Introduction
Did you know that people watch 5 billion videos on YouTube every day? In fact, 300 hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
This might not even surprise you, as YouTube is the leading service that made it possible to easily put videos online in 2005. Flash forward to 2017 and if your marketing strategy does not have a video component tied to it, your visibility and business growth potential will suffer. Video should become a critical piece of the marketing puzzle because of how much video content your audience is consuming.
But, with many other companies knowing this, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out amongst your competition. This is why advertising spend does need to be allocated to services like YouTube in order to gain visibility from your target audience.
Although similar to paid search spend, the world of YouTube advertising can seem a bit overwhelming and complicated to navigate at first.
Hence, this guide will walk you through the several aspects of running a successful YouTube channel and make a killing using these tips.
YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch, share, and promote original videos online. YouTube is fully integrated with Google Ad Words for video, leveling the playing field for businesses that want to reach new customers with online video.
YouTube is a video Social Networking site and the 2nd most popular search site on the Internet after Google, who owns YouTube. YouTube video watching is a significant activity on the Internet, with over 1 billion visits to YourTube daily and over 100 million videos watched daily. And it's easy for anyone who sees your video to rate it and share it with his Social Network.
How YouTube Works?
YouTube's theme is “Broadcast Yourself,” and as such encourages everyone to make and broadcast videos on everything imaginable. YouTube is owned and operated by Google, and leverages the search power of Google.
All YouTube videos are indexed by Google's search and will appear in Google's search results when you select Video in the search options on Google. Using YouTube is a great way to get listed in Google's search results since Google gives YouTube videos priority in their search results.
YouTube videos can be viewed by anyone with access to the Web site. No user account or log-in is needed to search for or watch videos. Setting up a user account, on the other hand, allows you to upload videos, and also lets you customize your viewing with YouTube by subscribing to “channels” and giving feedback ratings on videos.
When you set up your own YouTube user account, many of the familiar functions of Social Networking are offered as options, such as sending a YouTube video link to a friend or
Using YouTube for Marketing
Videos on YouTube can be short and simple. For your marketing, decide on a goal for your YouTube activity. Some common themes include customer support, educational, product instructions, customer interviews, employee interviews, event videos, and professional produced videos.
Your YouTube videos need to have tags and descriptions associated with them for search in YouTube, so use your keywords and be sure to include them when you upload your video. Google's search bots cannot index the media, only the text associated with the media, so adding tags is critical to your video being indexed.
Just like any Social Media, creating an account and only posting once (one Video) won't have a great impact. Creating a series of videos, however, will result in increased search optimization and followers of your YouTube channel. Find a way to implement regular video production into your marketing effort to build an audience on YouTube and increase your ranking.
Video Production
For production, you can use a hand-held video camera. Any major brand that has a microphone input will produce good video. Good sound quality is important for video production and making your YouTube video easy to understand. If you have a story to tell, make some notes and rehearse those several times to make it sound more natural when you are reading from them.
If you find you're better at ad-hoc video, keep a video camera with you for part to capture some of your daily activities. If you have a Smartphone, use the built-in video camera to capture some short videos. Simple YouTube uploading from a YouTube app is usually a feature included with most smart phones.
Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker and the Apple iMovie applications allow basic video editing and are a good place to start for editing your own video productions. Consider getting a professional video made if you decide to expand your marketing and want more complex stories told in your videos. The production quality on YouTube is improving and a good video production can be created for $1,000-$4,000 as a starting point. The higher the budget, the more you'll get in scripting, production preparation, and concept development by a professional. But don't let that stop you from doing something on your own, good audio quality and a steady camera can result in an excellent video.
Remember, it's the message and content that's important to viewers.
YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics is a self-service analytics and reporting tool. It provides data about each video you upload, so you can easily track how many views it gets, where people are coming from to find it and what type of people are watching it.
YouTube Analytics can give you information about:
· the 'firsts' for the video, including the first referral from a related video, first referral from a YouTube search (including the search terms used), first time the video is embedded in another website
· how many views came from each referral source
· which gender and age groups the video is most popular with
· which countries the video is most popular in
· how many comments and ratings it has received.
