Short form video kinda sucks

I mean… you probably kinda guessed what this newsletter is about from the subject line, right?

But just in case you love me so much that you opened this email without reading the subject, here’s the deal:

YouTube shorts, Instagram reels and TikToks kinda suck compared to longform YouTube videos— and I’ll explain why.

THEY DON’T MAKE ANY MONEY

As you can see above, I made $47 from a YouTube short that got 412k views. If that was a longform YouTube video I probably would have made $2-4k.

sad trombone

But maybe you don’t care about monetization, because you’re doing this to build your personal brand and drive business for some other offer (consulting, a product, etc).

Well, there’s still some big problems:

THEY DON’T DRIVE TRAFFIC

TikTok, Instagram and Shorts REALLY don’t want you to leave the app, so it’s hard to drive traffic from shortform video to a website (eg, to book a discovery call or download a lead magnet).

“Link in bio” is your best option, but how many people are actually going to go to all that trouble?

Longform YouTube videos have clickable links in the description, and people definitely click them (that’s why every sponsor has “click the link in the description” as their CTA).

For example, the links in all my YouTube videos brought me ~7k LinkedIn followers and probably 50k+ Instagram followers with ZERO effort on my part.

THEY DON’T BUILD BRAND VERY WELL

Because shortform video is delivered in algorithmic feeds where people just mindlessly swipe, shortform users oftentimes don’t even know or care who the creator of a video is.

Think about how many TikTokers you actually know by name… probably not many, right?

You probably just think of them as “the guy that does pressure washing” or “the girl who writes funny poems.”

The same is true with YouTube Shorts.

THEY DON’T CONVERT TO LONGFORM VIEWERS

And as you’ve probably heard other people say, YouTube shorts viewers also don’t really convert to viewers of your longform videos. They’re basically two separate audiences that don’t overlap very much.

Shorts viewers just watch more shorts, and that’s it.

So if shorts don’t make money, don’t build brand, don’t drive traffic and don’t convert to longform viewers, what are shorts really worth?

Not much, in my opinion.

SO HERE’S WHAT YOU DO:

I’m not saying to walk away from short form video completely, because the awareness they drive still has some value.

So here’s how you get the best of both worlds:

Optimize for longform YouTube videos, and pay someone to make short form videos from them.

Depending on exactly what you need, you can probably find someone to do them for $20-100 per video.

The results probably won’t be as good as if you made original content just for shortform, but I think it’s the best compromise for most people.

THE VERDICT

So for everybody who asked (which is almost everyone on my sales calls), there it is: ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to find shorts GUILTY on all charges.

(please don’t go full TikTok and start making funny dance videos about SaaS…)

PS - Here’s the part where I try to sell you something. If you want to talk about how you can use LinkedIn or YouTube to grow your business, reply to this email or just set up a call here!