EP 335 - YouTube for Coaches: How to Use Shorts Get More Views in 2026 (Part 4 of 5)
YouTube Shorts are a must-have for coaches posting to YouTube! If you want to get more views on YouTube as a coach without recording more videos, you're in the right place, because in this video we're going to show you exactly how to do it with YouTube Shorts.
In Part 4 of this 5-part YouTube for Coaches Series, Debbie Shadid and YouTube Strategist Nicole Janton break down how coaches can use YouTube Shorts in 2026 to grow subscribers faster, repurpose long-form videos, and show up on YouTube every single day, even if you're only recording once a week.
If you're new to my channel, my name is Debbie Shadid. I'm a Business Growth and Life Coach and the founder of the Business Building Boutique. For over two decades, I've helped women learn how to become coaches, get clients, grow their businesses, and create meaningful income doing work they love.
If you want to grow your YouTube channel as a coach without doubling your workload, YouTube Shorts is the strategy that makes it possible, and this video shows you exactly how to create, edit, and post them so your coaching content reaches more people every week.
In this episode, we'll walk through:
How to turn one 20-minute coaching video into 5-10 YouTube Shorts automatically using Descript
Why YouTube Shorts get 5-10x more views than long form videos, and how to use that to grow faster
How long your YouTube Shorts should be as a coach (and the 3-minute rule you need to know)
How to frame and record your coaching videos so they crop perfectly into Shorts
How to schedule your YouTube Shorts so you're showing up every day without recording every day
How to use your video transcript to repurpose your coaching content into written posts and carousels
One long form video is not just one video. It's a week's worth of content, and YouTube Shorts is how you make it happen.
When you start using YouTube Shorts consistently as a coach, your reach multiplies, your subscribers grow, and your coaching business gets in front of more of the right people every single day.
Ready to build your coaching business the right way? Book a free Business Blueprint Call: https://www.debbieshadid.com/schedule
Free Canva Workshop — Build Your YouTube Brand: https://www.debbieshadid.com/canva
Debbie's Favorite Recording Setup:
Logitech Full HD Webcam: https://amzn.to/4m2rRye
Blue Yeti Podcast Microphone: https://amzn.to/4cfd4gc
Office Lighting (no ring in glasses!): https://amzn.to/4rZ9hrZ
Phone Tripod Stand (adjustable to 62"): https://amzn.to/40Y7WqB
Descript for Video Editing: https://descript.cello.so/6xw4YgGx34a
Listen to the Podcast:
Life Coach Business Building School Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/life-coach-business-building-school-with-debbie-shadid/id1502118085
If this episode was helpful, share it with a coach who's been talking about starting their YouTube channel. Subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the rest of the series - we're just getting started!
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Transcript
Today we're gonna be talking about short, so if you've been part of our YouTube series, we have already covered how to get your channel set up. We've talked about your script, we've talked about editing your long form video, and today we're gonna talk about how shorts play a role in your YouTube channel growth, as well as how you can use it for other content. I'm Debbie Shadid, so glad you were here. I have been helping women over 50, with all the things needed to know to grow a coaching business. And this is part of our five part series on YouTube where we are talking about getting started and growing your coaching business through YouTube. I'm joined by our YouTube strategist. Nicole, welcome. Hey Debbie, I am so excited to be here, and for you coaches out there who are on YouTube, this video is gonna be the thing that helps you take those YouTube videos and just make exponential impact from it. So I'm excited to dive in. So Nicole, I really today wanna lean on you and for your wisdom Nicole has been, the person who's taking care of our shorts while. We'll talk about how you can use AI tools like Descript or whichever one you're using out there, Riverside. You can use those to cut up your long form into shorts, but there's more to it than that. There's strategy that's involved. So Nicole, do you wanna share about how you work with our long form video and you turn it into shorts? So from every single long form video, there's always going to be segments or little shorts that you can pull and share either directly as YouTube shorts, as reels over on Instagram and Facebook as TikTok videos. The possibilities are endless. So I want you to think about, for every 20 minutes that I'm recording. There's probably at least ten two minute segments in there. Maybe cut out the intro outro, but the point is there are a ton of shorts that you can grab. Now, we personally use a tool called Descript, which we'll link in the caption below in case you're interested. And this actually has an AI tool involved in it, which will take your long form video and immediately cut it up into what they call magic clips. And Riverside is a similar software that can have the same feature just automatically making these shorts for you. Now, it's also really important that as you're listening through, maybe you're doing your editing right, like we talked about in a previous video, you're gonna catch things like, Ooh, that was a really great moment. Or, wow, that alone is a key takeaway. So while you're editing, I recommend actually just taking notes for, what is the key word that I want to return back to? You can even just copy and paste that portion of the transcript while you're editing. Because while we do wanna lean on ai, as Debbie talks about in a lot of videos, AI is great, but it doesn't always capture your real essence. It's not going to be able to tell the tone, right? Sometimes the clips