YouTube videos can help you publish once, and share a dozen times

Reusing material for different platforms may sound bizarre or downright lazy when you state it like that but hear me out it’s like a thrift store, you would often hear people making fun of those who bought second-hand clothing, now, it’s all the hype! 

No, I’m not saying that reusing old material is like thrifting. It’s just a matter of repurposing content in as many ways as possible!

But, why?

You put in HOURS on YouTube videos. Editing, scripting, recording, and touching up, regardless if it’s a 20-minute video or a 5-minute one, a LOT of time and effort goes into it. So, why would you just leave it on a singular platform? 

Plus, YouTube is now SUPER saturated. It isn’t what it used to be and creators have a hard time crossing 10k views! Even Buzzfeed, which used to be all the hype from 2014-2016, easily scoring a few million likes within the first 20 minutes of upload, has been struggling to cross 10K views for weeks! 

This says a LOT about YouTube’s algorithm! New creators come, and create content, they get ahead and a lot of other creators are left to struggle with views. This is why it isn’t great to put all your eggs in one basket. 

Where should you do it?

Even though the title states reels, which means, Instagram. But that’s just putting it vaguely, you can chop up your videos and post them on any platform that offers short videos! Like TikTok. 

TikTok is a great beginner-friendly app to post short videos and promote yourself too. Creators with less than 50k followers land great brand deals and collaborations as well! 

You just need to know HOW to do it. 

Will short videos even work?

Do you remember when every platform came out with stories? They copied it off of Snapchat because of the hype of 10-second videos that disappear after you see them. 

That trend started off YEARS ago, eventually, TikTok took over in popularity and short videos. 

So, I’d say, yeah, short videos DO work. 

They are brief, they don’t make you lose attention and they highlight important details. 

If someone is new to your niche or has shown interest in your particular niche, they would want to watch a few eye-catching-30-second long videos instead of a 10-minute one. So, do NOT sleep on short videos. 

How can you chop up videos properly?

The strategy is on point but you desperately need some tips! Even though it’s pretty vague to cut a video up and use the remainder to create new content, here is a little advice you can follow up on.

1. No Intro

Do you think the intro was great? GOOD, now crop it out. When you’re working with short videos, the intro is usually done by the caption, and by adding it into your short video, you are wasting time that you don’t have! 

So, cut out the intro OR 

If you really want to keep your intro, keep it to 10 seconds and make sure it is more than just an introduction to yourself. 

A rule of thumb to follow is: to use what adds value and discard the rest. 

2. Create subtle suspicion 

We can’t tell you what to do, but we can tell you what will look super cringe. 

If you start your short video by talking about a certain subject, not finish your sentence and abruptly end your video and state to “watch the whole thing on YouTube NOW!” Nobody is going to follow through with it. 

The art of subtle suspicion is immaculate. You need to learn how to hide it, and how to make your audience curious without making it look cliche. 

A few ways to do that:

• Talk AT LEAST 3-4 sentences about the topic you are delivering 
• Instead of “Watch the whole thing on my YouTube NOW” use, “If you are interested, I can help you, watch the whole video on my YouTube” 
• Don’t give an abrupt ending, end with a legitimate statement, or to follow you on your TikTok. It looks more clean and professional that way 
• Quoting numbers will play in your favor 

3. Don’t talk too much

This is probably the most important tip. You are here to cut your video down to 10% of it. Platforms with short videos exist to stay away from the long ones. No matter how important you’re going to find your views, save them for YouTube. 

Try this: 

• 3-second intro (optional) 
• 4 lines about your topic
• 1 line to end it all. 

People who have built a mass following can increase their lines of course. But at the very beginning, you need to capture attention and you need to capture it FAST. 

4. Quality

Use a professional application to cut your video down into pieces. And film it with a professional camera. 

There is a downside to posting on TikTok and it is that quality AND quantity. You need to be consistently coming out with great quality videos even though they are 30 seconds or less. 

This is why many people prefer Instagram reels because you don’t have to be consistent with them. But TikTok does push a lot of videos on the FYP which gives you a greater chance of going viral. 

