Ideal YouTube Shorts Ratio and Dimensions

You may be overwhelmed by the many options available when exploring YouTube Shorts ideas. You can wing it and create whatever strikes your fancy, but that’s not the best approach if you hope to go viral. There are proven best practices that can help you achieve your goals, and one of the most crucial is nailing the ideal YouTube Shorts ratio. This guide will help you identify the ideal YouTube Shorts ratio to create engaging videos that align with your goals and attract the right audience for your content.

We’ll also explore how you can use the right resources to uncover viral trends so you can create content that gets noticed. One of the best resources to help you find video trends is Virlo's virality analysis tool. This user-friendly tool will help you find optimal YouTube Shorts ideas to reach your goals by identifying trends and analyzing the performance of existing videos to get you started quickly. 

Table of Contents

• Ideal YouTube Shorts Ratio and Dimensions

• 13 Best Practices for YouTube Shorts

• Importance of YouTube Shorts

• Is It Possible To Create A Square YouTube Short?

• Go Viral with Virlo's Virality Analysis Tool

Ideal YouTube Shorts Ratio and Dimensions

You must stick to the aspect ratio for YouTube shorts to provide high-quality videos for the platform. Capturing your YouTube Shorts in this sweet spot will increase the odds of attracting a large audience and leaving you happy with the final product. YouTube Shorts aspect ratio is 9:16. It was designed to take up the whole of your phone's display. YouTube Shorts video dimensions of varying lengths are expressed in this ratio. YouTube shorts size ratio played on a computer typically has a 16:9 aspect ratio. The player will adapt to the video's aspect ratio and the viewer's device without any action on the user's part.

The Resolution Requirements for YouTube Shorts

The minimum resolution required for YouTube Shorts must be met. Otherwise, you won't be able to deliver the promised materials. Effectively delivering information is more important than knowing what you're talking about. YouTube shorts can be as low as 600 x 600 or as high as 1920 x 1080 pixels in resolution (standard length-by-width ratio for vertical content).

The Ideal Size YouTube Shorts Thumbnails

Knowing the YouTube short video dimensions in pixels is crucial when creating a custom YouTube shorts thumbnail. The recommended video resolution for YouTube shorts is 1280 by 720. Having this information at your disposal will make you a more effective video content designer and distributor. Many people use these shorter videos on YouTube for advertising and self-promotion because there is less competition in this format than in more conventional-length videos.

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13 Best Practices for YouTube Shorts

1. Use Virlo for Finding Trends for YouTube Shorts

Virlo helps short-form content creators crack the code of virality through AI-powered trend analysis. Our platform combines creator insights with advanced analytics to identify winning content patterns, optimal posting times, and successful audio/video combinations that help your content stand out in today's fast-moving social landscape. Perfect for independent creators looking to build a sustainable side business, Virlo takes the guesswork out of content strategy. We analyze the latest viral trends and help you understand when to post and what combinations of elements drive engagement. Whether you're just starting or looking to optimize your existing content, Virlo enables you to navigate the ever-changing algorithms to increase your chances of going viral. Go viral with Virlo's virality analysis tool.  

2. Grab Attention with an Engaging Title

An engaging title sets the tone for your YouTube Short. A title does more than just inform viewers what your video is about; it can also entice them to watch it. Optimizing the title/caption of your Short is just as important as making the video itself engaging. Consider using the title as a hook to keep viewers watching your Short until its end. You’ll need to experiment with this since different kinds of language work for various audiences. That said, it’s a good idea to keep your title short and punchy and use words that resonate with your audience.

3. Make the First Few Seconds Count

Come up with a compelling hook to get your viewers’ attention within the first few seconds of your video. Avoid clickbait, though! Nothing makes a viewer swipe to the next YouTube Short faster than a clickbait video. It’s a great idea to brainstorm a few hooks before filming your Short, and to make sure you experiment with different kinds of hooks across your videos.

4. Create the Perfect Loop

YouTube Shorts are played on a loop by default. If the viewer doesn’t swipe to the next Short video, they will see the same Short again for the second time, or even more times. A perfect loop will help make your Shorts look crisper. When filming and editing a Short, create a seamless loop to encourage multiple views.

5. Re-Hook Your Audience

It isn’t enough to create a strong hook for the beginning portion of your Short. Despite the short length of the video, you need to keep viewers engaged throughout its duration. Ideally, you should aim to re-hook your audience every three to five seconds, whether with a trending sound, text, or other visuals.

6. Create Consistently

Whenever a new platform or a feature like YouTube Shorts gets released, content creators will pour themselves into testing it out and figuring out how to make it a part of their strategy. But all too often, these creators give up after a few attempts that don’t go far. If you want to go viral with Shorts, you have to create them consistently. That can be one video a day or one a week, but just make sure you stick with them. That’s the only way you’ll start seeing results!

7. Use Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to make your Shorts more discoverable and should be part of your YouTube Shorts strategy. Do some research, see what hashtags top creators in your specific niche use or what hashtags are featured in viral videos, and include them in your content.

8. Post Your Shorts at the Right Time

While there’s no hard-and-fast rule for the best time to post on YouTube Shorts, you can follow some general tips. According to research from HubSpot, most marketers post YouTube content between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays. That’s generally a good time to post. But if you have a big enough audience, you can check YouTube Analytics to see when your subscribers will most likely be on the platform at those times for the best chance of going viral.

