Question: I’m trying to grow my YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts, but I’ve heard that using scheduling/3rd party tools can cause low engagement and reach. Is this true?

The short answer is: the data suggests no. Consistency is more likely to raise your reach and audience engagement — which is the primary service offered by third-party scheduling/repurposing tools. However, this myth will always persist based on who you ask.

How do we know scheduling tools are not likely the culprit of low engagement?

Organic reach is the number of eyes on your content without you paying to reach a specific audience. Unlike ads, organic posts aren’t targeted to specific audiences, so they rely on the social network’s algorithm.

While we don’t know all the details of how algorithms work (each platform is drastically different), we do know that one of the main goals is to keep people scrolling on the platform so that they see more ads. The formula is more ads seen = more money for the platform you are posting on.

Here is a real life example of a user for the past 10 YouTube Shorts:

As you can see, the views vary widely when using any kind of API and many times for YouTube the variables have to do with your YouTube account.

What does this mean for you?

The algorithm rewards high engagement, which is directly linked to consistency for many social media users. This means that the more active you are, the more your engagement and reach increase. While the algorithm considers multiple factors, it doesn’t seem to disfavor third-party posts.

What does cause low engagement?

High-quality and engaging content will perform well on social media, whether posted via an app or natively through a platform. What impacts engagement is elements like poor quality content or a lack of interaction with your audience.

Once your post is repurposed, there’s still work to do. You can’t just leave a post and expect it to perform on its own. You must check in daily to see the responses, shares, and comments. If you don’t, your reach will nosedive as fewer of your posts appear to your followers and, in turn, your potential audience.

Scheduling/Repurposing content doesn’t exclude you from being proactive with your content. If you schedule your posts, you need to block out time for when you can be active and present on your page to respond and engage with your followers.

If you engage frequently and still see low reach, consider experimenting with different content formats, hooks, descriptions, video length, etc. This is because when repurposing, every platform has a specific algorithm and they vary drastically (for example your post on TikTok may get hundreds of thousands of views, but the same video on YouTube shorts may get 17 views)

Native music for each platform variable

Each platform has different music, trending sounds, and even sound effects options. This can be a major factor in whether or not a video gets an extra boost. Carefully consider this variable when deciding to schedule or to natively post without the watermark.

Option for Google Drive and then natively posting

A great option for anyone that is worrying about natively posting versus 3rd party apps is that you can make a workflow within Repurpose that makes Google Drive or DropBox the destination. That way without you doing anything extra all your videos within that workflow are in your storage without the watermark and you can natively post them yourself.

Tips to try when posting to YouTube Shorts using Repurpose.io

Use an short engaging video title with up to 3 hashtags
Use the title as the description (copy and past). Don't include anything else in the description.
Don't upload a thumbnail
Don't use the YouTube Tags box (leave it blank)

The idea is to mimic the YouTube Shorts App.

In Conclusion

Online social media content is going to always vary, change, and evolve constantly. The only variable that stays consistent is that every single creator should be testing to see what works specifically for you and your platform. Content and marketing continue to just be a game of testing and keeping what works and improving what does not. So as always, do what is best for you and your brand!



If you want to do your own deep dive research, here are more articles that may help on the topic:

Socialstatus.io

Buffer.com

help.aretheyhappy.com

Promorebuplic.com

Repurpose.io

Nataliecross.co


QUESTIONS? We've got you! Email our Support Team at support@repurpose.io or chat live with us on our site. We look forward to helping you.

Updated on: 23/10/2023