We have to pick and choose our battles here! 

But let’s go back to quality. It needs to be foolproof. You can not upload a bad-quality video that looks like you shot it from a watermelon! 

Even if you don’t have the latest camera, you can still create a great quality video. The secret? LIGHTING. 

You can find those $12 ring lights and adjust them to make it bright while shooting even from a regular iPhone. It will improve your quality by 10x. Perfect cheap solution! 

Make sure the transition is smooth in between 

5. It should make sense

Finally, it should make sense. A lot of times when you are cropping videos, they start to lose logic behind them and turn out to be a mix and match of a few topics combined. You do NOT want that. 

• If your YouTube video covers a few points, pick one point at random and any 4 valuable sentences you said about it. Take notes, and then proceed to chop the video using any editors 
• If your video only covers one topic and it’s a bit out of order, select a few points that match each other, cut out the rest of the video and you have a perfect video 
• Take notes and time stamps of the video clip you want to keep and discard
• Please don’t add too much background noise! Your words should be clear
• Get the video reviewed by someone who hasn’t watched your YouTube video to get an idea if it’s making sense or not

These are some of the most followed rules by creators who have been growing on multiple platforms through YouTube.

Now, there’s just one question that remains…

Which platform should you pick?

There is no right or wrong answer for it of course. And each platform comes with its own perks and its own cons. You must pick the platform that you can easily adjust to and that gives you good steady growth.

There are a ton of platforms you can pick from, here are their pros and cons!

Instagram reels

Honestly, Instagram reels are a great way to succeed. You don’t have to be super consistent for them to show up on the algorithm but of course, you do need to put in the time and effort into making it super high quality and using the right kind of hashtags to appear on the explore page.

However, Instagram has been looking into its downfall since 2020. Their new updates have left many users extremely disappointed since they don’t add much value to the platform. Huge creators have gotten shadow-banned because of how easy it is to buy followers. And with Instagram’s guidelines, it’s impossible to use any cuss words to avoid your post being taken down. It’s getting more and more difficult with time to appear on the explore page without heavy filters and overall, there are fewer people using Instagram.

YouTube Shorts

These are a pretty new edition. It sounds very ironic to upload clips of your large video onto the same platform where you posted the video but it does work for a lot of people. There isn’t any redirection onto another platform included and your channel is RIGHT there. So, a lot of people will eventually subscribe to you based on that. And it’s easy to appear on anyone’s feed too!

However, you ARE putting your eggs in one basket if you don’t post anywhere else and many of your viewers may have already watched your video, so your efforts would be rendered useless! YouTube reels are also a controversial subject. They can get annoying with all the blatant, cringe videos posted so the people in your niche may never even reach them.

Snapchat

Probably the oldest platform with stories that disappear in 24 hours. You don’t have to worry about quality here. But this is probably not the best platform for short videos. It is the oldest in the game which technically would make it the best but Snapchat has definitely lost its hype. It was EVERYTHING in 2016 and creators benefitted from it a lot. Even though you can now monetize and create a business profile now, it still hasn’t recovered from its sudden low usage from 2019 onwards.

But, if you have managed to build quite a following, of course, take advantage of it! Since you don’t need good quality or consistent posting to grow on it, just a good promotion of your account.

TikTok

The most used app in the past 2 years. It has proven to be pretty successful for creators all over the world. You can easily take advantage of that by posting a well-curated video and watching your numbers rise. You will eventually reach the for you page of your targeted audience with a bit of work put in but you will get intense brand deals and a LOT of clout.

However, you need to be SUPER consistent. You need to post a few times a day and that could be SUPER draining. You can make a few videos lower in quality and come out with a great groundbreaking video (chopped up YouTube video) once a week! TikTok is getting very concentrated now and that could work in your favor or against you. Try using 3 hashtags in your posts that are related to your niche to help steer the algorithm towards you!

Did we miss anything here? Let us know!

Hypefury’s tools provide a great way to queue up repurposed YouTube reels and gifs on other mediums like Instagram and Twitter.