YouTube Tools That Scale Attention  🔗 **Source:** [YouTube Tools That Scale Attention](https://share.snipd.com/episode/e48ef8ac-1a81-461b-9ede-d8a431b7977d) ## Highlights - **Animate Product Photos Into Shorts** - Try Add Motion to turn a single product or brand image into an 8-second Shorts clip to give still photos movement and grab attention. - Use music and text overlays to add context so the animated photo becomes a purposeful short, not just a gimmick. Transcript: Jerry Potter And I want to get your feedback on them and then we'll kind of discuss actually using them. So they launched something called Add Motion for YouTube Shorts, which is a tool that will let creators basically animate a simple photo of themselves into an eight second short using Preset motions and effects. So tell us about this a little bit and how you can see this being used, Leron. Yeah. Liron Segev So I think that tools are great, right? We need more tools. And what I like is that we have an option to use them or not use them. And especially as businesses who are not focused on being like YouTube creators or content creators, you have a business to run. So anything that's going to make our easier is always welcome. The fact that we can have a image and it gets animated and gives us a little bit of life, I think it's cool. I think it's interesting. I think it's another thing that we have to try. And I think you'll see a theme running through all of this is that we have to experiment for ourselves. Every business is going to be slightly different. What works for one, not necessarily going to work for another. I'm very anti this whole guru kind of like, close your mouth and your thumbnails because Mr. Beast did it. Like, I hate that because not everybody is the same. Not every brand is the same. So do I like more tools? Yes. And we're going to try more tools and try use them in our, in our systems. Absolutely. Is there anything that's like screaming out at me right now? Like, oh my God, this is the hardest thing. Drop everything. Try this now. ([Time 0:02:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/590df8ac-9d5c-4939-b139-eb4193c5399f)) - **Remix Requires Added Value** - Reimagining and remixing frames creates a new user-generated content loop but requires adding value to avoid brand-erosion. - Remix examples: brands should annotate or explain a creator clip (e.g., show product use and benefits) rather than just slap a logo on it. Transcript: Jerry Potter One thing I think it's important for businesses and marketers to know too, is that other people can take any single frame from your YouTube short and turn it into an eight second video As well. Now attribution is still there. So it'll still link back to your actual video where it came from. But I do think this potentially introduces a really neat, you know, user generated content situation where it's like, hey, grab any frame from our video and turn it into something and We'll pick a winner. Liron Segev Look, we kind of into this area of like content and identity theft and then repurposing somebody else's hard work where they came up with the idea, they came up with the concept, and all You're doing is clicking a button saying, hey, make me the same. We're kind of in that little weird transition area. YouTube will work it out. YouTube is really good at understanding content and understanding fakeness. And yes, they have their faults. Absolutely. But their system is geared for it from day one. They've been fighting spam pretty hard. If you remember as a content creator, the amount of spam comments we used to get compared to what we get now, they've really kind of stepped up that gap. So I like the idea of a brand being able to remix somebody else's content. But, and this is like a massive but here, you have to add value. You have to enhance the clip. What I absolutely hate, and this is going to do very big brand reputation, is when you take somebody's clip and you remix it, and you put your little face in the bottom corner as a talking Head, kind of green screen, just your head as a cutout and you keep on pointing above your head because you're pointing to the original content and you've said nothing. So that kind of erodes your brand's reputation. If you want to add more content, more context, that's amazing tip to go. So as an example, we're talking about the bakery or in the food prep industry. If you're in that industry and you've seen a creator, anybody online using your product in their cooking recipe, that's a great one to remix. But as you're remixing it, add your version to it. So stop that clip and say, okay, see at this point, they used our product. Here's the health benefit. Here's what's going to happen with the product. This is what we're going to do. You're adding your authority to it. So the attention shifts from what you remixed back to you as the brand, whatever you do, don't just remix, put your logo at the bottom and going, Hey, here's my content. ([Time 0:07:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a299efb2-663d-428f-b168-d9b420415107)) - **Use Shorts For Discovery Not Full Funnels** - Add Shorts as a discovery 'food truck' to reach different viewers while keeping long-form as the relationship-building 'restaurant'. - Use Shorts to surface new audiences but expect most viewers to remain short-form consumers unless content strongly drives them to long videos. Transcript: Liron Segev Again, goes back to