9. Learn from the Competition

Ever heard the saying “great artists steal?” It has been attributed to everyone, from Russian composer Igor Stravinsky to Steve Jobs, but the whole saying goes like this: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” The difference? Copying would mean just taking what the competition’s doing and doing the same thing. “Stealing” means finding out what works, putting your spin on it, and injecting your creativity into an established format or trend. Doing this should be an essential part of your research.

10. Jump on Trending Music

With YouTube Shorts’ built-in Sound tool, creators can add popular songs from major labels to their videos without getting penalized. Whenever appropriate, consider featuring trending music in your Shorts to improve their chances of going viral. Pick a song that matches closely with what your Short is about.

Importance of YouTube Shorts

1. Embrace the New Wave of Short-Form Video Content

YouTube Shorts, which launched in September 2020, is YouTube's answer to TikTok. Shorts are vertical videos that can be up to 60 seconds long and are shown to users in a dedicated feed that makes it easy to discover new content. The first long-form video uploaded to YouTube occurred in April 2005. Since then, the platform has grown to encompass more than 114 million active channels and 2.6 billion monthly users in over 100 countries.

All this is to say: it's a competitive and saturated market. Similarly, TikTok and Instagram are saturated platforms, with one billion monthly users on TikTok and 1.4 billion on Instagram. In contrast, YouTube Shorts is in the early stages of development, with growth still to be expected as more people get behind the short-form content. According to recent data, YouTube Shorts hit over 2 billion monthly active users in July of 2023, seeing a growth of 33% more than in the same month a year ago.

That's on top of recent statistics that almost 80% of YouTube users watch Shorts. These statistics reflect an incredible opportunity for small businesses to carve out space and grow their audience (and channel) on the platform by adopting short-form videos early. Whether in product demonstrations, the launch of a new product line, or taking your audience behind the scenes of your business operation, there is every likelihood of captivating viewers and enhancing your visibility by jumping on the YouTube Shorts bandwagon.

2. Strengthen Your YouTube Presence

Shorts and long-form videos are published on one YouTube page and integrated into the main app. Shorts also appear in users' regular YouTube feeds, notifications, and subscriptions in Google search results. This makes it easy to maximize your reach and strengthen your YouTube presence. As YouTube product manager Pierce Vollucci explains, channels that incorporate both Shorts and long-form videos perform better overall than those that invest solely in long-form.

Vollucci states, "The channels that made Shorts seem to be growing faster. We anticipate that audience demand for short-form content is here to stay." For small businesses, this translates to offering audiences a mix of content types. If you already have a strong audience from long-form videos, consider Shorts as an ad for your primary channel that can be placed in front of more viewers before directing them to your longer videos. 

3. Boost Your SEO Visibility

With YouTube being owned by Google, its long-form videos and YouTube Shorts can dominate the search results in the video category. This is excellent news for small businesses looking to boost their search engine visibility and reach relevant audiences searching for keywords and queries related to their brand. Just like long-form videos, SEO rules also apply to YouTube Shorts. Be sure to add relevant keywords to the title and video description to ensure your short-form content appears when your target audience searches for similar videos and is specific and appropriate to the keywords used. 

4. Repurpose Your Existing Short-Form Video Content

The beauty of YouTube Shorts is that it allows you to repurpose existing short-form vertical videos from Reels and TikTok, saving you valuable time that can be put towards more video content. By repurposing these vertical videos to YouTube Shorts, you can continue to show up consistently on social media, maximizing the value of your videos and boosting your brand's reach. 

5. Gain Access to YouTube Shorts Monetization Programs

Though YouTube Shorts initially weren't part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), monetization options were announced in late 2022 to allow creators to earn money from their short-form content. To be eligible for YouTube Shorts monetization, you must have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers. In addition, you need either 10 million public Shorts views in the last 90 days that are valid or 4,000 public watch hours of long-form videos during the previous 12 months.

For those focusing primarily on the growth of YouTube Shorts, the former is recommended as watch hours from Shorts in the Shorts Feed don't count towards the watch hour threshold. YouTube has also introduced an expanded program for new creators and those with smaller followings, allowing you to monetize through fan funding and YouTube Shopping. You can apply for the program if you have 500 subscribers, three public uploads in the last 90 days, and three million public Shorts views in the previous 90 days. 

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• Youtube Shorts Font

Is It Possible To Create A Square YouTube Short?

YouTube allows creators to make square YouTube Shorts. That said, creating Shorts with a 9:16 aspect ratio is still recommended to keep with the standard and ensure your videos look good on mobile devices. However, use whichever format will engage more with your new audience. YouTube may permit 1:1 square videos as YouTube Shorts. However, these videos aren’t optimized for the platform and may achieve poorer performance. Generally, it’s best to create vertical YouTube Shorts with a 9:16 aspect ratio. If you’re creating square-frame video content, Shorts might not be the right space for you. Instead, you might prefer to share these videos on Facebook or YouTube as regular videos.

Go Viral with Virlo's Virality Analysis Tool

For YouTube Shorts, the optimal length is between 15 and 30 seconds. The maximum length is. It takes sixty seconds, but viewers prefer watching videos that are shorter than this. Keeping your YouTube Shorts within this ideal range will help you maintain audience engagement and improve your chances of going viral. Go viral with Virlo's virality analysis tool.

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