Are YouTube Shorts Sabotaging Your Business? | Ep. 88

The case against YouTube Shorts for business owners. Here's what nobody's saying about short-form video content. I'm calling out the YouTube Shorts hype and sharing why this strategy might be sabotaging your business growth. If you're a solo entrepreneur wondering why your Shorts aren't converting to sales, this video explains everything.

We're covering the real impact of YouTube Shorts on audience building, why engagement doesn't equal revenue, and the video marketing strategies that actually work for online business owners.

Time to stop following trends and start building a video brand that lasts!

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Transcript

I don't know why more people aren't talking about this, and I think it's because nobody wants to admit YouTube shorts is one of the worst uses of your time as a solo business owner. And when I started digging into the data around short form content, I realized it might actually be worse than I thought.

My name is Meredith, and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can build your binge worthy video brand and actually get clients and customers from YouTube.

And there's some really surprising data that I don't ever hear anybody talking about from this researcher named Scott Graffius. he tracks something called the Half Life of social media the half life being, the amount of time it takes for a post on social media to receive half of its total engagement like, like shares and comments and things like that.

 and what he found for 2026 is that the half-life of an Instagram post is 18 hours. Hours. Yes. The halflife of a Facebook post is 86 minutes. That's about an hour and a half, And the halflife of a YouTube video is 10.6 days. you and I both know we want our content to outlast 10 days, right? We want the time and effort we put into our content to last weeks, months, and even years.

But what you might not know is that long form informational, educational, solution driven YouTube content, the type of content that strategic business owners are posting on YouTube.

that is the exact type of content that gets views and leads and sales for weeks, months, and years down the road.

what does that have to do with YouTube shorts? Well, I work with solo business owners all the time who say, well, why can't I just take what I post on Instagram reels and TikTok and throw it onto YouTube shorts? Problem solve. It's like the best of both worlds. But here's what YouTube isn't making obvious about YouTube shorts.

The shorts feed doesn't operate like the rest of YouTube. It operates exactly like Instagram and TikTok. It's a scroll feed. When you post a YouTube short, 

you are very rarely getting views on shorts for weeks, months, and years down the road. 

 you're bringing that scroll and forget behavior of social media to the one platform that was actually designed to work long term.

When you create long form content, short form basically gets you short term results, whereas long form gets you long-term results.

 but here's what nobody is saying out loud or nobody is willing to admit about social media. Every hour that you spend making short form content on any platform is an hour invested in something designed to disappear.

The fun ephemeral content that has made influencers famous,is designed to make influencers famous, 

So how do you actually get consistent leads and clients and consistently grow your audience without posting every single day? Let me show you why shorts aren't the answer. And what is, And by the way, if you've been doing shorts as a business owner because you thought you had to, because you see other people doing it and you didn't really like having that extra thing on your to-do list, I think you're gonna have a huge sense of relief by the end of this video.

 now. I hear this all the time with my clients and students inside of Video Brand Academy. Meredith, I don't have time to create long form content. Short form videos is all I have time to do, so I'm just gonna post on YouTube shorts. well, let me fill you in on something because if you think that posting short form content is perfect for somebody who is short on time, it's possible that you're just creating content that spins the wheels, that spins your wheels

 Short form educators and agencies recommend posting three to five reels or tiktoks a week, sometimes multiple a day.

even the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri said this, the optimal posting schedule is the one that you can actually sustain without burning out 

 You guys, that's the bar for Instagram. Post as much as you can up until the point of breakdown, and then it's okay to pull back if you have to.

 it's no wonder that Instagram and TikTok needs you to post as much as they do. The shelf life of short form content is basically in the toilet. They need you to keep feeding the feed because without that constant flow of fresh, new content from you, working for them for free.

There's nothing for its users to scroll. You just have to keep posting. That's the game for social media.

And if you're hearing me, you might be going, how is YouTube any different? Meredith? Like, that doesn't make any sense. And the truth is, for some genres of content, it's not that different. Like there's plenty of influencer over the top, you know, Mr. Bfi content on YouTube. What's different about YouTube isn't the content or the creators, it's the viewers.

