- 2021 Youtube Trends - September 6, 2021
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YouTube has become one of the topmost platforms for many individuals, brands, and even businesses to market themselves and their products. With the increasing features YouTube has to offer, various markets are relying on YouTube due to its massive audience and constantly changing trends.
Here are the most popular YouTube Trends that Youtubers have been incorporating into their content in 2021:
- Livestreaming –
While streamers have been around for many years due to gamers having a very large audience, other streaming platforms such as twitch have taken over. Recently, the idea of involving your audience while you play, watch sports or just interact with your audience has become popular and has taken over the YouTube Community as well. Sport Streams, “Get Ready with Me” streams, and of course video game streaming are trending.
The idea of the audience watching you without any edits or cuts is a smart way of engaging and getting to know your audience. It can also be a useful tool for brands to incorporate through unboxing videos, live product reviews, or reacting to popular videos and trends.
Some important points to look out for when streaming live:
- Ask important questions during the stream and offer answers for them.
- Give important information about your brand.
- You can showcase your products or services in a creative manner.
2. YouTube Shorts
After looking at the success of TikTok, and even video platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, YouTube picked up on the trend and launched “Shorts”, which functions in a similar manner of creating short 15 second videos that are quick and entertaining.
While it is not available all over the world (as of now, India and the US only), once widely available can prove to be quite a strong tool for brands who want to create content quickly in order to view the responsiveness of their audience. The biggest advantage for businesses with this feature is the efficiency and time needed to make and upload it.
While longer videos take more time and with the decreasing attention span of social media users, YouTube shorts will provide interactions with the customers in the long run, even helping with brand awareness.
3. Docuseries
When we think of documentaries, we often think of 2-hour long movies that document a certain topic – while there is a niche that would still love the old school documentaries we often see on TV, there are also a large audience who likes to watch documentaries that are shorter, more entertaining and immersive.
An interesting trend that has come forth on YouTube is brands and influencers creating a series of short videos documenting parts of their lives, connecting it to any sponsor or brand endorsement. This is an innovative way for brands to showcase their products through the art of storytelling. A brand that sells protein shakes, for instance, can create a docuseries through lives of YouTubers who are famous for their fitness routines or healthy lifestyles.
A common example we see is the “CaC – 1000 Lockdown Kahani” that has been trending in Pakistan. It is a series of documentaries on the lives of strong independent women, linking it to having high calcium levels and hence, strength.
These are becoming more and more trendy as the videos are both immersive, relatable and do not overwhelm the audience with too much information about the brand. Rather, they slowly transition the information in the form of a story.
4. YouTube Chapters
This is a feature and an upcoming trend that I personally really like. For very religious video viewers, especially those like me that rely heavily on tutorials and how-to videos, YouTube has made it easier to navigate through long videos by sectioning them into chapters, named accordingly.
A common behavior we have is to categorize things to make it easier to plan and organize; and YouTube is allowing creators to provide that option to its viewers. While it is still not fully available to all creators, this will be an extremely popular trend as it is already widely noticed in many popular channels that make longer videos.
So, for example, if a designer is watching a design tutorial and only wants to watch the final steps, it will become easier to navigate and click on that particular chapter.
Similarly, it is a useful teaching tool for companies and institutions that want to use YouTube videos to teach – allowing them to teach by chapter or subject section.
5. Trendy Thumbnails
We often come across a video that, upon viewing, doesn’t seem all that interesting, however it has a lot of views. What is one of the reasons this happens? The answer is trendy thumbnails. Minimalism is the new modern design trend, and one of its major incorporations is in Thumbnails on YouTube. As the video title and the thumbnail are the first two things anyone scrolling on YouTube sees, it plays a large role in making them click on that video, often times even if may not be of direct interest to that viewer.
A common theme noticed is a high contrast thumbnail, with a solid background and large clean text on the thumbnail; the more minimal, the more attractive.
Following this “Less is More” ideology is a trend everyone should hop on if they haven’t already. It is like a shortcut to getting your audience to click on your video and is quite easy to do!