I started uploading some YouTube shorts a few weeks ago. A YouTube short is a video that is shot in vertical format and is 60 seconds or less in length.
YouTube, I had been reading online, were pushing shorts and Instagram were pushing Reels because they were concerned about the growth of TikTok.
Since I started, I have a 1-minute vertical video to upload to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. And the experiment has been well worth it. So much so that I intend YouTube shorts to be a central part of my online marketing efforts.
The views, comments, and likes on YouTube are impressive and encouraging. And I am experiencing similar positive results from Instagram Reels and TikTok. Not so much with Twitter, but I don’t pay much heed to Twitter now from a marketing perspective.
I have been considering shooting the vertical videos on my camera, as opposed to my smartphone. But the jury is out on that one.
The quality would be marginally better. But would the extra effort and friction be worth it? For example, the issues I would have uploading the videos from my desktop computer rather than using the various apps on my Galaxy S20 phone.
That is something I will have to think about as the advantage of shooting on my camera and uploading from my Mac is the ability to do some postproduction editing on my computer in Camtasia or iMovie.
And uploading to YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter is easy from desktop Mac or PC. Uploading to Instagram Reels requires a (free) Google Chrome extension.