More specifically, it's the intent of the viewers, and I'll explain more on that in just a second. When you are an expert in your industry, when you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your area of expertise, when you want to be the go-to trusted person in your niche, YouTube is the platform where people go to solve problems, find solutions, get answers to questions. YouTube is the platform where people go to seek out the thought leaders and the experts who can actually help them.

 They're not looking for, you know, dances and memes and trending sounds. They're not even looking for high production value or like a perfect video setup. They're looking for quality, informative content from trusted industry experts, from trusted sources who know what they're talking about.

You post one video on YouTube and YouTube keeps serving it to the right people for years. You're not feeding the feed, you're building an asset. This is why I like to call YouTube the Let Them Come To You Platform.

and when you build a YouTube channel around. Long form YouTube strategy the right way. Every video that you publish makes the last video that you published work even harder, your content compounds. That's the difference.

Short form is like a treadmill. You're just running in place. Long form when done strategically is an escalator.

And honestly, on a personal note, I deleted TikTok off of my phone for the entire month of January because I could see how easy it was to get sucked into the scroll, right? That short form scroll, that like endless feed of, you know, dopamine heads. And I don't know about you, but I don't feel great about building my business on content that does that to people.

 I like to consume short form content. I think it's fun. I think it's interesting.

I think the trends and the memes and the culture is all very fun, interesting, and entertaining. But it's exactly that. It's fun and interesting and entertaining the way that social media is meant to be. I think social media should be something that you want to do. Not something that you have to do 

Now, I said earlier that what's different about YouTube isn't the content or the creators, it's the viewers. It's the intent of the viewers.

we can't have a conversation about YouTube shorts without discussing viewer intent. and all you have to do is think about your own behavior on social media. We're in this constant state of scroll and you, the person creating the content is forced to keep up, keep feeding the feed just to stay visible as a service provider, as a course creator, a coach, some way that you offer to, to teach people something where you actually help real people with real problems in their life.

 would you rather show up for consistently? Someone who consumes 30-second clips and memes while sitting on the toilet. Or someone who is intentionally seeking solutions,

Somebody who is intentionally diving into a new topic or trying to solve a problem that they've been struggling with. And that's the part that nobody is saying out loud. People are scrolling short form content on the toilet.

There are studies and data that back that up, but I don't think you need to know what they are because I think that you and I both know that's true

Short form is like throw away content that you consume just to pass the time just to prevent boredom. 

I mean, that's the audience intent that you're creating for when you post YouTube shorts.

now obviously there's more to YouTube than just YouTube shorts and you know, regular long form content, right? YouTube has many features, video podcasts, long form recorded videos. There's community posts, there's live streams, and just like any other platform, just because a future exists doesn't mean that you have to invest your time and energy into using it, especially as a business owner.

You have an ROI to figure into the equation here, right? You don't put your car into four wheel drive just to leave your driveway just because you have four wheel drive, right? Unless you live in western New York and you're somewhere between the months of November and March.

But on YouTube, certain features are better for certain circumstances and certain outcomes. Regular long form videos or video podcasts, which is what you're watching right now. These are highly recommended for any niche or any genre, and definitely for solo business owners. So what we're talking about here are landscape videos.

I recommend at least eight minutes on up to like as long as you wanna go, as long as there's value in your content, right? regular long form videos are still the bread and butter of YouTube. That's what makes YouTube. YouTube, it's the obvious choice for business owners.

They're easy to search. They're easy for the algorithm to surface to your ideal audience. On the YouTube homepage and the suggested videos, feed live streams are still long form. They're a little different. They're great for connecting with your existing audience and they can be used to grow your audience.

I think live streams require a little more experience and skill that comes from practice over time in order to be effective. Shorts are perfect for influencer style and like entertainment style content, 

But if you are looking to grow your audience to generate leads and sales with your content, shorts might actually be hindering the growth of your channel. And I'll touch more on that in just a second.

because long form video content should come first if you're a solo business owner, and there are two reasons why.

