Transcript
Molly: All right, let’s get on the bus. It’s time to go to Camp. Content. Y’all ready? Summer camp has begun.
Anthony: Oh, Day one.
Matt: I’m driving this joint. Just like that.
Anthony: Picture I like. Well, I’m always in the back on the graphic, so I guess I’m like one of those kids who throws things at you guys in the front. So I just hit you with some gum, Matt. Let’s just make believe there’s gum in your hair.
Molly: Well, you’re the bartender. You’re the one that snuck Milwaukee’s best, right? Yes, ma’am. Onto the field trip to make sure that we all have a terrible time. Right. That was me in high school. I might be speaking experience on that.
Anthony: Yeah, I would have brought something classy. Like old English.
Molly: Hmm.
Anthony: Malt liquor.
Molly: What was the champagne of beers with that one?
Anthony: Miller High Life. Why do I know who I know all these things?
Matt: At our camp, we play Edward 40 hands around the campfire.
Molly: I’ve heard of that game. That’s a generational gap right there. But, see, when I was your age, we didn’t need games to drink. We were just derelicts, naturally.
Matt: I don’t know how much of a game it is to duct tape to 40-ounce beers or your hands and try to be the first one to drink.
Anthony: I’ve never heard of that game
Matt: Yeah. We do it in college all the time. It’s called Edward 40 Hands. And you would duct tape 40-ounce beers to each hand and you couldn’t take them off until you finished both. So you’re just duct-taped together or.
Molly: Or Pee yourself.
Matt: Or you pick up. Yeah. I couldn’t pick up food. Couldn’t do anything.
Anthony: How do you use the latrine? The lavatory.
Molly: You can’t
Matt: Unless you have a helping hand.
Molly: But now that’s Edward. 41 hand.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony: Whoo!
Molly: Hey, Bum rum bum.
Anthony: Oh, right.
Molly: So, speaking of summer camp, Everybody wants to know what YouTube shorts are? It’s not magical underwear. Unlike the Mormons, they’re not magical. And where you wear while you watch YouTube.
Anthony: That’s a great Joke! Should I be wearing my YouTube underwear while I watch YouTube?
Molly: YouTube shorts?
Anthony: Great idea. I guess.
Molly: Right? Man, you could wear them on the beach. You can wear them on your couch. YouTube shorts. We should make some shorts. The YouTube Logo. We’ll get sued. But anyway, YouTube shorts are all the rage right now. And I’m a huge fan because of YouTube. Well, you know everybody. Everybody wants to talk about how everything’s the original TikTok algorithm that’s like the thing to say in marketing. Like a couple of months ago it was reels and shorts. But we’ve seen the data here at Heartcast media. We have been putting up YouTube shorts for our clients and for my personal podcast, and we have definitely seen a significant difference between the whole video, the whole podcast, and the clips of the podcast that are being posted on shorts. Like some of my videos have like 17 views on the whole video and 400 views on the shorts. So it really begs the question, you know, should you be using YouTube shorts in your content marketing plan in 2023?
Anthony: And shorts, I think also are a good way. If you already have an established YouTube channel like Molly was saying, you can kind of tease people to come in and watch your long-form content by giving them the short-form stuff, or you can use it obviously. I mean, everybody’s thinking about the marketing aspect, and the stuff that I read that I thought was the craziest was that 73% of consumers are willing to watch a short-form video to learn about a product or a service. And I would have never guessed that 73% of people are willing to watch commercials now because the commercials are somewhat fun. You can call Heartcast media, we can add some graphics to them. There are a couple of jokes in there. It’s actionable stuff that you can learn immediately and put to use immediately, and there’s value in it other than just being told, Oh, doesn’t this cheeseburger look delicious, and don’t you want to buy it? If I teach you something, you’re probably more than likely to watch my other videos. So if 75% of people that are wondering how to make this is going to watch a video to learn it, why not try to be one of those videos?
Molly: Yeah. I mean, I watch a bunch of shorts, Matt. Do you watch shorts at all?