testing, right? I like shorts as a strategy. So leaving AI aside for a second, shorts as a strategy is really, really powerful. It's the way to get in front of a very, very different audience that maybe isn't watching your long form content. So you can get that as a discovery mechanism. And people who like to watch shorts, guess what? They don't like to convert from shorts to long unless there's something super powerful. The original thinking was, oh, I'm going to see your stuff, really like you, click on the long form video, subscribe to your channel. That was the original thinking. But over time, we've realized that people watch shorts on the toilet waiting for the doctor and they're just going to scroll through shorts and next, next, next. And occasionally they find something so powerful that they go, oh, hold on a second. I actually do want to see the entire one hour interview because this was really, really good as a clip. So should you try shorts as a business? Absolutely. Is it going to be surfaced in front of a different kind of audience? Yes, that was the intention of Schwartz. I'm giving you that leverage. And it's the equivalent of, you know, we've used this analogy before, of having a food truck, right? You have your restaurant and you have your food truck. Your food truck is a little bite-sized, getting people to sample a little bit of your content. If they really like it, well, then they're going to walk into your restaurant and sit down and have a real meal. ([Time 0:16:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e2fcedf1-ad22-427e-b7a7-f37cd8c46f4e)) - **Prototype Big Visual Ideas With Effects** - Use effects.youtube to prototype high-concept visuals cheaply by prompt-iterating desktop prompts instead of expensive production. - Treat it as rapid testing: iterate prompts until an effect resonates, then scale with series. Transcript: Jerry Potter And so now you can actually create these effects that can be used and you can basically create them with simple prompts with no coding required. Before it was a lot more complex. And it's available to anyone who has advanced features unlocked, which also includes, I think advanced feet, like to upload longer than 15 minutes, I think is an advanced features. Like it says advanced, but most channels have gone through this process to have that unlocked. My favorite thing might be that you can do it on desktop, because I don't like working at my phone. It's at effects.youtube But let me ask you about this. Is this an opportunity for brands to get more of their kind of, you know, almost like memes that people can use in other shorts? Or how do you see this tool being utilized by marketers and business owners? Liron Segev Yeah, again, goes back to ideation, right? So because it's prompt-based, it's about coming up with a really creative idea and then saying, okay, well, how do I execute it? So before we had all these features, if you had this crazy idea of I want my brands, I don't know, swinging through the city skyline of New York like Spider-Man, that's big budget, that's Huge production cost, that is years of planning and getting permissions. There's all of that stuff coming into play. Now you can go, hold on, I like this idea as a concept. Let me go test it out. Let me just type this prompt in. I'm going to reiterate a couple of times until I get it right. And then I'm going to test it and I'm going to see what happens. And if my audience really likes me swinging through New York, holding my cake in my hand, hey, maybe we'll do a series of this. So experimentation, experimentation. Again, ideation. It's taking the stuff that you have in your head and you go, if I had unlimited budget and all the tools in the world, what would I do? Great. You now do at your fingertips. ([Time 0:19:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d3c113f7-9088-4d1d-b662-4106656add50)) - **Reply With Voice Only When It Matters** - Use voice replies selectively and intentionally — reply to thoughtful or relationship-building comments rather than auto-voicing every comment. - Prioritize matching the commenter’s tone and add a personalized detail to make the reply memorable. Transcript: Jerry Potter So now this is rolled out to everybody on YouTube. And essentially, you can reply to comments on videos using audio. Now, this only works on mobile devices, but you can do it in the regular YouTube app or the YouTube studio mobile app, both Android and iOS. You have up to 30 seconds to record a message. And I played with it a little bit today and I can share my experience a bit, but Liran, what are your initial thoughts on this now that this is wide open to everybody? I mean, have you used it at all or where are you at with it? Liron Segev Yeah, just like you, I was really looking forward to it because, you know, thinking I get a comment, I really want to reply, I hit record on my phone and then I'm done. Like my, this is really cool to build up your community. That was the theory, right? In reality of it, my question to anybody is this, do you want a reply to a comment from some rando at Walmart? Yeah, but from you, they might want to hear from your voice with their fans. Ah, you've just nailed it. That's exactly it. If you have a personality-led brand, and if you're like the Michael and the Jerry's of the world, and you really want to hear their voice saying, hey, thanks for watching, that's cool. If you're going to get a reply