Number one, the best game you could possibly play on YouTube is to accrue watch time. That's how long viewers are actually watching your content. Not just views, not just subscribers or comments. How long are viewers actually watching and staying engaged with your video Watch Time is a green flag. It's a signal for the algorithm that the video is satisfying to the viewer that they actually are enjoying what they're watching.

And the more watch time you accrue, the easier it is for YouTube to get your content in front of more of the right people.

It is very difficult to build meaningful watch time, connection, and trust with, you know, 30 to 62nd YouTube shorts. 

 Number two, even YouTube values long form content exponentially. More than shorts. What I mean by that is to qualify for YouTube's partner program where you're, you know, essentially getting monetized on YouTube, where they're going to pay you a chunk of their revenue

as a long form creator, you need to have a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time accrued in the last year. That's how, that's one of the requirements to being, you know, eligible for the partner program. As a Schwartz creator, you need a thousand subscribers and 10 million shorts views in the last 90 days.

Let me say that again. In order to be monetized on YouTube with shorts. You need 10 million views in the last three months. That's 110,000 views every single day for the last 90 days straight. Just to reach the baseline minimum to be eligible for the partner program.

That's 40 million views a year.

Why? Because the actual value of shorts content on YouTube is nowhere near the value of long form content.

 and that right there should tell you something. Because YouTube doesn't make business decisions based on what's fun and ephemeral and trending. They make business decisions based on what is going to get them the most return on their investment. And you would be bonkers as a business owner to not take that into account when you are considering your own return on your investment of time, energy, expertise, output.

 Now, if you're still watching this far and you're a solo business owner, my assumption is that you're not trying to be an influencer or a YouTuber, right?

You're a business owner who wants to use YouTube. Strategically, smartly YouTubers and influencers optimize for subscribers views. Um, virality, Whereas business owners optimize for intent, connection, trust leads sales,

and this is the part that really gets me, this is the part that just like it, it gets my goat every time. I have no idea where that phrase came from.

It is not that shorts don't work. Like we've seen channels like absolutely blow up in weeks or months to, you know, a million subscribers just by posting shorts and like, I'm not suggesting that shorts simply don't work and they don't get views and they won't grow your channel or, you know, you won't get any results from them at all.

 it's that YouTube shorts might actively be hurting your chances of your long form content reaching your target audience. And YouTube won't say this, but every client I've ever had who does shorts and long form together,

and my clients are primarily solo business owners you know, they're, they're coaches, they're course creators, they have signature programs, or they work one-on-one with clients in some way, you know, services, et cetera.

when they come to me and they say, Meredith, I'm doing everything that you have taught me to do with my long form videos. I'm following the strategies you teach. I'm building the spider web. My thumbnails look good, my titles are click worthy.

But I'm not getting very many views on my long form content. It's just like going nowhere.

 and I say, pull up your analytics. I love diving into people's analytics. It's like looking into a crystal ball. I can see immediately within a single click on your analytics exactly what the problem is.

And for my clients who are doing both long form and short form, doing both consistently every single time, what I notice is that the top videos on their channel in the last 28 day period are shorts and YouTube operates on viewer behavior. That's why watch time is so important. so when you post a long form video that you work very hard on, and you follow all of the right strategies and you do all of the right things, YouTube doesn't really know who to put that in front of because the Shorts audience that you've been attracting with the Shorts content you've been posting is not there for long form content.

Remember. They're scrolling on the toilet.They're there looking for something to pass the time or to be entertained or to disassociate from whatever else is going on in the world. In that moment, it's literally how the algorithm was designed to work.

it's doing exactly what it was trained to do. And by posting shorts and long form on your channel with the intention of wanting to get traction in your long form content because that's where your best stuff is.

you trained your channel, to attract an audience that simply isn't interested in long form content.

 You're attracting people with your short form content that just want more short form content. They just want you to feed the feed so they have something to scroll when they're on the toilet.

Now, in an ideal world, it would be lovely if you could get discovered with your shorts content and the people who are discovering you automatically went to go seek out your long form content and hit subscribe and watch your videos and be an engaged member of your like long form audience.

