How to Grow On YouTube Shorts: 5 Tips to Get More Subscribers, Likes and Exposure to Your Channel

As the world of online video content continues to change, the most popular social video platform of all time continues to grow and evolve as well. From its humble video-sharing beginnings, YouTube has proven that it knows how to change with the evolving demands of online social audiences.

While YouTube’s main social video offering remains much the same as it was in its early days, the platform has recently pushed into the short-form vertical video format to rival competitors like TikTok and Instagram Reels.

If you’re a brand or content creator looking to build a channel and expand your own YouTube footprint, moving into YouTube Shorts is a no-brainer. However, while the idea of expanding seems easy, learning how to grow on YouTube Shorts isn’t quite the same process as that on YouTube or other social video platforms.

Let’s go over how likes, subscribers, and exposure on YouTube Shorts work, as well as explore how to grow a YouTube Shorts channel to boost your own brand today.

A brief intro to YouTube Shorts

Created in 2019 with the goal of competing directly with TikTok, which saw its own meteoric rise around the same time, YouTube Shorts was officially launched globally in July of 2021 and has quickly become one of TikTok’s biggest competitors in the short-form vertical video space.

Similar to TikTok and other short-form video platforms like Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts maximum length allows users to upload short-form vertical videos that are three minutes or less in duration.

YouTube Shorts displays these short-form videos in a scrollable feed similar to TikTok’s FYP. YouTube Shorts also allows creators to earn money based on the number of views they receive as part of the YouTube Partner Program, similar to how it works with monetization within its main app.

Because of YouTube’s huge audience and amount of web traffic, YouTube Shorts has huge potential for content creators looking to either make the jump from other social video platforms or simply as a way to expand their content and reach.

How do likes and subscribers work on YouTube Shorts?

But just because you might want to grow your audience on YouTube Shorts doesn’t mean it’s easy. Building your channel and finding more followers requires quality content and smart strategy.

To inform this strategy, let’s go over some basics on how followers, likes, and exposure work on YouTube Shorts. To be direct, YouTube Shorts works exactly as a TikTok knock-off. Users can watch YouTube Shorts within the YouTube app, which is offered as a separate tab, similar to how Instagram offers its Reels content to users.

YouTube Shorts allows viewers to like, dislike, comment, share, or remix each video in front of them. The number of likes and comments is displayed for reference. If the video uses unique audio, the remix option allows users to create their own content using the same audio or music.

What’s unique about YouTube Shorts might simply be that it’s part of YouTube’s platform, which means a YouTube Shorts channel can be connected to a main YouTube channel. However, it’s important to note that users who subscribe to a creator’s YouTube channel are not automatically subscribed to the YouTube Shorts channel and vice versa.

How many subscribers do you need to monetize YouTube Shorts?

Similar to YouTube, which has its own monetization guidelines and thresholds, YouTube Shorts requires creators to have at least 1,000 subscribers to unlock monetization through the YouTube Partner Program.

YouTube Shorts creators also need to have at least 10 million public Shorts views in the last 90 days or 4,000 total public watch hours for their long-form videos in the past year.

Those are just the raw numbers required, though. YouTube requires creators to fully comply with all YouTube channel monetization policies, including the company’s policies on repetitious and reused content, as well as YouTube’s Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, Copyright, and Google AdSense program policies.

YouTube also has other rules for YouTube Shorts, requiring monetizing partners to accept the Shorts Monetization Module—terms that let users earn from ads and YouTube Premium in the Shorts Feed. All monetizing content with ads must also follow YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guidelines.

Tips for How to Get More Subscribers on YouTube Shorts

If you’re looking for some tips to help grow your channel and find more subscribers for your YouTube Shorts content, here are some helpful tricks and tidbits of information to keep in mind.

1. Identify your niche and target audience

Our first tip is to simply do your research and try to identify what niche your content fits into. Suppose you can connect into a niche with a built-in community and audience base. In that case, you can tailor your content to appeal to these communities and explore how to stand out when compared to the other top and most popular channels in the space.

2. Leverage your current YouTube channel if possible

If you are launching a YouTube Shorts page when you already have a regular YouTube channel with its own following, be sure to let your usual audience know about your new Shorts channel and encourage them to subscribe to your page there.

3. Include the right hashtags

Hopefully, this is common knowledge by this point, but hashtags are a highly important part of any social media platform’s algorithm. Adding hashtags will always help; researching what hashtags to add and why will be advantageous in getting your content in front of more viewers.

4. Monitor your analytics to track your results

Similar to both TikTok and YouTube’s main app, there is plenty of analytics and tracking data to keep tabs on for your YouTube Shorts content. Creators can use these analytics to inform your content plans by tracking what types of videos work and—perhaps more importantly—what content doesn’t.

5. Make sure you’re using the right audio and music

While YouTube Shorts is built on the ability to “Remix” videos based on popular audio clips and music selections, the nuances of how to use the right audio and music on YouTube Shorts is still a bit tricky and evolving by the day.

For example, using copyrighted music on YouTube itself can be quite tricky to navigate. Using music that you haven’t properly licensed or own the copyrights to can leave you liable to have your videos muted, taken down, or even have your channel suspended or taken down.

However, with regards to copyrighted music, YouTube Shorts is slightly different, and users are encouraged to “Remix” audio based on popular trends. Still, if you want to make sure your content is safe and legal to use on other social video platforms and for other marketing purposes, royalty free music is always going to be your best option.

Here’s a helpful primer on what royalty free music is and how it works.

More resources and tips for How to Grow on YouTube Shorts

At the end of the day, finding more subscribers for your YouTube Shorts channel and building your audience is a fun problem to solve. Try to simply focus on creating content that feels true and appealing to you and your niche, and the format lends itself well to authentic content that doesn’t treat itself too seriously.

For more tips and tricks for working with YouTube Shorts, including some of the best royalty free music for YouTube Shorts, check out these additional articles from the Soundstripe blog below.