Matt: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, it’s basically like having Tik Tok on YouTube because you go to, like, at least a YouTube app and you just click on the shorts portion right to the right, or like, it’s like the second thing is right there if I go to YouTube.
Molly: Exactly.
Matt: Right on the bottom here, you can click on this one. Sorry. And you just scroll through shorts.
Molly: Oh, do you watch Andrew Tate videos if you just catch you watching entertainment? I don’t like it.
Matt: It just shows you everything random like there’s a plane. That’s why.
Matt: Don’t watch planes diving into the ocean. Oh, duty. Well, this guy is doing who knows what, but it’s like. So it’s basically like having He was riding a rollercoaster, actually, so. Yeah, I guess my algorithm is Andrew Tate. Rollercoasters and planes.
Molly: That’s okay. Cause I get Andrew Peterson’s name, or whatever his name is. And I’m like, How did I get this fucking guy? But whatever.
Matt: But it’s just like having the same thing right there. Right? So you’re just scrolling through, You’re looking at everything and it’s just and then I guess like Anthony was saying, the algorithm, like if I’m watching through shorts and I maybe spend. It’s as if I just did like I just did and I scrolled right past Andrew Tate and right past a plane and right past the roller coaster. But something pops up like a Call of Duty video or a soccer highlight, and I watch it throughout the length. Then I’m probably going to start seeing more. And then when I go back to normal, YouTube, my suggested video is probably going to be a soccer video. It’s just like what the World Cup did, right? YouTube shorts sponsored the World Cup. And what YouTube did was send all these high-end creators and TikTok stars and streamers and YouTube people, and they sent them out to the World Cup and they just did YouTube shorts the entire time. And there was a collective like, I think, 90 million Fans between the people they sent out there and the whole time they’re just highlights of games. These stars that like at a game just taking selfie videos in a sweet box or something real quick and it’s just like and then it popped off.
Molly: They stack their statistics by doing that because of YouTube, I bet they changed their marketing deck like their project that weekend boosted all their numbers. And I’m not mad. I mean, there are 2 billion active users on YouTube. It’s the second-largest search engine in the world. Like I’ve been on the YouTube train forever and since the birth of Heartcast media. Right? So it makes sense. And apparently, shorts are getting 15 billion views daily. So what I find really interesting about YouTube shorts is if you have an existing channel, you can use YouTube shorts to bring traffic. But if you don’t have a channel and you want to create more short-form video content this year and you’re like, I don’t know if my audience is on LinkedIn, it’s probably on Tik Tok. I don’t want to mess with it, but like Instagram, LinkedIn, you know, whatever. Well, okay, make sure you put it on your blog because of SEO and domain authority and driving traffic to your blog, but also YouTube because you don’t even have to have full-length videos on YouTube. You could just have an aggressive shorts campaign. And get a whole bunch of traffic that way and then drive those people with your CTA’s on those videos. And so, you know, talking about your like for your page, how it works is, well, I think the magic in all of these videos is the fact that they show you the first 2 seconds. So there is.
Anthony: A star like me. Oh, sorry. No.
Molly: Yeah. Oh, so they show you the first 2 seconds, and then you instinctively, like, want to watch more? Like, because it looks like something’s about the fall or it’s like you’re clicking on stuff you don’t even care about, but they like rope you in with that. That moment. But what it knows is if you’re scrolling through and you slow down on Android Tate, we’ll talk about that later, but we’ll have you slow down on Andrew Tate. Although I’ve been watching Tile Swan videos because she’s a sociopath. But I digress. The Insta algorithm knows that you’ve slowed down on it for a second. You don’t even have to click on anything. You just stay on every second longer and then the algorithm knows, Oh, this user watched longer lengths of videos with these tags, and that’s what people don’t realize. It’s the tags that are this connecting thread in YouTube. And that’s why, like when you’re uploading content that you do, it’s so important about hashtags and tags on the content. And so many people skip that point, but that’s how it is. That’s why if you watch a husky singing video and you watch the whole thing or you watch it twice, it’s a YouTube Short. You watch it twice, you scroll up, and the next video is going to be another husky because they’re going to find more videos with the same tags. Not even the same name, right? The same tags. It’d be interesting to do a little experiment where you put videos up and you don’t put any title on them or you put a very, like basic like, you know, test, but then you put all the right tags and see if you can get like, you know, traffic with the same content because I think the tags are what really drive the entire algorithm on YouTube. And it makes sense. It’s the largest, second-largest search engine in the world. Of course, it’s based on search engine and search volume optimization.
