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Short-form video on YouTube – trends with a focus on food

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Charlotte Leung

By Charlotte Leung,Contributor” on April 21, 2023

www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-leung-pr

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Searching For New Recipes And Cooking Hacks? Short-Form Food Videos On YouTube Are Your Solutions To All Problems! Short-Form Videos On YouTube And YouTube Shorts Are The Go-To Nowadays To Share Your Amazing Dish And The Way People Go In Search Of New Recipes And Hacks.

They Are Wonderful Platforms For Both Food Creators And The Public To Look For Cooking Recommendations Spicing Up Creativity And Inspiration In The Kitchen.​

What Are YouTube Shorts And Why Are They Important?

YouTube Shorts Was Released In 2021 And Has Become An Excellent Platform For Creators, And Marketers To Connect With Their Audience And For The Public To Navigate And Watch All Kinds Of Videos On The Platform. It Is A Relatively New Function On YouTube To Post Vertical Short-Form Videos Under 60 Seconds To Engage And For Viewers To Share With Tons Of Potential. With The Easy Editing Tool On YouTube Itself, There Are A Handful Of Creative Elements In Creating A Short-Form Video Clip.​

As of 2023 with 2 billion people using YouTube every month, YouTube Shorts are receiving an extremely high amount of viewership with 15 billion views daily and YouTube has a $100 million YouTube Shorts creator’s fund. With 74% of Adults in America using YouTube, it is the most popular online platform in America now and this number is foreseen to be increasing constantly. As the second-most visited website globally and the second-most used search engine after Google, YouTube Shorts is a successful launch without the need for the public to create a new account, i.e.TikTok.

YouTube Shorts V.S. TikTok

YouTube Shorts And TikTok Are Both Social Media Platforms For Users To Post Short-Form Vertical 9:16 Aspect Ratio Videos With Duration Under 60 Seconds And Under Three Minutes Respectively. With Many Similarities Between The Two Including Analytics, Scrolling, And Tools To Assist Creators To Earn Money And Subscribing, There Are Differences.

 

Despite TikTok launching before YouTube Shorts, YouTube Shorts is becoming as successful as TikTok with its advantages. While TikTok creators earn money from their views and engagement, YouTube Shorts are monetized by advertisements and sponsorships. In addition, creators can choose to ‘private’ their YouTube Shorts for just their community of paid subscribers to view particular videos while TikTok can only allow the creator to watch ‘private’ videos. One of the biggest difference between these two platforms are the demographics of users, while TikTok is a major platform for younger audiences, YouTube Shorts succeed in bringing in a larger scope audience from all ages, allowing creators to reach a higher engagement when posting on YouTube Shorts. Hence, content creators are leaning towards posting their short-form videos on YouTube as they can get more subscribers to both their short-form and long-form content. 

For viewers, YouTube Shorts is also easier as one does not have to create a new account and just watch it through their navigating website or choice. Therefore, YouTube Shorts are becoming more popular and will be your best platform for publishing your food content short-form videos!

How to Create YouTube Shorts

It is extremely easy for everyone to create their own YouTube Shorts in just the app itself with simple steps. By pressing the “+” icon, creators can add different short clips from their photo library or record videos immediately to “Create a Short”. With clips or videos selected, different creative elements can be added including music, filters and effects to perfect your video. In publishing your shorts, creators just have to add a title and description to their artwork and publish it for the world to see.

Why feature food in Short-form videos on YouTube and Youtube Shorts

Food itself is a genre and category that is relatable to everyone as we all have to eat for survival. As we all cook every day, we need to make cooking and eating more entertaining and to be inspired by new and exciting recipes. YouTube short-form videos and YouTube Shorts are new platforms for food creators to feature their cooking and dishes for the public to view and learn from.

Similar to the Top Chef’s Show, food videos like cooking competitions and recipe challenges are entertaining in watching how one prepares food and creates a dish. When these contents are compressed into a short video, it makes it more addictive to watch. When watching these shows, viewers are educating themselves as well with the discovery of new recipes and ingredients that could be made into a special dish with cooking tutorial videos. This educational experience can be brought to cultural discovery and learning as well as different people around the world can share their home recipes and traditional cuisine with everyone on the platform.

