AARP's YouTube Shorts are dedicated to expanding our digital reach by delivering positive and informative content aligned with the AARP brand. We do this by publishing engaging bite-sized videos that empower, entertain, and educate our 50+ audience. From inspiring narratives to thoughtful insights, each video aims to resonate with a diverse audience, foster a sense of community, and promote AARP’s core values. Through YouTube Shorts, we strategically leverage the power of short-form content, and our access to celebrities, to elevate AARP’s online presence and reinforce our position as a trusted source for inspiring and relevant content for the 50+ audience.
AARP's YouTube Shorts leverage our access to celebrities and our extensive archive to curate a variety of content. Our strategy involves repurposing existing material and actively filming original content that aligns with brand values. This dual approach ensures an engaging content mix that connects with our audience.
A challenge we faced successfully is the shifting availability of the celebrities we interview. We adapt our production timeline to meet deadlines. This flexibility allows us the ability to keep a steady publishing cadence of high-quality content and capitalize on star power to attract new and repeat viewership.
For our channel strategy, we ask ourselves ‘Why AARP?’ with every video we produce. By using this question as a focus, we aim to engage our current and potential audiences on a personal level, nurturing a deeper connection with the brand. The answer can be as simple as access to an appropriate voice. This fortifies the relevance and impact AARP has for our viewers.
Our continuing success ranges from longer tail content taking its time to reach high views and click through to immediate successes where content finds its audience within YouTube immediately. Two prime examples are “Sneak Peek Inside Bruce Springsteen’s Garage” and “Ringo Starr: Paul McCartney drove the Beatles’ work ethic” where the former took its time, but the latter caught 2,000 more views than our channel average in its first hour of being published. We publish content at ideal times for audience engagement. This reach, a consistent publishing cadence, and continued high percentage of Viewed Vs Swiped Away (VVSA), provides us with measurable success to inform future productions.
