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Autumn’s here and I’m enjoying the 3 weeks where my denim jacket’s worthwhile outerwear before I need something warmer. It doubles as quality emowear—I’ve been at tons of shows recently. Balance & Composure’s album release show last week, Pianos Become The Teeth’s anniversary night before that, and my personal national holiday’s coming on the 19th: When We Were Young in Las Vegas. It’s not a phase, mom.

Before we jump into YouTube Shorts strategy, I wanted to throw out to all you lovely readers that I’m still open for partnerships & speaking events in Q4 2024 + Q1 2025! A little inventory freed up as campaigns got pushed to next year, so gimme a shout if you wanna reach 70,000 marketers—you can reply right to this email.

But let’s talk social strategy, like:

• YouTube Shorts content strategy for brands

• Twitter’s tanking valuation

• How just a couple of LinkedIn posts can change your career

—Jack Appleby

YouTube Shorts for Brands: the easy way

YouTube has always been the redheaded step-child for Brand Social teams. It’s the place where you drop the big campaign spot and TV commercials, and… that’s about it. I don’t remember talking YouTube strategy even once during my 12 years at social agencies. We were plenty busy with Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and fending off client wonders about whatever new platform won 15 minutes of fame (stupid BeReal…)

But YouTube just announced a major change to Shorts, their Instagram Reels + TikTok competitor, that truly means every single brand making short-form vertical video content should be posting on YouTube.

The Change: YouTube Shorts increased to 3 minutes

Starting October 15, YouTube has increased the maximum length of Shorts from 1 minute to 3 minutes. That has big, big implications for YouTube as a whole, Brands who want more bang for their content’s buck, and Creators.

Let’s look at each short-form vertical platform’s time lengths.

• Instagram Reels: up to 90 seconds

• TikTok: up to 10 minutes

• YouTube: up to 3 minutes starting Oct 15

I linked YouTube’s official blog post with more info at the end of the newsletter, but let’s focus on the big win here for brands: easy content repurposing across multiple algorithmic, merit-based social networks.

Every Brand Instagram Reel + TikTok should go on YouTube Shorts, too.

I’m no mathlete, but YouTube Shorts going 3 min max means that the 3 major short-form vertical video platforms all allow up to 90 second videos now.

That means every time your brand makes an Instagram Reel or TikTok, it should get placed on YouTube Shorts as well. Every time!

This is free additional reach, for assets your brand’s already created, on a platform that’s hungry for more content, in an algorithm that’s doing numbers right now. You can build an entire new following on a very important video platform with just the extra admin hours to repost.

An extra YouTube Shorts benefit: searchability

TikTok’s gotten a lot of press about being Gen Z’s favorite search engine, but YouTube remains the second-largest search engine in the world after Google. Those keyword-rich captions you’re writing? Those are extra powerful on YouTube, as Shorts appear alongside long-form videos in search.

You want your content on the second-largest search engine. That’s a given.

But what’s the culture of YouTube Shorts? Aren’t TikTok and Instagram and YouTube Shorts all different communities who need different content?

I’ve always hated the argument that each network has nuances that require different styles of content. A user doesn’t magically become a different human when they close Instagram on their phone, then open TikTok. Gen Z acts like Gen Z on both TikTok and Instagram, Millennials act like Millennials on both TikTok and Instagram, etc etc. Every social network is just a content distribution platform, and every major social network is so massively scaled now that every demographic is reachable on every platform.

So, no, you do not need custom content for every social network.

Make really great short-form vertical video, then post that same video across Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.

There’s truly no downside to posting Reels on Shorts.

I’m willing to bet your brand isn’t doing anything with YouTube or Shorts right now. Spend the next 3 months putting your Reels + TikToks over on Shorts, see what happens, earn some extra points for getting more overall views on your content.

You reallyyy should be posting on LinkedIn

Writing about my job on LinkedIn changed my career. My jobs at R/GA, Twitch, and Morning Brew? All came in the DMs from me writing about my work. When I worked with Spotify? One of their product managers read my threads and reached out to me to work together.

Now, I wanna pay it forward & help you start sharing how you think on LinkedIn.

Introducing Break An Egg 🐣, my try at building the world’s most inexpensive career development tool on the market.

For just $5/month, you’ll get:

• 30 LinkedIn prompts designed to mine your experience for content

• New ways to highlight your career milestones & accomplishments

• A community of 1000+ other BAEs who help each other!

You can sign up right here. Cheaper than a latte. I’m keeping it at this $5/month mark for anyone who signs up until Black Friday, then it’ll go up a bit (but you’ll be grandfathered into your original price). Can’t wait to help ya break some eggs!

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Social Cues

Tall updates coming to Shorts (YouTube Blog). Here’s the official blog post from YouTube with the Shorts news, along with some looks at other platform updates. Marketers, please get familiar—YouTube’s gonna be big for you this year.

Twitter’s value has dropped 79% since Elon’s acquisition, down from $44 billion to $9.4 billion (TechCrunch). My hope & prayer is someone buys Elon out of Twitter and rights the ship. The site feels unusable at this point.

Brand Social Marketing during the Election (Future Social). Just bumping the piece I wrote a few months ago with thoughts on how your brands should appear during key election dates. November’s around the corner.