etc. For example, popular channels like CollegeHumor or Funny Or Die share short comedy clips and currently have millions of subscribers.

WebFx, a digital marketing agency, uses YouTube Shorts to share brief yet informative content about social media marketing.

Informative content doesn’t have to be lengthy. You can repurpose your blog posts or research reports into bite-sized videos just the way your audience loves it.

Don’t Feel Limited by YouTube Shorts Editor

YouTube Shorts allows creators to upload videos created with other tools. This means you aren’t limited to the YouTube Shorts video editor.

You can explore other video-making tools to make short YouTube videos. Although you’ll find a lot of tools out there, we recommend using Promo because it’s feature-rich and easy to use. Promo has a rich library of over 100 million premium photos and videos from Getty Images and iStock, a royalty-free music catalog, and multiple design elements to help you create entertaining and share-worthy YouTube Short videos.

How to Monetize Your YouTube Shorts Videos

Much like your main YouTube channel, there are many ways you can make money with YouTube Shorts.

The beautiful thing about YouTube Short monetization is that you don’t need to be in the YouTube Partner Program. You can earn revenue from YouTube Shorts ads, YouTube Shorts Fund, sponsored videos, and more.

Keep in mind that if you’re monetizing on YouTube Shorts, your channel must follow YouTube’s monetization policies. These include YouTube’s Terms of Service, Copyright, Community Guidelines, Google AdSense program policies, and Advertiser-friendly content guidelines.

Let’s take a quick look at the different YouTube Shorts monetization options and how to make money with YouTube Shorts.

Creator Fund

YouTube Shorts has created a $100M Shorts Fund to reward creators for making creative and interesting content that delights the YouTube community.

According to YouTube, they’ll distribute this fund during 2021/2022. Every month, YouTube will contact content creators whose Shorts videos have received a lot of views and engagements to reward them for their efforts

The YouTube Shorts Fund isn’t limited to just creators in the YouTube Partner Program.

To qualify for a Shorts bonus from the YouTube Shorts fund, all you need to do is to:

Create at least one original and eligible content in the last 180 days
Adhere to YouTube Community Guidelines
Set up an AdSense account if you don’t have one linked to your channel.

Tag Products to YouTube Shorts

Another way to earn revenue is by tagging products or merchandise to your Shorts Video. Viewers will see a product card at the bottom of their screen. Then they can tap the card to visit the product page, see more details and start shopping.

For example, you can sell branded products and merchandise like stickers, T-shirts, electronics, smart devices, and more.

On YouTube Shorts, only one product tag appears to your audiences, while standard YouTube video shows up to 30 tagged products in the product list. Therefore, if you tag multiple products, viewers will only see the first product in the list.

The product tagging feature is only visible to viewers in Brazil, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, Malaysia, India, the Philippines, and the United States. And creators in these countries can only access it via YouTube Studio on desktop.

Do YouTube Shorts Pay Creators for Video Ads?

With YouTube Shorts, the goal is to encourage viewers to jump swiftly from one video to the next, leaving little room for advertising.

However, YouTube often serves short ads between videos. Due to its max length of 60 seconds, the total exposure time for an ad is lower.

Unfortunately, attributing ad revenue to creators on Shorts is harder with promoted videos. That’s because YouTube Shorts ads appear between creators’ videos, rather than on the same page with the video like the normal YouTube ads.

As a result, content creators don’t earn revenue from advertisements displayed in the YouTube Shorts player right now.

The good news is that with YouTube Shorts, you can amass views from multiple traffic sources, including:

The YouTube homepage
Subscriptions feed
Suggested videos etc

With these coming outside of the YouTube Shorts shelf, you can earn revenue for your content efforts.

Things to Keep in Mind

Now that we’ve shown you how to use YouTube Shorts and earn revenue from the platform, here are a few things to keep in mind.

YouTube Shorts Is Still in Beta

Although YouTube Shorts is still in beta, the platform is fully functional and has enjoyed immense growth.

YouTube Shorts beta made its debut in 2020 and has witnessed massive adoption, surpassing 6.5 billion daily views in March 2021

Since the platform is still in its beta phase, many changes can happen from here on out. Since releasing the foundation video creation tools, they’ve added features like the ability to:

Add text to different points in your video
Sample audio from other videos and remix it into your clip.

