YouTube is adding- can you guess? Yes, that’s right, YouTube is adding another way to utilize Shorts within its community engagement process, while it’s also looking to help Shorts creators convert more viewers into subscribers via their clips. Okay, so it’s not monetization or raw engagement per se, but it’s about Shorts, hinting at the element’s popularity and the focus YouTube has been throwing its way lately.

In Short

First off, YouTube’s looking to make Shorts, in case you didn’t know, a more responsive engagement option by enabling users to reply with a Short in the comments Feed. Based on YouTube’s official example, creators can now add Shorts clips as comment replies in-stream, providing another way to utilize Shorts within the engagement process.

In many ways, it’s similar to TikTok’s video reply options, providing a more intuitive and interesting way to interact within the process. YouTube says that the functionality is rolling out to creators on iOS this week, with Android coming ‘in the coming months’. YouTube’s also adding  new Data Stories for posts, which will provide more insight into how your YouTube content is performing.

YouTube has been rolling out variations of its full-screen Data Stories cards over the last few months, which provide quick snapshots of various aspects of channel performance. These new post analytics will give you another way to learn more about your channel’s overall performance, with quick, headline notes that showcase key stats.

Lastly, YouTube is also adding the capacity for subscribers of a channel to become a channel member direct from a Shorts Feed.

“The join button will show to subscribers on Android and iOS. The goal is to give more subscribers of a channel the opportunity to support a creator through channel memberships.”

Shorts has become a key focus for YouTube, with the TikTok-style vertical video Feed facilitating more than 50 billion daily views, sparking a whole new use case for the app. Unsurprisingly, it could become an even bigger element – with YouTube now rolling out its new Shorts monetization program that could prove to be another big draw for top creators, which could have YouTube leeching more of TikTok’s best stars.

The Wrap

With TikTok on increasingly shaky ground in the US, it does seem that YouTube could be the closest, if not the best alternative. Think about it, if TikTok were to be given the boot, where do you think all of those orphaned creators would look to start again? YouTube, in the end, might actually win the short-form video race, and these new steps stand to only further the platform’s short-form video position.

Sources

http://bit.ly/3XCuIzZ