In light of TikTok's growing popularity, YouTube is now making efforts to prioritize Shorts and Stories on their platform. As proof of how big of a priority this is, they've dedicated an entire new section to "Stories and short videos" near the top of the Home tab on the YouTube mobile app. This is one of the most frequently viewed placements across the entire YouTube platform, so it's worth taking note of this and thinking about how you can use Shorts and Stories to help your channel grow.

Not many channels are currently taking advantage of Shorts and Stories on YouTube, so this is a great opportunity to stand out from the crowd and reach new subscribers for your channel.

YouTube recently disclosed the fact that channels that use Stories on a regular basis grow their subscriber counts 8.5% faster than channels that do not, which helps underscore the importance of this new format on the YouTube platform. Channels that use Stories can also now see analytics on how many viewers those Stories reached and how many people subscribed to their channels as a result of those Stories.

If you haven't used Stories yet, try looking through the Stories on the Home page of the YouTube mobile app to see creative ways that other channels are using them. Every channel has to start somewhere, so just trying making your first Story post as a test. Here are a few types of content you can consider posting:

• Record a selfie video straight into your phone addressing your audience and asking them what type of content they'd like to see on your channel in the near future
• Upload an image with a schedule of this week's upcoming video releases
• Post an interesting highlight clip from a longer video you recently uploaded to your channel, and add a clickable sticker link to the full video so your audience can click and watch it. Please note it is currently only available to add a sticker to a full video on your channel once every 5 days.

Stories can be up to 15 seconds long, are only available on mobile devices, and are currently only available to creators with over 10,000 subscribers

Check out our overview on Stories and our overview on Shorts for best practices as well as information on exactly how to view those analytics.

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