from the Alex Famosi, Gary V's of the world, that's cool. I can definitely see that. If you're the local baker, sorry, had to do that. If you're the local baker and people really love your cakes and somebody left a cool, positive comment and you want to reply because everybody knows you by name. Awesome. Is this a strategy that you want to start deploying in your business saying every comment now needs a voicemail? Michael Stelzner I'm not really sure. I mean, everybody could listen to it. No. Yes. Yes. Liron Segev It's completely public. So it's out there. It's like relieving a text reply, which by the way, I think a lot of brands are missing an opportunity on just replying with text. I mean, I think that is completely, if you haven't done that, don't jump into voice. Get used to the replies of the replies, right? Okay, because you're opening up yourself to an entire different world. And I think that, again, the theory of this is great. And I think the theory of it is that if you have a reply with a voice, you're going to make that really cool personal connection. Perfect. Absolutely, you should be testing this. Do not make it a policy that every single comment now gets a voice reply because this scales really quickly and now you're going to have an issue. And is it the same voice? Is it always the same person that's in the video? Otherwise, it gets confusing. What happens if there's multiple people in the, like it kind of snowballs very, very quickly. So I like it. I like it from a personality channels for sure. Absolutely. I've tried it a bunch of times. Didn't make a massive engagement spike in my, not at all. Michael Stelzner And technically I have to stop watching. Well, they might have to stop watching another video in order to listen to your reply, right? You're interrupting. Liron Segev So I know a lot of people watch the video and whilst it's going on, they're scrolling through the comments, right? It was definitely very common on like the Instagram feeds, Facebook, the video loops and loops and loops because the person's reading the comment. Yeah. Now you've got to say to yourself, well, is this valuable enough for me to pause the video, press play and to listen to it? I think it'll be very novel the first time, but I think it's going to be a free for all. ([Time 0:26:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7cd4e29e-45fb-426c-b302-da35c5f9b884)) - **Voice Replies Let You Show Empathy** - Jerry Potter tried voice replies on a walk and found them light, easy, and better for expressing sympathy or nuance than typed replies. - Example: Jerry used voice to reply compassionately to a viewer describing a family health struggle. Transcript: Jerry Potter You know, I was out on a walk today and I was thinking ahead about the show and I thought, oh, let me just open the YouTube studio app and let me just see what comments I had here. And it was really light and easy for me. And I try, I can't keep up with all the comments on my channel, but I try and do the best I can. You know, now there are AI suggestions that have built. I don't even know what plugin I have, but it'll, it'll be like, how's this sound? And I'm like, yeah, that's perfect. But it was really convenient. And to me, as you mentioned earlier, Leron, hearing the voice of the person, I think is really powerful. This is where I think it can warm people up faster because it's like, oh, wow, they're talking to me. You know, if you can tell by their username, all the ones I replied to today, I could see their name in the username. It was like, oh, Eileen, oh, Rick, oh, Jill. And so I was able to address them by name as well. And so I think when you are commenting as a company, you know, all that intimacy is gone. So I enjoyed it. I could see doing it more, but I had one comment from a guy who said that his wife has had this health thing and has to be at home and he has to be home to take care of him. So he's trying to grow on YouTube so he can, you know, cause he can only be at home. And it was so much easier for me to express the sympathy that I was feeling in my voice than to be like, you know, typing, sorry, bro, or, you know, anything like that. And so I enjoyed it. ([Time 0:31:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb1e6b28-fc0a-4c21-93c6-cb031153238c)) - **AI Lowers The Cost Of Testing Creators** - Creator Partnerships uses Gemini to scale creator discovery and outreach, lowering the barrier for brands to test influencer marketing. - AI matches by audience signals but brands still must manually vet fit and creative tone. Transcript: Liron Segev Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot of brands now starting to experiment with working with influencers. And remember, up until now, you either had to kind of reach out to the influencers themselves, or you had to go through an agency, right? And those were essentially your two options. What I like is that it's making it easier for a brand to at least see what's out there. Everybody's heard of influencer marketing. Everybody's heard of partnerships. People understand that if you can get your product and service in front of a big audience, that's going to help you within your business. So this is just kind of removing that barrier and allowing you to at least see. I can go in and I can say, this is my audience. Who kind of matches my vibe? Who matches from a data point of view? But that's one part of the equation, right? Because