that it pulls are not the greatest. Sometimes they're amazing. So make sure you have that mixture of both. But overall these shorts are going to be quick, easy to digest, highly searchable, right? Because you can also put titles on them on YouTube. Little bite-sized pieces of your content that are gonna help you to get so much more watch time, views, engagement outta the same long form video that you've already recorded. So YouTube is always changing algorithms, just like every other social media platform and while you're listening to this, what I can say is that shorts now are showing up at the top of the feed. So do you wanna talk about that and the impact that shorts have on you growing your audience, growing your subscribers? Yeah, a hundred percent. So if you're scrolling through YouTube as a consumer right now, you'll notice that whatever it is that you search for, there'll usually be a couple of long form videos, and then like four or six shorts. Than a couple more long form videos and more shorts. So YouTube is realizing actually if people can get their questions answered or exactly what they want in this bite sized content, then that's what they want. They're pushing out the shorts more and more. So across the board, across all the channels that I'm managing, I notice that shorts get easily twice as many views. If not, I would go as far as saying like 5 to 10 x the amount of views just because they're so much easier to digest. Somebody can quickly click it, get what they want out of it, and then hop off as opposed to sitting through a long video. So when it comes to growing your subscribers, think about how many more eyes that you're getting on your content by putting out shorts. And then if you keep your captions super simple, you can actually link directly to your channel or directly to the long form video that you pulled the short from to bring people over and bring people into the ecosystem to get them to engage more with that content. So are the shorts that you're talking about, just the ones that are clipped out of our long form video? Or are you also saying that coaches should be putting other things on short? So for example, should I be recording myself out on my walk as I'm just talking and should that piece of content also go on as a short on YouTube? Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say test it. if you're recording any form of short form video for Instagram for TikTok, just download it. Upload it, and see how it goes. See how the engagement is, see how the interaction is. I would say yes, by and large, if you're recording anything, it's gonna perform well on YouTube. It doesn't have to be just snippets of the long form. The reason I say that is because if you're already putting in this effort to record your long form, I know so many people who are just not taking advantage of making these shorts and more content from a. All of that effort and expertise that you already poured into your video, but a 100% if you wanna be out on a walk, if you, maybe, you know the best time to do it is actually, I just got off of a coaching call and I had this great takeaway. Or I hear this all the time, you're gonna wanna hear this because now you're directly in the zone. As coaches, we sometimes it's easy to get. Out so far that you're talking at this high level. So as much as you can tie it into, man, I just had this coaching experience, or a client shared this with me, that's gonna help them connect even more. So what details specifically do we need to know about once it's edited? What is the next process that you do and are you scheduling them or how do they get uploaded? Share a little bit about that. Yeah, so there's all sorts of different scheduling platforms that you can use if you want to be scheduling these across. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, et cetera. We use Metricool internally. But there's plenty of different platforms. With YouTube, we actually just schedule directly in YouTube. So when you're in your YouTube studio, you can go into the short section. You'll just actually press, upload a video just like normal. You'll add the title and description, and then we can schedule it ahead of time. I will say you wanna make sure that you're paying close attention to the title and maybe even the. First line of your description because it's going to impact SEO, which we talk more in detail about in the next video. but you want to make sure that whatever short that you're putting out there, you're thinking, would somebody be searching for this? What is the key piece of value that they're getting from it? Ahead of doing that scheduling, you schedule it out. Ideally, get out daily ones if you can, right? If you're doing a weekly video that's 20 minutes, you're definitely gonna be able to get at least, five shorts from it so they can go out on the other days of the week and now all of a sudden you're showing up. Every single day on YouTube instead of just weekly. So the possibilities are endless, and especially with scheduling, it's super fast to get them out. one other note that I will say that we didn't talk about in the editing piece is just consider adding somewhat of a text hook. So on the screen itself, you're gonna have your captions where it's showing what you're saying visually, and those can be added inside of Descript or inside of Riverside also wanna add some sort of a text hook so that when the person first sees the video, they can get an idea of what you're gonna be talking about. So you can think about it like an extension of your title. Like for example, how to Grow on YouTube as a coach. That could be the text hook for one of the shorts that we pull from this video. So if you do not have captions on it, I know a question's going to be. YouTube will generate captions. What if it ends up with both? Hmm, this is a good question. Normally it will end up with. Both anyways, because YouTube is automatically going to transcribe it, but for the viewer, they can toggle on and