YouTube channels
You can set up a YouTube channel for your business, bringing all your videos together. This allows you to customize your channel with images representing your firm. Your channel
includes an 'About' section where you can provide a short description of your business and a link to your website or contact details.
Your channel is where you group the videos you make and upload, the videos you watch and like, and the playlists of videos you create.
Your channel will have a web address (URL) that you can promote on your website or marketing material. People can subscribe to your channel. This means when they log in to YouTube your videos will be listed on their YouTube homepage.
You can also create 'playlists' within your YouTube channel to organize your videos by subject or type. For example, you could have a playlist featuring videos about each of your product categories, or you might have a playlist for videos contributed by your customers for a video competition you run.
YouTube Advertising
YouTube incorporates features that let businesses promote their videos to people who might be interested in them, targeting customers by demographics, topics or interests.
Advertisers pay each time someone views their video. You can choose which locations your ad will appear in, what format it will be, and even how much you are prepared to pay per view (if you want to boost the prominence of your ad over your competitors). YouTube's advertising guide explains how it works.
Why Opt for YouTube for Business?
Starting a business and making sure that it prospers into something profitable – these are two completely different tasks. You need to put in a lot of effort to make sure that people see your product or brand. YouTube is one of the best possible tools for this job. Here are some of the important benefits that your business will get by building a strong presence on YouTube.
· Popularize your product: If your business is trying to get into a new market with a particular product, you can simply make a video of the product working and show the benefits that the product has. If done in a creative manner, you will soon find that there will be many people liking your video and going for your product.
· Get feedback: You can use YouTube even if you are not completely ready with your product. It can be a great tool to figure out the response that the product might get. You simply have to put up the video of your prototype.
· Sharing made easy: As a young business setup, you may have people located at remote locations. It might not be possible for you to share all the material with them. YouTube can be a great way to share presentations or something similar with these remote employees.
· Simplify tasks: For businesses that often get client calls regarding problems with the product, YouTube can be a lifesaver. You might not have a work force to cater to all these problems. In that case, you can simply make a video with systematic details and share it on YouTube so the users can access it.
· Increase your brand visibility: If you are unable to make a video regarding your business due to time constraints or lack of good content, then there are other methods. You can simply go, rate and comment on relevant videos. You can also share some good videos on your channel. Simply by doing this, you are making your brand more visible and communicating with other users.
· YouTube Insight: Once you have your video on YouTube, comments are not the only way to analyze them. In addition to comments and ratings, there is an Insight feature also available on YouTube. This is a reporting function, which provides you with statistical data regarding the people visiting your video. This is helpful as you can figure out whether your campaign is actually working or not and make changes accordingly.
· Increase your site’s traffic: YouTube also allows you to insert links into your videos. By doing this you can channel traffic from your YouTube video to your own site. Search engines also index these videos, and video results are comparatively lesser than text results. This increases the chances of a person finding your business video through a search.
· Save Money: One of the most important factors in any marketing campaign is money. Conventional methods like advertising on television or newspaper require a lot of money, but YouTube allows you to upload your videos completely free. From setting up your channel to analyzing the traffic on your video, it costs you nothing.
· YouTube Ads: With such a huge number of views everyday YouTube is one site where you would definitely want to run an ad campaign. You have multiple options available when it comes to the kind of advertising campaign you want to run. You can use one of the several marketing programs or you can use the video target tool to place your ads.
Get the Maximum Out of YouTube
You can build your company’s presence on YouTube, but the job is only half done. To make sure that your campaign succeeds, you have to put in a lot of effort. The most important thing would be make proper use of your channel. YouTube gives you the option of customizing how your channel looks. You should take full advantage of this as it allows you to stand out amongst other regular channels, and makes a positive impact on the viewer.
Many companies simply ignore their channel. After the initial bursts of enthusiasm, you may find that there is nothing happening in the channel and this may discourage you. Even if you have nothing new to post, make sure that you keep up to date with the comments.
You should also make sure that you keep your content organized. You have the option of creating playlists. So you can group all the relevant videos together into a single playlist, or you can sort them on the basis of time.