it doesn't stop at the match. The data cannot tell you whether it's a good fit or not. It can tell you statistically whether there's an overlap, but I might have an overlap with Jerry's audience and I might want to sell my widget to Jerry's audience. But man, like that Jerry guy in his dress eating cake, I don't know if that's going to be my, my people are going to resonate with that. So statistically we might match, but are we actually going to get on? It's the equivalent of the swipe left, swipe right on the dating app. It gives you the matchup, but you got to then do your homework to see whether it's actually worth pursuing. But are we going to see people at least trying it? Yeah, absolutely. ([Time 0:41:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f8632f0-e72c-4cd6-a049-e90630207bc8)) - **Do The Creator Homework First** - Vet influencer fits by watching the creator's last 10 videos, reading comments for sentiment, and reviewing prior sponsored integrations. - Ensure the creator naturally integrates products rather than forcing unrelated ad plugs to avoid viewer skip. Transcript: Liron Segev The traditional good housekeeping stuff. So number one is go and watch the last 10 videos that they have on their channel and understand, like, do you resonate with it? How do you like the way they come across? Do they explain it in a way that you think your audience will understand as well? And remember, it's not you as a business, right? You've got to look at it through your customer's eyes. So you might understand your product really, really well. You've got to remember that it's your customer that's watching. So look through it through their vision. Look at the last 10 videos and say, wow, okay, I really connect with this person. They make sense to me as a customer. Cool. So that's the first thing. I would go through their comments, read the comments before you have to listen to all the comments, read through the comments, understand what their audience, are their audience really Hostile? Are they really supportive? And again, knowing that only a fraction and the loud few are the ones leaving a comment, but it kind of gives you a little bit of a sentiment of how the audience responds. So many of these creators have really wholesome communities, which are super loud and super friendly. Great. That's a great indicator that you want to kind of be in there. I would also look at previous sponsorship videos that they did. Now, good creators who follow the rules will always mark their content as sponsored. They will have include paid sponsorship comes up. So it's very easy to find those, those partnership. Go see if it's a natural fit. Do they do like a Linus tech tip kind of vibe where they talk about one thing and completely non-related. Here's how to install your new Wi-Fi system. And now a word from my sponsor, drink Coca-Cola. What? It's got nothing to do with it. But are you okay with that? If you're okay with that, great. If you know people are going to skip right past it to going back to the video, then maybe it's not a good fit. You want to create as a naturally including their products into their content because that's, you want your audience to go along for the, actually watch the branded piece and not skip Over it. So these are kind of like the first couple of very quick ways to see whether you like this person. Does it make sense? ([Time 0:43:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6de7ece-ff35-4455-ad9b-1085bb00a671)) - **Influencer Wins Come From Long-Term Trust** - Creator-brand success depends on long-term trust and allowing creators creative control rather than one-off transactional placements. - Expect multi-touch campaigns; brands should provide guardrails but let creators create to build audience trust. Transcript: Liron Segev It's the whole thing of, you know, I want to find a good partner, right? And a good partner is going to share what their data is like. The part I don't like is putting like a creator hat on is I'd like to see it the other way around as well. Like how much sales that my campaign do? Cause you know, you might think you, you didn't get enough views or enough reach and you're feeling really down about this partnership. But on the other side of the table, the brand's so excited because they finally did some real numbers. So I would like to see like a two-way street. But I think to your point, the more that we share as creators, we're saying, look, here's who we are. This is our authentic self. This is what the data says. This data is unemotional. We did really well. We didn't do really well. How do we go from long term? So that is my one thing about working with a creator is that just remember that it's not always about a flash in the pan. You've got to build trust. You've got to build a relationship, not just with the creator, but with the creator's audience. And sometimes it doesn't, can't happen in a one and done. Sometimes you've got to do three or four or five, or do a series of videos where you can be mentioned in the right context to the right audience. And eventually everything will start clicking in place. When you work with a brand, you've got to understand it's not just about the data. It's about the creator and their audience. And the biggest thing that you can do to help yourself is let the creator create. ([Time 0:46:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15fd46dd-ace7-4281-a2ac-f73feebc44f3))