But the data that I've seen from my clients doesn't support that that's what's actually happening,

and your data will actually show you whether that's happening on your channel or not. One of my favorite accounts to follow on threads is Rene Richie. He works for YouTube. He's the creator liaison. He's a creator himself, but he's basically made it his life's mission. It seems to show up on social media and explain how the YouTube algorithm actually works. He, uh, debunks a lot of myths and, um, kind of like tries to squash misinformation and, you know, in an effort to kind of understand.

How the YouTube algorithm works. We as creators are kind of like looking at our own data and looking at what YouTube says, which is not very much, and then he kind of, kind of meets in the middle and explains things in a way that actually makes sense.

and I often see him posting some variation of the fact that YouTube doesn't push videos out. It pulls videos for the viewers based on what they've already watched, based on their own viewer behavior.

 So think about that viewer intent and viewer behavior. If your most watched content is 30 seconds shorts, who do you think YouTube is building your potential audience out of for the next time you post a video? It's the toilet scrollers. And so if the next time you post a video is a 12 minute video where you're like teaching your framework, you're digging into something deep, like something actually meaningful, something helpful, they swipe right by it or they don't even see it at all because what are they doing?

they're scrolling shorts Rene himself has said that shorts are great for reach and I agree, but reach is only valuable to a business owner if that reach leads to clients, leads in sales, And here's another thing that people often forget about YouTube and YouTube shorts or just like doesn't occur to most people on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Short form content is great for lead gen because you have dms, you have this like native way to deliver a lead magnet to somebody who requests it. Um, you can do that manually without a whole lot of trouble.

You can do it automated with like ManyChat and things like that. basically like right there in the conversation. It's very seamless. It's very native. YouTube doesn't have dms, so you're relying on somebody actually taking the time to go to your bio to click the link now YouTube is allegedly testing, bringing dms back to the platform, and I think it's available in some countries. I don't think United States is one of those countries. So I I it's been very hush hush. I don't know what's gonna happen with that. 

 in the future, if we have dms and everything I just said is, you know, obsolete, then I'll, I'll eat my words. But I don't think that adding a DMS feature to YouTube is going to change the viewer intent of toilet scrollers. You know what I mean? now, if you're like, Meredith, okay, look, I haven't been doing shorts, but yet still I am. I'm not really growing my audience. I'm not really getting leads in sales.

And I have yet to see how YouTube is really helping my business. I built a free tool for you. It works in less than 25 seconds. I call it the YouTube visibility report, there is a link in the description so you can go and grab it. It's actually, it's actually kind of cool.

Now if you're watching this and you're like, this is all bs. I'm doing shorts, and shorts are working great for me and I love it, and it's everything that I ever wanted out of YouTube than like, great, keep doing that. Um, I'm a huge fan of doing more of what works for you. There's no arguments there.

I'm not trying to convince somebody who's successfully doing shorts and getting the results that you need out of it to like go and do something else that would, that would be bonkers.

This video is more for you if you are doing shorts or you're thinking about doing shorts and it's not working like your, your not that your channel's not growing, but your business is not growing from the efforts that you're putting into creating that content. 

 that's who I'm talking to. if you're trying to keep like feeding the feed of short form content on YouTube shorts while putting time and energy into your long form content, and ultimately you're finding that neither of those things is paying off for you, it's probably not because you're not posting enough shorts.

It's more likely that you are posting shorts, which trains YouTube to bring more shorts. Preference viewers who ultimately ignore your long form content, which is probably where your good stuff is. like it's hard to pack thought leadership and framework and, and teaching and your, your unique ways of talking about things and your expertise into 30-second clips, and if you've been doing that because you thought you had to, because you know, you keep hearing people say, well, you know, intention spans are shorter now. Are they, are they really, because I'm seeing all of the top podcasts, uh, on YouTube are two and three hour long episodes. Or more each of them. Last year, Netflix spent $18 billion on content.

