loop youtube shorts

How To SCRIPT And Loop YouTube Shorts (2023)

Loop YouTube Shorts to increase engagement! Do you want to create looped videos so that people keep watching without swiping away? This results in over 100% watch time, significantly increase your video engagement and signals to YouTube that you are video is really quite good.

This is a simple hack for YouTube Shorts and will allow you to double your watch time. In this article, we will show you a few ways to plan and script your video, so that looping them during editing is not only possible but incredibly easy.

By the way, YouTube wants you to loop your video. It’s not a cringy hack! They even mentioned it as part of YouTube Shorts’ growth strategies in their Shorts report. But exactly how to do it, they didn’t bother to share many details.

That’s exactly what we are here for. Let’s get started!

What is a looped video?

Loop videos are continuously repeating videos with endless or multiple replays. There are several ways to create a loop video. By the way, YouTube Shorts already has the “loop” feature built in. Meaning, if you don’t scroll away from the current video as a viewer, the same video will continue to play.

How to make people STOP watching your YouTube Shorts 🙂

In order to help people keep watching your video, we need to first understand what might trigger people to stop watching your video.

In addition to being boring, you can also send signals to indicate the end of your video by using phrases such as “thanks for watching”, “that’s it”, and “hope you enjoyed this video” which will let viewers easily swipe away.

How do we get around that? Step one is to avoid those phrases at the end of your YouTube shorts, and let’s move on to how to script your videos so it doesn’t end.

How long should your Shorts be for looped videos?

This a slightly debatable in my opinion. On one hand, yes – it’s better to keep them short (under 30 secs, or even under 15 secs in some cases) so that viewers are more likely to experience the “looped” effect. Again, if they don’t reach the end of the video, the video will never loop. Makes sense?

One trick you can experiment with is to assess your viewers’ average watch time. You can do it by visiting YouTube Shorts’ analytics. Specifically, you’ll need “Advanced Analytics”.

By default, YouTube only shows columns such as Viewed (vs. swiped away), Shown in feed, Views. But you can easily click on the “+” (plus sign), and add additional attributes to the column, such as:

  • Average percentage viewed
  • Average view duration

The reason why I chose both attributes is that my Shorts are not all the same length. Some are much shorter, and some are closer to the 60-sec max duration mark. Seeing percentage and the actual seconds watched is quite helpful.

How to loop YouTube Shorts (2023)

By looking at the stats above, it’s helpful for me to generalize that my Shorts will probably do best when it’s around 30 seconds or less.

How to script and loop YouTube Shorts

The best way to learn is to find great examples. @doobydobap is a brilliant food blogger on YouTube and TikTok. Her shorts first took off on TikTok, and after also publishing to YouTube with her long-form content, there is no sign of her slowing down.

For example, this video of hers called “how to meal prep like a Korean”

Important note: because I’m embedding this video as opposed to letting you watch it as part of YouTube shorts, this video won’t automatically loop for you. If you want to watch the original version to understand how the loop starts and ends, watch it here (on YouTube).

Starts your script with HOW, or a simply, a question (Example #1)

Script starts: “how Korean meal prep? It’s Banchan. Banchan is the hallmark of Korean food.”

Then she goes into what Banchan is, while she demonstrates how she prepares them.

Script ends: so yeah, what comes to most people’s minds when they hear Korean food is Korean BBQ, and that’s fine. But if you really wanna know

Analysis of this looped shorts:

Tina (aka doobydobap) write the script with the end in mind. If you swap the script and starts with the end, it still makes perfect sense.

In this case, Tina is breaking up a perfectly good sentense into two parts.

In the end, she starts with “But if you really wanna know…”, which sets the stage and suspense for you to want to find out what’s going to happen next.

“But if you really wanna know…” is NOT a sentense, clearly. Viewers have to stay to find out, and then at some point they realized the video looped to the beginning again.

The start of the video “how Korean meal prep, it’s Banchan”, is short and catchy. It’s a statement. But viewers won’t click away because of her yummy banchan and the process of prepping it. Even if someone knows exactly what banchan is, or how to make them, they are still curious how Tina makes them with her special touch.

Start your script with a statement (Example 2)

Script starts: “I used to hate Korean food. I was an extremely picky eater…”

Script ends: “it’s crazy to think that when I was younger,”

Analysis of this YouTube shorts script

In this case, Tina started with a statement, and she explained where she came from, how she behaved for many years. The story ended with “when I was younger,”

In this technique, Tina is using part of a dependent clause on its own. But a dependent clause cannot act as a complete sentence because it begins with a subordinating word, such as when, because, if, whoever, etc. 

This is brilliant! Nobody is going to click away when they hear “when I was younger”, that’s not a complete sentence. Of course they are waiting to hear what happens next. In a few seconds (or longer), they will realize that the video has already looped, and they are watching the beginning of the video, again.

Conclusion: How to script and loop YouTube Shorts

There are many examples of looped YouTube shorts like doobydobap’s. Each creator, each video may sound and look different, but the techniques are similar.

In addition to breaking up a sentense in the middle, or a dependent clause, what else can you do?

So much of scripting YouTube videos or shorts is about learning how to write that catches the viewers emotionally, engage them through words and sensors.

In this post written by RankMath, they broke down Power Words, where they explain:

Emotional Power Words: “There are hundreds of emotions humans can experience, and not all work in the same way. Anger may cause someone to share something, but not purchase a product or a service. Fear, on the other hand, may work oppositely.”

Sensory Power Words as “help paint a picture in your readers head. Not only that, they help trigger a sensory response and make your reader see, hear, smell, taste, or feel your words.”

Among those there are also seductive and trigger words.

Don’t over use them. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. This is true in creative writing, and YouTube shorts and video scripting.

What can you do next?

Start scripting, and keep writing.

The most you practice, the easier it gets. The good thing about YouTube Shorts is that they are no more than 60 seconds. This helps you train your brain to pack a lot of information, an emotional story, a reflection from your world. At the same time, you don’t have to write so much – there is no time.

I hope I can set up a workshop to write together with some of you one day.

Until then, let me know your questions, comments below.

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