YouTube Shorts - How to upload and get featured!

If you’ve noticed short form vertical format videos on YouTube lately you might be wandering where they came from and why Youtube is starting to look a little like TIKTOK all of a sudden.

Well there are a number of reasons for this and in todays video I am going to talk about why YouTube Shorts is going to play a major role in allowing content creators to find new audiences in 2021.

To understand Shorts we first need to look at the meteoric rise of TikTok along with the increased usage of mobile phones when it comes to consuming video content.

TikTok is an international version of Douyin, which was originally released in the Chinese market in September 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide after merging with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly, on August 2, 2018.

September 2016 as an evolution from the app musically which had built a strong following of users uploading short lip sync videos to their favourite songs. The videos were short, often viral and addictive in nature.

What made TikTok appealing for the viewers is the short viral nature of the videos that would play one after the other with no need to click and navigate the intuitive nature of the player kind of hooks the viewer in.
At the same time anyone could create and account and easily share and above all views and followers seem to come easily for anyone uploading any type of content that was remotely increasing or entertaining.

When India banned TikTok in 2020, YouTube saw an opportunity to jump in and offer the same kind of short form video to its users on the platform to bridge the gap for the Indian market who had taken so positively to Tik TOk.

Enter YouTube shorts. For some time it was restricted to the Indian market in beta form but now YouTube have outlined its commitment to extend the offering to its content creators in all other regions in 2021.

Very soon you should be getting access to the shorts icon in the YouTUbe app which allows you to record and upload 15 -60 second videos directly to YT. You’ll also get access to a range of Royalty free Audio tracks to ensure you don’t run in to any copyright issues.

I can’t tell you when these features will be available as YouTube haven’t confirmed when it will roll out the full feature to the rest of the world as yet other than to say it will ben in 2021 But if you are keen to jump in and try it out now you can do it using the YouTube app on your iPhone or the YouTube creator studio on your desktop browser.

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