It's not because no one's watching long form content. attention isn't shorter, it's just more selective, and there's actually science that backs up why this is good news for a business owner. It's called the Mere Exposure Effect.

 and it's not even new. I mean, this is from the sixties. Psychologists, Robert Ance did research that strongly supports the idea that the more time somebody spends with you, the more likely they are to trust you. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more somebody trusts you, the more likely they are to work with you to buy from you, to even want to watch more of your content.

 that's why long form content is the best use of your time and energy as a business owner. You're not just getting views. You're not just getting like yay thumbs up comments. You're building trust. And trust is what turns a viewer into a client. In a world where AI can generate short form content in seconds, and we've all seen it the internet is flooded with it.

 long form video content has become the ultimate trust and authenticity signal. When somebody watches you talk for 10 minutes or watches, you teach something for 10 minutes,

 You just can't fake long form content the way that you can, a 30-second clip. So if you've been posting shorts because you thought you should, or because you thought you were repurposing your long form content and figured, why not? I'll just throw this on YouTube.

I wanna give you permission to stop, take it off your to-do list. You don't have to keep participating in toilet scrolling culture. You don't have to keep posting content that disappears. 

 focus on one long form video a week,and let YouTube do what YouTube was designed to do. Find the right people and let them come to you.

I call YouTube the Let Them Come to You Platform for a reason. That is the smartest way to create content as a business owner. It's an escalator, not a treadmill.

And if you're thinking, yeah, but you know, longer videos take longer to create than short form. Let me remind you, I'm talking about long form videos once a week versus short form videos every single day. And if you're posting random like memes and trends and throw away content that people scroll on the toilet, it doesn't really matter how little time it takes you to create.

If it's not moving the needle for your business, it was still a waste of your time. Even if you had just one hour a week to create one long form video, low production, low key, just hit record.

Even if it wasn't your best work, you're still going to be, so much further ahead. at building your audience and generating leads and sales than if you posted forgettable short form videos every single day.

and this might sound totally off the wall, but the truth is, I actually want a sustainable shorts strategy. I want a valid short strategy as a business owner, that doesn't feel like more stuff on the to-do list, that doesn't feel like an extra part-time job. My clients and students in Video Brand Academy, they ask me about shorts all the time, and I would love nothing more than to just hand them the proven strategy.

I mean, that's what I do in VBA. I give you the strategies that actually work. I don't have or know of a YouTube short strategy that actually works. For generating real business results for your business, like real leads, real sales, real connection in the way that long form content does.

 but I'm willing to keep my mind open. I always love experimenting. If you have a short strategy that's working for your business, please reach out to me. I wanna hear about it. And if you see shorts from me in the future, just know I'm probably experimenting with it myself.

If I crack the code, like I will be the first person to tell you, here's a viable short strategy, go and do it.

but as a solo business owner who works with solo business owners, I'm anti adding stuff to your to-do list just for the sake of like, well, everyone else is doing it.

So I guess I have to like, there's real ROI to where you invest in your business that you, that you have to consider.

 So if you've cracked the shorts code for business owners, I genuinely wanna hear from you.

I'm not being sarcastic. Please, just don't come to me with how many subscribers or how many views your videos have been getting.

Come to me with your leads, your sales. Show me how shorts has helped your business actually grow. and for the rest of us, look, if you've been putting any amount of time into your channel, whether you've been consistent or only just like a little bit here and there and you're not getting consistent growth, you're not getting consistent leads or business prospects or sales Or even engagement from the audience that you're trying to reach. You probably have a visibility gap. There's something between your content and your ideal audience that's not connecting, and that's exactly why I built the YouTube visibility report. It's a completely free, uh, diagnostic tool. You answer a couple questions, it literally pulls the data from your own channel, and runs it through the same YouTube ecosystem framework that I teach inside a video brand Academy. it takes about 25 seconds. and you'll know exactly where the gap is and what to fix first on your channel You put a lot of effort into your content, so you need to know like where you stand So I'll put a link to my YouTube visibility report down in the description, and you can start building a YouTube ecosystem that lasts.