Most video creators today are shooting on a nice camera, editing on a big screen, listening to their videos through nice speakers, and publishing from the desktop.

Mobile considerations don’t often enter the picture, but that’s a huge mistake because a massive amount of viewership on YouTube takes place on mobile devices like cell phones and tablets. In 2021, we have to consider mobile viewers when it comes to how we craft and optimize our videos. But what does that look like? How do we do that?

One of the newest strategist’s on my team, Ingrid, and Lennon met with me to talk strategy and how to optimize your videos for mobile viewers. Here are a few things to consider.

  1. Consider a strong focal point. Remember that when you are on a mobile device, thumbnails are pretty small. So, how do you create a strong thumbnail for mobile viewers? We suggest the glance test. This is where you close your eyes for a few seconds, open them, and if your eyes don’t immediately find somewhere to rest on the thumbnail, there is likely too much going on in that image. There needs to be a clear picture of what the story is or what it’s teasing.
  2. Highlight the details. Don’t use wideshots for everything. Your 4K screen you’re editing on will be much, much smaller for mobile viewers. You can try using arrows on your thumbnail, outlining the focal point, or pitch further intrigue visually about the story you’re trying to tell. You want to make your viewer stop and wonder what’s going to happen in your video.
  3. Double check your audio on your mobile device. Your audio on your computer or nicer quality speakers may be vastly different from how it sounds on your phone. You always want to double check your video’s audio (and visuals) on a mobile device to quality check it before publishing. We’ve caught the music being too loud in the background and have had to adjust audio levels before posting something live, so we definitely recommend doing a final check.
  4. Shoot vertically for YouTube shorts. Not everyone needs to create YouTube shorts, but we always think it’s worth experimenting with! We typically recommend shooting horizontally when shooting YouTube videos, but for shorts (or even Tik Toks and Instagram reels), to optimize for mobile viewing, you really want to shoot vertically!

Do you do anything else to optimize for mobile viewers on YouTube?

Let us know!

Keep changing lives,

Tim

P.S. Want to learn more about optimizing your videos and channel for crazy YouTube growth? Join us for 8 weeks inside our advanced YouTube training experience called, “.” We’ll take you through our YouTube growth process that almost 1,000 other creators have followed to infuse growth into their channel.