Anthony: And they’re it just in case you think you may get lost in the sauce, there is a demand for these videos. You know, I was probably one of the other cooler stats that got me all excited about these YouTube shorts was learning that when they came out about two years ago, the amount of videos being uploaded were pretty even with the amount of videos being watched. And now there’s a drastic difference. There are 175 billion views for every 1 million uploads, so it has grown at five times the rate of when it began. So obviously, like Molly always says, it’s because we get caught in a loop, right? You really watched it and paid attention once, but you probably played it 650 times. So they compared their stats or whatever. But the point is, people are watching these at a super high rate. And the way you could kind of look at it if you apply the supply and demand philosophy to social media is that there’s really not a lot of videos out there as far as how much these videos are being consumed. So there’s room for your content. People will find your content because they’ll go from the one they know where to find to yours, because like you said, the algorithms are going to show it to them. So don’t think like, Oh man, I’m going up against the giant influencers here. Right? Exactly. Like you’re going up against people in your sphere, in your industry, and in any industry, right? There’s a percentage of people who are stupid in their content that is going to say you’re just going to be naturally better than them. And if you’re kind of halfway, you know, and you’re teaching people something, you’re in a really good place now because there’s such a high demand for these videos. It’s crazy.
Molly: There is. I mean, it’s like that lady that Rachel Patterson, that I follow, that I did, that social media hack that I showed you guys yesterday in the meeting. Like that was a 32-second video. I already shared it with somebody else. Now she’s following her and probably going to do the same thing. So it’s like, you know, then you gotta figure, you know, that’s quick content. That’s 15, 30 seconds, right? So it’s like, yeah, you need a lot more videos. What’s next? What’s next? Because people just want to see what’s next, what’s next, what’s next?
Anthony: And you hit on the time there. What do we think is the sweet spot? Right? Obviously, it’s between 15 and 60 seconds, but generally speaking, about 6 to 7 out of ten get completed. So do we think you want to be around the 32-second mark? I mean, I don’t know that there’s good statistics determining the precise length of the video, which basically is what I’m saying. Right. Are there?
Molly: Well, according to the interwebs, more than 70% of YouTube shorts are longer than 15 seconds. Right. I don’t know what the completion rate is.
Anthony: Okay. Yeah, me neither.
Matt: I mean, they have. What’s the time limit? 60 seconds. They can’t go over
Molly: They can’t go over 60. Yeah.
Anthony: I actually look that up real quick.
Molly: So it’s interesting. And then 70% of YouTube watch time is on mobile.
Anthony: Right.
Matt: It’s all that makes sense. I mean, everybody does mobile. Yeah.
Molly: And then and it’s saying that you can use it to get long-time subscribers, which I agree. And then this is interesting. They’re going to start doing ad revenue sharing on shorts in 2023. But you must have a thousand subscribers, which is fine, and then take time to monetize your YouTube channel. You have a thousand subscribers and 4000 watch hours. All right. In order to qualify for monetization on YouTube. That’s what it is right now in the last year. So you have to keep getting those hours every year to maintain your thing, you know, which would be I mean, there would be no point in having a monetized channel if you’re not getting those hours watched anyway. Right. Right. But YouTube shorts have to have 1000 subscribers and 10 million shorts views in the last 90 days.
Anthony: That’s seen, that’s why there’s no indication.
Molly: And that means those viral ones are definitely getting launched thousands of times.
Matt: Well, yeah, well, it’s like back to the World Cup thing, like they did it was like some challenge rules like you could show I was like shopping on shorts where you could, like, purchase an official World Cup T-shirt directly from watching a short. And I guess the hashtag was FIFA World Cup Challenge. And that hashtag alone generated 10 billion views throughout the World Cup over three more weeks.