off Mm-hmm. so they're able to do that easily. A lot of people automatically have their captions toggled off. I would just say in general is what I've noticed. So having those added captions from an external software can be really helpful. But if you're just recording on your phone and you don't wanna shove it into Descript, you could just post it right away and the transcription will come through. Another question I know people are thinking is, okay, if I had a 20 minute video and I could get 10 clips, isn't that too much to put on YouTube? Isn't that too many to put out there? Are too many people gonna be like, she just did that same video 10 times. Is that a problem? So I'll say, people can't even remember what they had for breakfast. So for Right. to remember, Debbie was wearing that striped shirt in the last three videos, I, it's. Probably not gonna make an impact on them. What is gonna make an impact on them is how they feel when they're watching the video. So are you speaking to them? Are you being honest and authentic? So if you're showing up authentically and you're sharing your personality, then no matter how many videos you're going to share, people are gonna resonate with it. But if you're putting effort into recording and making your scripts that it's highly valuable, chances are that you have a good 5 to 10 chunks of individually digestible content that's gonna be highly valuable for the listener. So in terms of quantity as a hard and fast rule, as long as you're proud of each individual piece of content that's going out, and it feels like you feel free to post more, right? We always hear about. People growing their channels massively, who are posting like 300 shorts a day. Not to say that you're gonna get to there, but more is better as long as the quality is there. So I just wanna make note. She said, as long as you feel good and the quality is there. So just because Descript can clip out 20, 60 second videos for me outta my long form video does not mean that we are going to put all of those up there because I'm not gonna have videos shorts out there that like, don't quite make sense So don't just take what Descript is clipping out and share it as a short just to get content out there. That also is not the right way to do it. We don't wanna just post for the sake of posting, and though don't sit on all this bank of content that you have. in addition to, we're talking about shorts here, we can of course clip up the video into shorts. You also now have a transcript of, 20, 30, maybe you've sat down for an hour. Think about how much of your voice has been captured, right? And how much can be done with a transcript. So this is another way that you could repurpose even beyond the shorts. Now let's talk about subscribing. And while we talk about that, I wanna invite anyone who's listening to subscribe Hit the bell so you'll be notified for our next episode. How about subscriptions? How do shorts build your subscriber audience? And the second question, Nicole, is for people that are subscribed to the channel, and if I go back to this sharing 10 of the same, what I would think is the same video, even though it's all different pieces of content, are they actually gonna see those because they're subscribed? so typically your shorts because it'll pop up on their main feed. Now actually, if somebody has seen your short, it can help them to drive over to your video as well. So it's gonna be just of value to your subscribers. If they're used to just viewing your long forms, it's probably not gonna hurt for them to see the shorts. If anything, it'll just notify them, oh, there's a new video that I should go check out, and they can click over to your channel and watch however they prefer to watch. But in terms of subscriber growth, like I said before, think about you know, if we're getting 5 to 10 x, the amount of views on a short, how many people are going to see and find you and potentially start to like know and trust you want to come over, subscribe and learn more. So it's a great way to grow subscribers. Really just a great way to get reach for your channel. I just wanna point out to you guys listening like I'm holding my phone up right now, and when you're looking at a short. You're literally scrolling by so quickly that I don't make note of. Oh yeah. Debbie had three things in there. I don't notice that. So it's not a big deal. You are aware of how many shorts that you created and shared because it's on your mind, but the consumer is not paying attention. We want them to get, their eyes on one and stop. that's gonna have something to do with the hook that's there. Stop and listen. That's the goal. So honestly, I think it's the more the merrier. Yeah, exactly. I would say if you're not putting out shorts right now, or you're only putting out a few, try doubling whatever your output is, or if it's zero, at least start getting two out a week. I think everybody can be doing this, whether you're. Recording the long forms or like Debbie said, you're just on a walk or on the back end of your coaching call record something quick and throw it up on YouTube. Let me talk just briefly about the timing of how long do you think a short should be? How long could it be? We had a client who has never posted on social. Media before, and I was so proud of her. She's just a brand new client. She's going all in and she recorded herself, which isn't easy to do, talking about her business for five minutes, and I was like, okay, that's really too long for Instagram. It's really too long for Facebook. Like it's really too long for a regular social media post. What could she do with that? Do you wanna share your ideas on that? Yeah, so if you're gonna record a video and you specifically want it to be a short, you need to make sure that it's gonna be three minutes or less. YouTube, when you're uploading it actually doesn't allow you to say, this is a full video or this is a short, if it's under three minutes, it immediately categorizes it as a