YouTube has announced that Posts will now appear in the Shorts feed. This change allows users to see and interact with Posts while watching short videos.
How the Feature Works
You can now see Posts while scrolling through Shorts on YouTube.
In the screenshot below, you can see that the layout keeps the same vertical aspect ratio. While scrolling, the video gets smaller, using half the screen for Posts.
You can like and comment on these Posts without stopping your video.
See more about it in YouTube’s video announcement:
Background on YouTube Posts
YouTube has had posts as part of its creator toolkit for several years. These posts let channel owners share polls, quizzes, GIFs, text updates, images, and videos.
Posts are found in a special tab on the creator’s channel. They can also show up on subscribers’ homepages or in their subscription feeds.
Potential New Exposure
This update gives creators a new way to reach their YouTube audience with posts.
Further, this gives creators a way to reach Shorts viewers without creating vertical videos.
If you only publish traditional long-form content on your channel, you can potentially get into the Shorts feed by publishing text or images.
Looking Ahead
With this update, YouTube is experimenting with combining other content types with its most popular features.
It’s possible that YouTube is making this change because it’s competing with Instagram and TikTok, which mix videos with different types of content. Combining content formats has the potential to boost user engagement and keep people on YouTube longer.
For creators, this provides an additional distribution channel with a bare minimum cost to entry. Writing a text post may now get you in the same feed as a fully produced Short.
YouTube hasn’t announced specifics for how Posts will be selected or how often they’ll appear. Creators will have to do their own testing to see how this impacts visibility.
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
