Why you should use YouTube Shorts in 2022

Imagine having the attention of 15 billion media impressions without lifting a single finger. No complex strategies and not one single Zoom meeting.

Sounds too good to be true? For Ocean Breeze this situation became reality.

But how did this happened? What could possibly lead to such a great effect?

The answer was one TikTok video.

One video was all it took

Keeping it short: A person named Nathan Apodaca decided to film himself in a funny way skateboarding to work. Meanwhile he was drinking a cran-raspberry juice by the company Ocean Breeze. The video exploded on TikTok and increased the companies reach and sales signficantly.

More and more of such success stories are getting known. Nevertheless, the first mover advantage on TikTok is slowly a thing of the past.

Instagram followed the short-form video trend with its own service “Reels”. The service already developed to the main feature of the app with placing the “Reels”-feed button right into the center of the menu.

Short-form videos. The stage is yours!

Still not sure about this type of content?

The HubSpot Blog’s 2022 Marketing Industry Trends Survey found out that more than half of the marketers (51%) who use short-form video plan to increase their investment in 2022. Meanwhile, 38% plan to continue investing the same amount. Next to that, short-form video has the highest ROI of any social media marketing strategy as 30% of social media marketers plan to invest in it more than any other trend in 2022.

Many companies are already using TikTok and Instagram nowadays, but often times forget about the main institution when it comes to video content: YouTube.

Why you should try YouTube Shorts

YouTube launched a short-form video service in 2021, called “YouTube Shorts”. Since July 2021 YouTube Shorts is fully available in Germany, which still offers the first or early mover advantage.

YouTube has a major advantage over other platforms: an extremely wide target group. A study of Pew Research in the US showed that YouTube is the most used platform in all age groups except the group over 65 years old, where it still got to place number 2 after Facebook. Meanwhile, TikTok offers a less diverse target group in the younger age ranges, which is not suitable for all companies.

Moreover, YouTube is increasingly pushing the “Shorts” feature, which offers enormous chances for businesses and creators. Successful Shorts can quickly push the accounts reach significantly without having to pay a single cent. Especially if you want to start a completely new presence on YouTube this feature should definetely be worth a try. In testing this claim, it could be seen that a completely new channel quickly acquired over 20000 organic views with just a few short videos.

Social Commerce already on YouTube Shorts in 2022?

Another major step YouTube is taking, is the development towards shopping. In an extensive article Neal Mohan, the Chief Product Officer of YouTube, talked about future steps in community, collaboration and commerce. This focus will offer big chances in the field of social commerce inside of the YouTube player. Beyond in-video shopping functions, YouTube is also exploring other ways to incorporate social commerce inside the current user experience.

“We’re thinking about shoppable videos, Live Shopping, and, more broadly, how shopping appears across the app. With shoppable videos — like this partnership for Black-owned Friday — users can shop tagged items in their favorite creators’ videos.“ – Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer, YouTube

Also beyond the YouTube Shorts feature, shopping will be a big topic on YouTube in 2022.

Integrations of the shopping functions into the YouTube homepage of the app could then look like this:

A chance you shouldn’t miss

In conclusion, these rapid changes in the landscape of YouTube will offer exciting chances. Businesses around the world could benefit through content marketing in short-form video as well as through social commerce chances from 2022 on. YouTube should definitely be worth a try for every company who wants to take advantage of early mover advantages in the digital landscape.

Images: YouTube , YouTube Blog

About the author: Julian Thiers did his master’s degree in Digital Management in Cologne, is founder of the brand VOUM and project manager at the e-commerce institute in Cologne. His major fields are content marketing (online marketing), branding and digital platforms and structures.