YouTube is one of the fastest growing sites and is a great platform for you to showcase your company. When it comes to social media marketing there are very few sites more important than YouTube. All you need to do is make full use of the features provided by the site and be patient. YouTube can do wonders for your business if used correctly.
Chapter 2
The Technical Guide to setting up a YouTube Channel – Step by Step
1. Channel features for YouTube creators
Use YouTube's channel features to customize your channel and support your brand. These features are available to all creators who have verified accounts.
To see what features you're currently eligible for, go to your account features page.
Monetization: If you meet the monetization criteria, you can enable monetization to earn money from ads on videos.
Longer videos: When your account is verified, you can upload videos longer than the 15- minute limit.
Link to external sites: Use annotations in videos to link to external sites.
Custom thumbnails: Upload a custom thumbnail for your video.
Content ID appeals: Appeal rejected Content ID disputes.
Unlisted and private videos: Make your videos unlisted and share your private videos.
Live events: Learn how to create a live streaming event.
Series playlists: Group videos into series playlists to help viewers discover them.
Customize channel layout: Customize your channel's layout with branded banners and channel trailers.
Hangouts on Air: You can create a live Hangout on Air event.
Video editor: Edit your videos' content using the YouTube Video Editor.
2. Manage your channel with Creator Studio
You can use Creator Studio in YouTube to organize your channel, manage videos, and interact with fans. You can go directly to Creator Studio or follow these steps to navigate to your Creator Studio:
1. Sign in to your channel at www.youtube.com.
2. In the top right, click your account icon.
3. Click Creator Studio.
Tools in Creator Studio
Dashboard: Check for notifications and alerts from YouTube, including the latest updates, stats, and notifications for your review.
Video Manager: Organize and update your videos from one place or dig into a particular video to adjust settings individually. Use tools to optimize a video, tweak its settings, or bulk update changes across videos with a single click.
Community: Communicate and collaborate with your fans and fellow creators. Review and respond to comments, read private messages, see videos where you've been credited, or review a list of fans (if your channel has at least 1,000 subscribers).
Channel: Adjust settings that affect your channel overall, such as signing up for monetization, controlling your upload defaults, or enabling live streaming.
Analytics: Review your channel's performance and get info on how your channel is growing. Find reports and data to help you evaluate your channel and video performance, including views, subscribers, watch time, revenue for partners, and more.
Create: Access the audio library and video editor to create new videos, add sound effects or unique music, or experiment with transitions.
3. Basics about your channel
Your channel is where you can organize your video content for your audience. As a channel owner, you can add videos, playlists, and information about yourself or your channel for visitors to explore.
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Classic desktop experience
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1. Sign in to your YouTube account on a computer.
2. On the left, select My channel.
3. Use the drop-down menu next to your name to view your channel as Yourself, a New visitor, or a Returning subscriber. When you want to go back to viewing as yourself, click Done at the top of the screen.
4. Use the tabs to navigate previewing the channel:
Home: This is what your audience sees when they visit your channel. They can view a feed of your activities or preview different sections of your customized layout.
· Videos: Use this to see a list of all uploads publicly available for subscribers or all of the videos you've publicly liked. You can sort by most popular or date added.
· Playlists: This is a list of all the playlists that you've created.
Discussion: If you've turned on the discussion tab, this will display comments left on your channel.
· About: Use this to add a channel description (maximum length of 1,000 characters), set your channel country, enter a business contact email address, and define social or other web links.
· Links that you add here are featured just below your description and use the icon from the corresponding social network when displayed. You can overlay up to five of these links on your channel art as shortcut icons.
· 
To edit your About tab, hover over the content, then click edit .
New desktop experience
1. Sign in to your YouTube account on a computer.
2. Under your profile picture at the top right, select My channel.
3. Click Edit Layout.
4. Use the drop-down menu next to your name to view your channel as Yourself, a New visitor, or a Returning subscriber. When you want to go back to viewing as yourself, click Done at the top of the screen.