Food is a reflection of culture and YouTube offers everyone the chance to showcase their culture through food. Albert_cancook is an impressive creator who gets 20,000 subscribers every day according to Social Blade as he films short video niches recreation popular dishes from different popular shows, movies and even restaurants.

On top of learning recipes, sharing short-form food videos on YouTube and YouTube Shorts cultivate a community and offers a lot of audiences comfort and pleasure, especially with the rise of ASMR videos. By sharing the videos, anyone can comment and share the video with their friends and family as a social connection. The sounds and visuals of close-up shots in these food videos also offer a scope of viewers with pleasure and comfort with the sizzling sounds as well.

Why Short-form Videos on YouTube and Youtube shorts

Short-form videos and YouTube Shorts are successful with numerous advantages including attention capture, inspirational, all-inclusive and sharing functions. With short-form videos within one minute, audiences can watch the videos attentively and focus on the video such as recreating a celebrity’s recipe. With new recipes and cooking techniques introduced in under 60 seconds, it makes the cooking method seem easy and inspires audiences to try to recreate them with a broadened culinary horizon. Short-form videos are versatile with unlimited food hacks and shares on the platform, making it efficient for everyone to navigate what they want to learn about food. With the simple sharing button beside the video, audiences can simply copy the link or send it to their family and friends.

YouTube Shorts in particular is a new feature allowing people to create short-form vertical videos up to 60 seconds long. Recently, more creators have utilized Shorts to broadcast their content with the greatest advantage to increase engagement and visibility to everyone on YouTube. As YouTube Shorts are recommended and popped up on the page with relevant search, it can increase creators’ reach and attract new viewers. The ease of sharing on the YouTube homepage allows creators to go viral easily as “swiping” is highly addictive and can engage audiences to continue watching more shorts from them.

On the other hand, YouTube shorts are easy to create by just adding random vertical clips on the Shorts Creation Page without any editing tools and techniques, making it accessible to everyone. The Built-In Music Library offers a free music library for creators to choose from to perfect and finish off their shorts, hence, YouTube Shorts has become an extremely successful platform in increasing reach and engagement on YouTube.

Short-form YouTube videos are also used by professional chefs to share cooking videos in building their reputation, engaging with audiences, and increasing visibility and shares. If the chefs are not well-known internationally, they can build their brand internationally by presenting their culinary skills and knowledge in just one minute to engage and build a fan base worldwide.

Chefs can further utilize the monetization ability from YouTube to monetize their content to expand their earning potential through advertisements or sponsorships from food brands.

Recipes

Short-form food recipe videos on YouTube are an easy way for viewers to learn about a new recipe and to be inspired to try it out with just a one-minute short video. The reasons why Food creators are shortening their cooking videos into short videos are to share their cooking expertise with the public, build a loyal fan base by subscribing to their channel and generate revenue and build a brand of their own.

Gordon Ramsay is undoubtedly a chef that everyone knows and he is also using YouTube to post videos teaching others how to cook certain recipes, making other chefs follow suit in sharing their knowledge. When viewers are interested to watch more and getting up-to-date, they will subscribe to the channel and become part of the community of the creator, gradually, the creator can generate revenue from different food sponsorships and advertisements used in the cooking preparation.

Some of the popular food YouTube channels include Tasty (21.1M subscribers), and Tastemade (1.91M subscribers). They are two of many Food YouTube Channels out there creating short-form recipe videos of quick and easy recipes from dishes to be made in under 30 minutes, step-by-step instructions, creative recipes, and international cuisine to unique flavour combinations.

Shortening the whole cooking process to just a one-minute clip makes it easy for viewers to follow and is a great way to discover new recipes and learn new cooking techniques.

As short-form food videos on YouTube are free and can be easily searched just by typing the name of the dish or the ingredients you have at home, they are great sources of inspiration for home cooks and food enthusiasts in this platform of great varieties of channels and styles to choose from.

ASMR

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which is a tingling sensation one gets on their body parts in response to visual or auditory stimuli. It might be an extreme contrast to different people as some will find it extremely addictive and soothing to watch while others might find it disturbing. With ASMR ASMR food videos are another hugely popular food genre on YouTube people watch worldwide, it is due to the comforting and relaxation many receive from watching these ASMR videos. ASMR food videos are a kind of video where the creator is filmed in a close-up shot recording sounds of food being prepared, cooked or eaten. Many people, especially those who love food, like to watch it for stress relief purposes as they find it soothing and satisfying to watch and listen to. As the repetitive sounds are recorded in high quality, these food videos induce relaxation in those who like to watch and can be seen as a meditative method.