In the coming months, YouTube plans to launch features like the ability to use audio from billions of videos across YouTube on your Shorts. This means whether you’re reacting to jokes, watching recipes, or recreating comedy skits, you can add a fresh spin and repurpose it for another audience.

There’s much more to expect from YouTube Shorts before the full version hits the market. Over the next year, as YouTube listen to user’s feedback, they’ll continue to:

Roll out more video creation tools and easier ways to binge short videos on YouTube
Develop long-term monetization programs for creators and more.

Big Push From YouTube

YouTube is riding on the back of its success as the largest video platform to boost massive adoption for YouTube Shorts, providing stiff competition to TikTok.

First off, by putting a lot of money behind YouTube Shorts ($100 million), YouTube is aiming to achieve these things:

Invest in research and development to improve user experience and drive the platform’s overall success
Provide an incentive for creators to make valuable content that keeps users glued to the platform
Promote Shorts while providing massive opportunities for brands and creators to succeed

The YouTube Shorts vs TikTok debate will be around for a long time. However, as both platforms breathe more life into the short-form video genre, make sure to leverage them to your advantage.

Built-In Editor

With short-form videos, you want to capture the hearts and minds of your audience quickly. But it all starts with the video creation process.

YouTube Shorts’ built-in editor is fun and easy to use, and that’s definitely a plus. Anyone to create, enhance and share beautiful YouTube Shorts with just a few clicks.

The multi-segment camera, filter, speed controls, timer, countdown, and other features bring a creative spark to your video clips.

YouTube Provides Copyright-Friendly Music

In YouTube Shorts, artists and creators can access an extensive library of songs to use in their videos for free.

YouTube has millions of copyright-free songs and music catalogs (and growing) from over 250 publishers and labels, including:

Universal Music Group
Sony Music Entertainment
Warner Music Group
Warner Chappell Music
300 Entertainment and more

However, if you’re using these songs for your clips, you’ll have to limit your Shorts video length to 15 seconds or less.

FAQs

How to Get More Views on YouTube Shorts?

If you want to get more eyes and enjoy incredible success on YouTube, here is a list of things you should do:

Create content that appeals to your target audiences
Make sure to keep your content short, sweet and interesting
Use relevant and attractive titles and thumbnails
Add popular and trending songs to your YouTube Shorts
Create and upload videos regularly

How to Disable YouTube Shorts?

Currently, there’s no option to remove or disable YouTube Shorts on YouTube. However, suppose the videos appearing in your feed don’t appeal to you. In that case, you can tap the three dots at the top of each video and click Not Interested.

How to Make A YouTube Short Efficiently?

If you’re looking to take advantage of YouTube Shorts, you need to:

Set clear content goals
Identity content types that appeal to your viewers and
Create a content schedule to guide your content creation process

With Promo’s social marketing calendar, you can streamline your YouTube Shorts and share interesting content regularly. You’ll also find a rich library of easy-to-use templates to organize your content and craft compelling videos that deliver results, saving you time and making your content creation process efficient.

Get to Work: Create Fun and Engaging YouTube Shorts

There you go. From viral dance challenges to lip sync videos to funny videos, YouTube Shorts is soaring in popularity.

Viewers love it because the combination of trending music and fascinating visuals offers a rich viewing experience and appeals to their shrinking attention span. Leveraging this evolving trend can be a great opportunity to boost brand awareness and sales for your brand. You can quickly promote a new product, cover a news item, show behind the scenes at your event or business, boost awareness for an event, or just about anything else you can think of.

Best of all, YouTube Shorts videos are incredibly easy to create and share. You can record your videos directly using the built-in recorder or upload videos created with a professional video-making tool like Promo. Promo offers over 110 million royalty-free photos and videos, text, templates, filters, and other effects to help make your videos more impactful and appealing.

Go ahead and leverage YouTube for your social marketing strategy to start enjoying incredible business results!

youtube shorts

About the author

Promo Team

We believe that words shape thoughts and inspire action. Promo's content team is fueled by the motivation to help you to transform your words and ideas into powerful videos that help you communicate better with your audience and grow your reach.

The Ultimate Guide on How to Make YouTube Shorts