Had to pick between filming vertical or horizontal for my travel vlog last summer

I went with vertical for Instagram Reels and TikTok, thinking it would help growth. After 3 months my YouTube channel barely had any traction because all my footage was 9:16. Anyone else struggle choosing a format and regret it later?

3 comments

3 Comments

jesse_fisher1mo agoTop Commenter

Vertical is the only way to go if you actually care about reaching people under 30. Old school horizontal purists are living in 2015 when YouTube was the only game in town. Instagram and TikTok together have way more daily active users than YouTube does now, so why wouldn't you optimize for where the eyeballs actually are? YouTube's algorithm punishes vertical content because they want to push shorts anyway, so your real mistake was trying to use square peg footage in a round hole platform. Nobody watches travel vlogs on a laptop anymore, they're on their phone scrolling between clips. If you wanted YouTube growth you should have filmed both orientations from day one instead of betting everything on one format and then acting surprised when it didn't work.

lindab491mo ago

Hold up, @jesse_fisher, did you just call my 2015 YouTube uploads a retirement plan?

gonzalez.reese1mo ago

Guess my retirement plan is as shaky as my horizontal video viewing stats.