5. Use the tabs to navigate previewing the channel:
Home: This is what your audience sees when they visit your channel. They can view a feed of your activities or preview different sections of your customized layout.
· Videos: Use this to see a list of all uploads publicly available for subscribers or all of the videos you've publicly liked. You can sort by most popular or date added.
· Playlists: This is a list of all the playlists that you've created.
Discussion: If you've turned on the discussion tab, this will display comments left on your channel.
· About: Use this to add a channel description (maximum length of 1,000 characters), set your channel country, enter a business contact email address, and define social or other web links.
· Links that you add here are featured just below your description and use the icon from the corresponding social network when displayed. You can overlay up to five of these links on your channel art as shortcut icons.
· 
To edit your about tab, hover over the content, then click edit .
4. Turn comments on or off
Classic desktop experience
· Manage channel settings
You can decide if you want to allow viewers to comment on your channel.
1. Sign in to your YouTube account on a computer.
2. On the left, select My channel.
3. Under your channel banner, click settings
.
4. Turn Show discussion tab on or off.
5. If you have the discussion tab turned on, chose a comments setting:
· Display automatically: Comments will always show on your channel.
· Don't display until approved: Comments won't show on your channel until you approve them.
Comments are not available on private videos. If you want to allow comments on a video that's not publicly available, post an unlisted video instead.
· Manage video settings
You can decide if you want to allow viewers to comment on specific videos.
1. Sign in to your YouTube account on a computer.
2. Go to Creator Studio > Video Manager.
3. Select the box next to any of the videos you want to manage.
4. At the top of the screen, click the Actions menu.
5. Select More actions > Comments.
6. Select or unselect Do not allow comments.
· New desktop experience
· Manage channel settings
You can decide if you want to allow viewers to comment on your channel.
1. Sign in to your YouTube account on a computer.
2. Under your avatar at the top right, select My channel.
3. Under your channel banner, click settings 
.
4. Turn Show discussion tab on or off.
5. If you have the discussion tab turned on, chose a comments setting:
· Display automatically: Comments will always show on your channel.
· Don't display until approved: Comments won't show on your channel until you approve them.
Comments are not available on private videos. If you want to allow comments on a video that's not publicly available, post an unlisted video instead.
· Manage video settings
You can decide if you want to allow viewers to comment on specific videos.
1. Sign in to your YouTube account on a computer.
2. Go to Creator Studio > Video Manager.
3. Select the box next to any of the videos you want to manage.
4. At the top of the screen, click the Actions menu.
5. Select More actions > Comments.
6. Select or unselect Do not allow comments.
7. An important step in managing and promoting a YouTube channel is to add the right channel keywords.
Keywords can indeed help users to discover your YouTube channel when they make searches on Google, YouTube and other search engines. So the first step is to choose the keywords that specifically represent your channel and the type of content published.
Once done, sign-in to YouTube, click on your profile picture displayed at the top right corner
> Creator Studio > Channel > Advanced:
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Type your keywords in the Channel Keywords field and then click on Save:
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Separate your keywords with a space and use quotation marks when search terms are in the form of short phrases.
5. Create or edit channel art
Channel art shows as a banner at the top of your YouTube page. You can use it to brand your channel's identity and give your page a unique look and feel.
Use the guidelines and examples below to set up your design. Keep in mind that channel art looks different on desktop, mobile, and TV displays.
Add or change channel art
1. On a computer, sign in to your YouTube account.
2. In the top right menu, select My Channel.
· New channel art: Near the top of the screen, click Add channel art.
· Existing channel art: Hover your cursor over the existing banner until you see the edit
icon . Click the icon and select Edit channel art.
3. Upload an image or photo from your computer or saved photos. You can also click the
Gallery tab to choose an image from the YouTube photo library.
4. You'll see a preview of how the art will appear across different devices. To make changes, select Adjust the crop.
5. Click Select.
6. Verification badges on channels
When you see a or 
verification checkmark next to a YouTube channel's name, it means that the channel belongs to an established creator or is the official channel of a brand, business, or organization.
Verification badges don't affect search results for the channel or grant access to additional features on YouTube.