Two of the popular ASMR food channels out there on YouTube are Zach Choi ASMR with 24.4 M subscribers with the most popular video of him having over 85M views. His videos are filmed in close-up shots from preparing incredibly large amounts of mostly unhealthy but addictive food to cooking and eating them with a focus on crunchy or crispy textures such as eating giant onion rings, fried chicken, and honeycomb candy. Another popular YouTube channel is 쏘영 Ssoyoung where she has over 9.28M subscribers and 29M in her most popular videos. Her channel is similar to Zach’s as they both prepare food and eat them in front of the camera, however, her videos are funnier than Zach’s channel in the way that she often acts extravagantly with different reactions. For example, she will cook a 7.5kg king lobster and 5 feet of squid leg.

With the introduction of YouTube Shorts, ASMR food creators are posting condensed and compiled ASMR content on YouTube Shorts in addition to their horizontal videos with more than one minute.

Viral

Short-form food videos on YouTube are the easiest method for food creators to gain popularity with the ease to be shared widely across social media platforms with endless limitations from food preparation and creative and innovative recipes to mukbangs. To capture the attention and interest of the public, viral food videos are usually incredibly hard to make with a lot of processes, inside stories on how famous dishes or cuisines are being made or food challenges. One of the recent viral food challenges on YouTube Shorts is from PetersPasta where he films a series of challenges every day by making pasta dough with egg yolks double every time. With the huge food challenge, it managed to capture a group audience to catch up with his series resulting in a lot of his videos having more than 20M views.
Speaking of viral, there has been a trend in TikTok with “Viral food recipes” and “Viral food hacks” where creators are posting different mind blown and YouTube Shorts are doing the same and even with content creators trying out these “Viral food hacks”. These videos are viral for a reason, food is a universal language to everyone, and even if the voiceover is speaking a language one does not understand, we can just watch the video and learn the recipe without any words. YouTube Shorts are successful with similar functions as TikTok with simple swipes to engage a large audience base. Often, these viral recipes are special with creative adjustments on classic dishes or fun-making processes, making them interesting to try, hence, many people watch and try them out. Some of these recipes include Baked Feta Pasta, Pasta Chips, Baked Oats, Cloud Bread, Pesto Eggs, Salmon Rice Bowl and Spicy Vodka Pasta.

Mukbang

Mukbang is a highly addictive and popular form of short-form food video on YouTube. Originated from South Korea in the early 2010s, “mukbang” is a word made from Korean “eating” and “broadcast”, a blend of two Korean words “meukneun” (eating) and “songbang” (broadcasting), referring to the trend in broadcasting oneself eating large amounts of food while communicating with audiences in a live stream. Mukbang on YouTube nowadays is not limited to South Korea and Asia but worldwide, starting from eating Korean food such as ramen and corndog, it has revolutionalized a wide variety of worldwide cuisines and snacks.

Although mukbangs record sounds and are filmed in close-up shots as well when eating like ASMR, the main focus of mukbangs is on the amount of food one eats while ASMR focuses on the sound of the person chewing and slurping. However, content creators are combining both nowadays to broadcasting themselves eating a huge amount of food with ASMR.

Watching mukbang is a combination of watching ASMR and food recipes or food hacks as it offers different kinds of comfort with enjoyment and food exploration to viewers to learn about and explore new cuisines. Often, the food broadcasters are eating a huge amount of food that cannot be consumed by a normal person in one sitting, e.g. eating 112 plates of sushi and 2 drinks in one sitting like Tzuyang, a famous mukbang YouTuber in South Korea. She is even invited to go on television shows showcasing her ability to consume that huge amount of food despite being a skinny girl. She is one example of many fascinating broadcasters that captures a large number of people watching their mukbang videos.

Not only does watching mukbang amaze viewers, but it also gives viewers a sense of social gratification especially when one has to eat alone. Watching broadcasters eating happily with a large amount of food, makes one feel less lonely and enjoy their food better. It can be seen as a therapeutic and calming purpose. These are the reasons why mukbang can be brought to a worldwide sensation originating from South Korea.

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