Molly: And how many sales? Like what’s 1%? Yeah, probably 2% of sales, which was 10%.
Matt: Out of 10 billion views. Yeah.
Anthony: And your phone is at the behest of these shorts, because this morning I watched a short and I kind of tossed my phone on the bed. I went to get ready and I came back and the phone was still on like it had never closed. And I had probably watched those shorts 6000 times. And I was like, Yeah, it looks like my phone’s still on. Oh, yeah.
Molly: Mm-hmm. That’s when you see a short video and there’s like, farms and like Singapore or whatever. They have like 12,000 cell phones on a wall and they’re just like looping shorts. I don’t know if that’s real, but I think it is. I mean.
Anthony: They are getting 175 billion views.
Molly: If you really want to go hard into paying, you can go buy a bunch of burners, get some SIM card jibs, put all their phone numbers on them and sit here and make up your own views that thousands every day. Right? Not millions or anything. But I bet I mean, you know, I’m saying so you can’t but you know, you can’t believe everything you see. But, um. Very true. We are not suggesting you do that at Heartcast Media. And then.
Matt: Maybe.
Anthony: Don’t cheat ever. Don’t try and game the system. It’s not like we’re all trying to defeat algorithms.
Matt: Depends on the system.
Molly: That’s kind of the thing with social media. There’s a lot of people gaming the system with fake followers and all kinds of stuff. So it’s like, you know
Anthony: Very true.
Molly: Whatever. Oh, 25 What? 25.6% of YouTube shorts originated in India and 23% from America from the United States. That’s interesting. More people in India are using YouTube shorts in America and in the United States.
Anthony: There’s a lot of people in India, I heard.
Molly: 74% of adults in America use YouTube because it’s the best.
Anthony: Everybody’s using YouTube.
Molly: You know, it’s less of an age gap. I’m finding a lot of older people are using YouTube. They’re more inclined to use YouTube and Spotify and stuff like that because for.
Matt: That’s because YouTube has become. TV. It’s TV news, right?
Anthony: It’s just a video.
Matt: I mean, I use YouTube. I use YouTube TV instead of cable.
Molly: I was getting that maybe because it’s.
Matt: Great, great ask. Can’t say enough great things. But it’s become literally everything. And it’s always been around. It doesn’t come and go like every other social media app because it’s got.
Anthony: Hasn’t drastically changed, right?
Molly: Yeah, I have a pro account and I’ve had it for years and literally it’s playing right now. There’s like reggae in the background. Like I can turn it up. It’s like literally, there’s always music playing in my house. It’s on YouTube, and YouTube will just play great music, song after song after song for days. It’ll literally run for days and I’ll find new music.
Anthony: Coincidentally, all the music you like. That’s so weird.
Molly: No, but it’s even more. That’s the thing. I find that, like, what if I just play the same stuff over and over again and then plays the poppies over whatever’s popular in that genre? Do you know what I mean? It’s like when you know, when you put it in like, reggae and it always comes up like UB40 and you’re like, Dude, we put out like four songs, like we recorded Why? Yeah. Oh my God. I get irrationally angry when I hear that song, so I know we better get out of here when I start e before I start throwing kids off the bus. Do you know what I’m saying?
Matt: Fair enough. Yeah.
Anthony: But I mean, you hit that, and.
Molly: Now we’re at our 15-minute mark, and it’s a poor man’s shadow marked up by that. Well, that’s where it’s 17 minutes, where over time, we promise this will be short. So YouTube shorts. The takeaway is we think you should do it. You can take content. You’re already making a podcast. You’re already going on. Chop it up into little bits, put it on YouTube shorts, build a subscriber base, and build a place to market your long-form content. And then the next step is going to be advertising on YouTube. But that is going to have to be another episode. But our final takeaway, I’m going to say two thumbs up to YouTube shorts. What do you guys think?
Anthony: Two thumbs up. And I’m sorry, I am. I love you.
