Short-form video is becoming an increasingly competitive space amongst social media platforms. It seems like not a month goes by without one of the big platforms announcing a new tool or feature within their video offering.
This growth in popularity is likely due to the explosive growth of short-form video-first platform TikTok. With others such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram all trying to tap into the clear popularity of quick, engaging video.
But increased engagement isn't just of interest to social media platforms, it is also an interesting insight for creators who are looking for better ways to engage their audience. In this guide, we take a look at short-form videos across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, paying special attention to the insights that each platform offers creators.
Short Form Content Analytics
In-platform analytics offers creators a powerful insight into the performance of their content, giving clear, data-backed information on how they can boost engagement and reach their audience in a more compelling way.
In this section, we will give a brief overview of the analytics available to creators across the top three short-form video platforms Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok.
Instagram Reels Insights
Instagram Reels is the platform's answer to short-form content. Insights offer creators key metrics on their Reels including:
Plays
Accounts Reached
Likes
Comments
Saves
Shares
Not only does Instagram offer top-level insight into the above metrics, but they also provide deeper insight into your content reach. This additional insight provides you with details on the types of accounts you have been reaching and which content formats are more effective at driving high levels of reach.
YouTube Shorts Analytics
YouTube Shorts is a relatively new player when it comes to short-form content. This new feature from YouTube was initially released in India in 2020 and has since been launched across many other countries around the world as the platform's answer to TikTok’s widespread popularity.
Unlike other social platforms which focus primarily on offering analytics through their mobile applications, YouTube offers insights through their YouTube Studios desktop platform and via their app.
Until recently YouTube Shorts have been a little tricky to assess via YouTube analytics. This is because Shorts are simply videos that are shot in portrait mode and are under 60 seconds long - this means they can also be viewed as a normal video (yes, this is pretty confusing).
So, although you can get deep insight into your video performance via YouTubes analytics, it is more difficult to pick out how your video performed in the Shorts format.
However, more recent updates from YouTube now offers analytics on Shorts as separate videos. This allows you to see key metrics on these videos such as impressions, watch time and average view duration. This move is likely to pave the way to more detailed, dedicated analytics for YouTube Shorts.
TikTok Analytics
The TikTok platform offers creators helpful insight into their videos via Creator Tools. This provides creators with an overview of their account including:
Engagement - Video views, profile views, likes, comments, shares
Follower Count
Pieces of Content Published (Last 7 days)
It also offers insight on a content level, providing insight into:
Number of Views on Content (Last 7 Days)
Trending Content (Last 7 Days)
You can also gain insight into your followers:
Follower Growth Over Time
New Followers
Follower Gender Percentages
Locations
What is Means for Creators: Summary
Creators are always looking for new ways to boost engagement with their audience. Platforms that can offer more insight will ultimately be favoured by these creators - this will result in better content being rolled out by creators and greater levels of engagement by their audiences.
Although YouTube is only just getting started with their Shorts and analytics on these videos are currently limited, it is clear that they are committed to short-form video content. The deep insights YouTiube creators can already get on their normal videos is a sign that Shorts analytics may yet become very powerful.
For now, TikTok probably offers the most advanced analytics for those looking to leverage short-form video - this is likely partially why it is favoured by so many content creators.
Of course, there are third-party platforms that can offer creators additional insight on almost any social platform for a cost.