short, and if it's over three minutes, it's immediately categorized as a long form video. So with that in mind, make sure that you're keeping your recordings or at least your edits to under three minutes to show up in shorts. In this case, for the client who recorded five minutes, it might even be a matter of just posting it as a two part series if she wanted it to be in shorts. Otherwise, it could be a quick video, right? You can have a five minute YouTube video, and if anything, it might actually get more views. Because it's nice and easy to digest you're really gonna wanna make sure you're paying attention to the title, the SEO, the description, especially as you're building your new following. All of that is really important to getting eyes on the video. But all in all, shorts under three minutes, I find that 60 seconds is a really nice sweet spot. maybe a minute and a half when you start to get over two minutes, it can feel a little bit of a run on, but it's of course gonna depend on your content. Let's talk about how you position yourself when you record a short. I bring this up because the client that I'm speaking about, she recorded the five minutes on her phone, and so I was saying, well, that's vertical. And a long form video would be horizontal. while she can upload that as a five minute video, and I encouraged her. I mean, why not? It's your first video, just put it up. Or she could take it and put it in Descript. Like you said, make it into two parts or I said you can get probably three or four clips outta the five minute video and use those as short four shorts specifically. What would you say to everybody about how they record it? I know for me what you guys have said is, I should back up some, like get back a little bit further so there's more head space or, so there's more space. What tips do you have on that? Yeah, so what you wanna think about is when we're transforming a video into a short, the ratio's gonna be 9 16, which means it's nine on the width and 16 on the length. So it's much longer than it is wide. So if you're looking at Debbie and I here, it's a little bit different because since we're doing it in an interview context, we've set it up like this purposefully, and when it goes into a reel, we would actually be stacked on top of each other above and below. So it doesn't necessarily matter our framing as much, as long as you can see us in the frame, our faces, et cetera. But now, if you're recording a solo episode and you want to snip that into a reel, if I'm this close to the frame and now it's cropping me to 9, it's gonna feel very zoomed in on my cheeks, right? so you don't want it to feel as close. This is why we recommend sit back a little bit further from the camera. Let's let us. See more of your body if we can have some space above the head. This is gonna allow you to place the text hook at the top of the short, which is gonna help to stop the scroll, right? If you think people are scrolling through, the very first part they see is the top of the video, so we recommend sitting back a little bit further. sure if you can hear me on my mic that far back. I'll come back here. so sitting back a little bit further, and then when you go to crop it in, it's going to be the perfect size for shorts. If you're sitting closer to the screen when it gets cropped, it's going to be too far. But you might say, actually though, when I have my long form video, I want them to be this close to my face. I want them to be able to feel me more. I don't really want my whole body shown. No worries at all. You can just make sure that you crop in your video for the YouTube, and then you'll have a separate crop for your shorts. Let me ask you about recording on Zoom versus recording inside of one of the platforms that we've discussed. So this series that you're watching right now has been recorded inside of Descript. There is a recording studio in there. What I know is that when we have recorded on Zoom. And we do sometimes record on Zoom, and I encourage people to use whatever they have, just start with what they have. Don't worry about trying to get another piece of technology to complicate things. So when you record on Zoom though, and you go to make 'em into shorts, am I correct, Nicole, that those are the ones that tend to get a little bit more blurry? Yeah, so depending on your Zoom settings, a lot of the time Zoom is naturally going to record in a much lower call. I believe even with the higher resolution Zoom recordings, it's still only 1080 versus recording. In a more professional studio, you can record up to 4K, which is just gonna be better and better quality. Now all that to say though, as Debbie said, if, if you don't have Descript and you don't want to get it, you can just record even on your phone or on Zoom. But I would actually recommend the phone because if you're using the back camera on your phone, it's gonna be higher resolution than literally most professional cameras like 10 years ago. So you're gonna get very professional looking footage. It's easy. You can set it up anywhere. All you need is a tripod. Maybe set yourself up in front of a mirror if you like to see yourself, but you don't need something super fancy to get recording. And if you're not using the back camera, it's okay too. I tell you, I keep trying to use my back camera. Even right before this episode, I was taking pictures of myself in this outfit with the back camera so we could use those. For the cover of this episode, and it's just difficult to do that. So I think there's a skill to that. Let me ask you about teleprompters. I can link a teleprompter that I have used and that we recommend to our clients in the comments here, but what is your thoughts about teleprompters? Yeah, this is an interesting question and actually even in our little bottom left corner in our recording here, we have a teleprompter button, so it is something you can do inside a Descript, and more and more platforms are coming out with this capability now, in my