Talent Recap
I was brought on at Talent Recap to boost their YouTube engagement. Talent Recap is a unique case in that the content they use is recycled from television and licensed through downstream rights. While there, I taught them how to utilize YouTube shorts as a trailer/net to catch new audience members and engage them with their long-form content. I also employed a tracking system to help with A/B testing where each videos' metrics are weighed against each other in a simple Excel doc. In the 9 months I was there, 2 million new subscribers came from Youtube shorts alone.
YouTube shorts serve as a trailer for your channel
One of the strategies I employed to improve overall engagement and subscriber count was to treat every YouTube short I selected and edited as a trailer for the channel as a whole. A trailer needs to be a concise, punchy highlight with a strong hook and resolution.
Captions are important for more than just accessibility
Knowing your platform is everything. People often watch short-form content silently. Imagine, you’re sitting at your desk at work, you’re on the subway, you’re scrolling in the bathroom, lying in bed next to your partner at three in the morning. Captions can mean the difference between keeping a viewer hooked and having them scroll to the next video.