YouTube Shorts 2025: Insider Tricks for Maximum Results

There is no other type of content on YouTube, that causes as many questions and confusion as Shorts.

How to film them so they become trending? What principle determines how short videos appear in viewers' feeds? How to promote such content, and is it even possible?

But most importantly — which creators should even be making Shorts, and for whom would they only cause harm?

Today we won't dig deep into the history of short format or analyze algorithms step by step. Let's instead use examples to figure out right away whether you specifically need Shorts, and if so, how to work with them correctly.

How do creators feel about the Shorts format?

Generally, by the degree of interaction with short videos, bloggers are divided into three categories: those who ignore them, those who make them but nothing works out, and those who do everything excellently.

And here comes the time for the question: what type of creator are you today?

First type —

• Mr./Ms. Ignore

You either simply don't see the point in the new format — and we completely understand you here — because most likely your channel feels great without Shorts, since long content is all you need for success.

Or, which this happens sometiems, Shorts is simply not the format you'd be comfortable working in, and you're not attracted to the prospect of a frantic chase after trends that die faster than your videos gain views.

Or maybe you're that cautious creator who once heard from us or other YouTube experts that Shorts kill channels with long videos, and you don't want to get involved in this venture just to be safe.

Any of the listed approaches is justified and good in its own way. And you absolutely lose nothing if you happen to shoot only long content.

Shorts are not a magic button, but it should be noted, they're not some terrible channel killer either. The main thing is to work with them correctly. And you can easily ruin a channel with our beloved long videos too.

Let's move on to the second type of creators:

• “I make short videos, but nobody watches them!”

Examples are unnecessary here. This phrase can describe literally any case when Shorts don't meet your expectations.

Thanks to the fact that the Shorts feed never ends — that is, no matter how much you scroll through it, the platform will continue finding new content for you — it seems like there's simply an enormous amount of Shorts. Actually, this isn't quite true.

There really are a lot of Shorts, but creators who regularly make short videos are only 10-15% of the total number of creators on the platform. Even fewer are those who do it well.

What are we getting at with all this?

The fact that you have millions of chances to succeed in creating this format and promoting your channel through it. Because, as strange as it may sound, it's still new and actively developing. Just look at Dream Scream, three-minute Shorts, and the change in view counters for short videos.

• Creator with a black belt in making Shorts

These guys also once went through everything that bloggers from the previous category are facing now. But unlike them, the percentage of creators who are really doing well with Shorts is minimal.

And it's logical to assume that such bloggers do something special to make their content stand out from the crowd.

But in reality, they simply do what most creators posting Shorts don't do. This is their advantage, and we can also master this advantage.

To do this, we'll first have to go over the basics.

How Shorts algorithms work

And since we promised that today's explanation would be as simple and brief as Shorts themselves, here's a simplified description of how the algorithms work, screenshot this:

You make a Short → YouTube selects a test group close to your target audience → shows them the Short → collects reactions → draws conclusions and shows your content to a larger audience or slows down the shows.

And if you think of it, it turns out that a lot depends on exactly who YouTube shows your video to in the very first, test group. This leads to a simple question — How can we independently help YouTube promote our videos?

There are two main opportunities for us as creators — optimizing Shorts and providing data about the channel's target audience.

Optimization, though very limited, still exists for Shorts. Short video metadata will help YouTube understand what your video is about and possibly who might be interested in it.

Data about your target audience the platform takes from channel analytics and other videos. YouTube analyzes which of your videos attract certain viewers. This helps it understand your target audience.

Therefore, it's important that your channel has a sufficient number of videos. The more information there is to analyze, the easier it is to identify connections and understand who to offer your Short to.

We also shouldn't forget about this:

What differences between Shorts and long videos affect their promotion?

• First, it's the short lifespan of the Short itself. To make this clearer, let's break it down in comparison with long videos.

Thanks to the fact that viewers quite often find long videos through queries in YouTube's search bar, you can create evergreen content. That is, videos that may not hit trends but gain views throughout their entire existence, as they answer viewers' eternal questions.

Shorts, on the other hand, are mostly built on recommendations and trends. That is, they quickly take off and quickly get lost on YouTube. Of course, they'll also bring you some traffic from search, but let's be honest — that's not the main point of Shorts.

• Second, precisely because Shorts quickly take off and die, you need more of them in quantity to get more chances at success.

If you have only one short period of time when you can really count on success — that brief period right after publishing, when the platform gives more exposure — then it makes sense to try your luck as often as possible, especially since YouTube doesn’t limit the number of Shorts you can post per day.

• Third, the publication time of your short video also matters.

If short videos are distributed through the feed immediately after publication, it's important that your potential viewers aren't sleeping at that time, for example. Otherwise, your Short will hit the recommendation feed at night, and new morning videos will simply push it out.

• Fourth, the time in which you must interest the viewer has become even less than in long videos. If it's 8-10 seconds, here it's only 2-3 seconds in which you must grab attention, outline the topic and the video's subject matter.

It sounds unrealistic, but to somehow deal with this task now, we recommend trying to answer the questions — what short videos do you watch and why?

YouTube itself loves to give comprehensive information about its products. But algorithms are a fairly closed topic that is rarely officially commented on by the platform. This is done to prevent fraud and attempts to bypass the system. Simply put, so that no one "hacks" the algorithms, as it's commonly said.

And we don't need that. We'll simply turn to information that managers weren't stingy about sharing.

Tips for working with short videos

First of all, the algorithms for long and short videos have a common global goal — to show videos to viewers who will appreciate them. Therefore, the first thing you should think about when creating Shorts is your target audience.

The second thing that's important for you to remember is how YouTube evaluates the success of a particular video.

When working with long videos, we're used to this being mainly the retention rate and how often viewers watch your video to the end. With Shorts, the situation is slightly different.

Viewer retention here loses its primary importance, since Shorts is quite a short content format, and it even starts playing again if you get distracted for a second.

Despite this, it's still important for the platform how long you watch Shorts, since, for example, advertising revenue and participation in the partner program still depend on the "engaged viewing" parameter, not just on playback, which has recently been counted as a view.

Moreover, if you go to your channel Analytics and select the "Content" section, "Shorts" item, you'll be able to see such an indicator as "Viewed percentage".

This is the percentage ratio of those who watched your short video to those who scrolled past it. This way you can evaluate how much your content hooks viewers in the first seconds.

And finally, the third point — there's no perfect timing and frequency for publishing short videos.

Content quality will always be more important than its length or number of videos. It doesn't matter to YouTube how often you decide to publish or not publish a video. Any new Short will have its own chance at success.

Let's not be deceptive and say that channel reputation doesn't affect anything. It does, but not in the way it's commonly believed.

If you've already built up a certain amount of content, optimized your channel and videos, determined your topic and audience — it will become easier for YouTube to create a portrait of your potential viewer.

In this case, the platform will more often promote your Short to a loyal audience that will give the necessary amount of reactions for further promotion and increased reach.

Of course, we won't learn the whole truth about how algorithms work, but from those fragments of our own experience and statements from platform managers, we've compiled quite a complete picture of how short video algorithms work for you.

We hope this information will help you get oriented and start creating something unique for your target audience, or finally let go of the thought that if everyone is making Shorts, then you need them too.