experience. Even if you're reading off of a teleprompter, if you're reading off of a Google document, your voice changes when you're reading versus when you're just talking. So I would likely avoid using a teleprompter where possible, if you're recording like a succinct ad or something, that has to be a very specific script, that's a different story. But if you're just trying to record sure, it's your recording, your long form video. It's more important as a coach that we're able to feel you really hear your tonality and your voice because. Your energy comes through and that's what people are going to connect with. And sometimes with the teleprompter, it almost creates like a wall between you and allowing yourself to authentically express that energy. So if you're somebody who's constantly tripping over your words and you're like, this is the only way it's gonna work for me if I use the teleprompter, then go for it. But overall, I'd probably more be likely to recommend. Let's maybe have a bullet point outline of what you're gonna discuss and then just speak from the heart. Well, and I have to admit, I have tried every way possible to record, over the years. what I find is it's just easier for me to start talking and then record over and over. If you looked at my camera roll. You can see that I record some things 10 times because I'm like, oh, that didn't sound good. I record again. it doesn't matter, like just start recording and you'll work it out. As you go through your third recording of the same 60 seconds, you'll work it out. So I think that's actually better. The teleprompter is an option. I also hear people say like, put a sticky note. I have tried that too, but honestly, when you are thinking like, oh, there's three points I have to say, it is much harder than you just talking to the camera. So I would encourage you and Nicole, you said it best, like, you know, trust and connection and emotion is important and people want to feel like they know you, and that you get them. So before we wrap this up, Nicole, I just wanna talk about what can they do with this content besides putting it on YouTube? Yeah, so there's so many uses that you can. Is for this content, right? We can post it on TikTok Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Lots of places are catering to what are these short form style videos because they're noticing it's keeping people engaged, it's keeping people on the platform. This is what people like. So by and large, all of the platforms are adopting short form video as a post style. So wherever it is that you're posting, I'd encourage you to get out your shorts. In those places, in addition to sharing the shorts directly, you can also be pulling from the transcript, right? So as I mentioned before, if you have a 20, 30, 60 minute transcript of you talking, it's all your intellectual property or it's really all of your. The essence of your coaching, right? That's what's coming through in these videos, so we can extract the transcript and then write a bunch of written posts from it, right? You could create carousel posts, which are those graphics that you can swipe through. How easy would that be to create from a transcript that you've already said? with the help of ai, you can have it analyze and make posts for you, just always with the caveat that, of course, when you bring in ai, there's. Going to be certain training that you want to give it to make it sound like you and your brand, so you're not overly relying on it. But if you're gonna use AI to create your content, I'd argue this is the best way to do it, because now you're actually starting with your voice, right? Which you're always talking about, Debbie, like, let's not start with ai. Let's bring our thoughts to ai. And this is absolutely the thing that I would recommend. So if you do long form content, I would absolutely take those transcripts and I would put those into whatever AI platform you're using and save those for that very reason as a reference of how you sound and how you talk the last little quick tip I wanna give on editing in Descript that I actually did yesterday. That was something new. Was, I actually took the edited video, the transcript, I downloaded it, and then I put it into Claude. And I said, read the transcript and tell me does this flow or is there something else that I should edit out? And do you know what it gave me? Three things that said, these three places sound like this or this or this. Like it was pointing out to me my tone or the way that I said it, that it could be misunderstood. Now, while that didn't actually matter in this case, I thought that was a super interesting way to do that. Nicole, I don't know if you're doing that. But it was a different perspective of like, did I get the right things edited out of the video and did the content really flow? So another example of using AI to help you in a positive way. Yeah, I love that. Using AI almost as your mini production Yeah. right? So whether it's helping you analyze your edit or pull out shorts, there's many uses. All right, Nicole. I think that is it. We're gonna be back talking to you about titles and thumbnails and keywords, and really wrapping up this series. If you have not seen the first videos that go with this five part series, please go back and watch those. Also make sure you subscribe. I will have links for Descript in the comments and several other tools that I utilize. I'll be sharing also my camera, my microphone, and my light. Those are things that all of our clients love to have links to, so you might as well. Nicole, anything else you wanna add before we wrap up? Well, in short, on our video here on shorts, make sure that you're utilizing shorts as much as you can. Whether you're creating long form videos or you just wanna record them one off, it's gonna be huge for your business, and it's really just a great way to get out there, share your voice, and start connecting online. All right. We'll see you guys very soon. Have a great day.
