How to Grow on YouTube, According to a Strategist for MrBeast, Preston

• YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway has examined tens of thousands of YouTube videos.
• He has worked with some of the best creators in the world including MrBeast and Preston.
• Here are his tips on how to grow on YouTube — especially in the age of YouTube shorts.

Short videos are having a moment as platforms like YouTube and Instagram — and even Pinterest — try to catch up with TikTok.

Ever since YouTube Shorts launched in early 2021, creators have had to adapt and find new ways to succeed on the platform.

“It reminds me a bit of the early days of YouTube, when the algorithm wasn’t perfect,” YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway told Insider. “A lot of the content wasn’t great, but it made you fall in love with creating content because anyone could do it in their bedroom in a few hours.”

Galloway is very familiar with changes on the platform. He is now 26 years old and has been creating content on YouTube for 15 years.

In addition to his approximately 425,000 subscribers on his main channel, he advises some of the best creators and companies in the world on how to grow and thrive on the video platform.

His past and current clients include megastar MrBeast, game creator Preston and UK YouTube group Sidemen.

He was hired to help them maximize the reach of their YouTube videos, increase viewer retention, and drive monetization. And he’s had to help them with many changes on the platform, including the launch of YouTube Shorts.

After initial skepticism about shorts, Galloway now recommends that all of its clients create both long-form and short-form content.

“I’m really optimistic about shorts,” he said. “With my long-form clients, we post short films on their main channel. I’ve looked at tens of thousands of videos and found no negative correlation between posting shorts and competing with long-form.”

Here are Galloway’s top tips for growing on YouTube today:

1. Mix short and long form content right from the start

Galloway recommends a posting schedule that includes both formats, ideally alternating two of each per week for a total of four videos per week.

While shorts are great for building subscribers, if a creator’s ultimate goal is to create long-form content, they should create long-form content from the start, he said.

2. Go to an alcove

In terms of content type, Galloway recommends choosing a narrow niche and staying away from varied or broad entertainment videos. Suitable niches could be a specific sport like fishing or a specific video game.

“I would study the most viral short films and the most viral long-form videos in your niche,” he added. “See what you can adapt and what you can learn from.”

3. Use shorts as standalone storytelling experiments

Galloway suggests not creating short films with snippets of long videos, but instead creating bespoke, self-contained 60-second stories.

This helps creators learn storytelling and editing skills that can later be applied to longer videos.

A good short film has a quick hook that grabs the viewer’s attention – usually a “big one-liner” – and a story that can be solved in a minute or less.

Galloway points to a short made by his client Jesser, a basketball creator, entitled “How Many Pumps Does It Take To Explode A Basketball?” This short film has 37 million views.

“It’s an immediate, direct question,” he says. “It takes a second to say and it sets a story. In short, I think it’s just about saying, ‘Here’s a thing, let me show you.'”

4. Focus more on viewers than subscribers

The number of subscribers isn’t always helpful in understanding whether viewers like your content. Instead, consider viewership numbers as a more valuable indicator of this.

Someone could watch one video, subscribe to your channel, and then stop watching more videos, Galloway said, while someone else could not subscribe and instead watch four or five videos in a row.

The second type of viewers are more likely to have your content recommended on their homepage than the first type, and as a result are likely to watch more in the future.

This advice doesn’t necessarily apply to potential brand partners.

“Subscribers aren’t that important, but they’re a beautiful fantasy metric that people and brands care about,” Galloway said. “I get about the same number of views per video as I did when I had 100,000 subscribers, but now I’ve got 400,000 and I’m just being offered more money.”