How to get a verification badge
Eligibility criteria
Once your channel gets 100,000 subscribers, you’re eligible to submit a request to YouTube for a verification badge. Note that we've made changes to this process over time, so you may see many types of channels with verification badges on YouTube. Note: If you’re an advertiser interested in a verification badge, contact your sales manager to learn more.
Keeping your verification badge
Once you have a verification badge, it'll stay on your channel even if your channel's subscriber number changes. If you change your channel's name, you can't keep the verification badge for the renamed channel.
YouTube reserves the right to revoke your verification badge or terminate your channel if you violate our Community Guidelines or the YouTube Terms of Service.
Manage your channel icon
Your channel icon shows over your channel art banner. It's the icon that displays to other users for your videos and channel on YouTube watch pages.
The default icon for your channel is the image associated with your Google Account. You can see this image in the top right corner of the page when you're logged into YouTube and other Google services. If you want to change this image, you can modify it in your Google Account settings.
7. Channel icon specs
Use these recommended guidelines when creating a new channel icon. Do not upload pictures containing celebrities, nudity, artwork, or copyrighted images since this violates our Community Guidelines.
· JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG file (no animated GIFs)
· 800 X 800 px image (recommended)
· Square or round image that renders at 98 X 98 px
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Edit & update channel icon
You can choose to upload a new image, use a still frame from one of your uploaded videos, or use your default image.
Classic desktop experience
1. Sign in to your YouTube account.
2. On the left, select My Channel.
3. Hover over your existing channel icon in the top left of your channel art banner.
4. 
Click the edit icon .
5. Click Edit and follow the on-screen instructions to select the new image.
New desktop experience
1. Sign in to your YouTube account.
2. Under your profile photo at the top right, select My Channel.
3. Hover over your existing channel icon in the top left of your channel art banner.
4. 
Click the edit icon .
5. Click Edit and follow the on-screen instructions to select the new image.
8. Customize channel layout
You can customize the layout of your channel so that viewers see what you want them to when they get to your page. If you don't customize the layout, all visitors will see your channel feed.
This is recommended for creators who upload videos regularly. You can add a channel trailer, suggest content for your subscribers, and organize all your videos and playlists into sections. Or, for example, you can always show your channel trailer to new visitors.
Before you can customize your layout, you need to turn this feature on:
1. On a computer, sign in to your YouTube account.
2. In the left menu, click My Channel.
3. Under your channel's banner, click the settings icon 
.
4. Toggle Customize the layout of your channel to on.
5. Click Save.
After you've enabled channel customization, follow the instructions to create a channel trailer for new visitors and create channel sections to customize the layout on your channel.
9. Organize content with channel sections
You can organize and promote content that you want to highlight on your channel using channel sections. A section lets you group videos together in a particular way so that your audience can make easier decisions about what they want to watch. You can have up to 10 sections on one channel.
10. Create a channel trailer for new viewers
You can have a video trailer show to all unsubscribed visitors to your channel. Your channel trailer is like a movie trailer - use it as a way to offer a preview of your channel's offerings so viewers will want to subscribe. You can't currently watch channel trailers on the YouTube mobile apps.
By default, ads won't appear when the trailer is playing on the channel page in the trailer spot (unless the video you've chosen contains third-party claimed content). This helps keep the user focused on learning about and subscribing to your channel. If the viewer is already subscribed to your channel, they'll see a video under "What to Watch Next" instead.
11. Set a channel trailer
Before you start: To set up a channel trailer, you have to first turn on channel customization for the channel.
1. Upload the video you want to be your channel trailer.
2. Go to the channel you want to manage.
3. Click the For new visitors tab. If you don't see the "For new visitors" tab, follow these instructions to turn on channel customization for the channel.
4. Click on Channel trailer.
5. Choose the video by selecting its thumbnail or entering its URL.
Note: If the visitor to your channel is already subscribed to your channel, they won't see your trailer. Instead, they'll see a video under "What to Watch Next." Follow these instructions to set the featured content you want to show.
Quick tips for creating channel trailers
· Assume the viewer has never heard of you.
· Keep it short.
· Hook your viewers in the first few seconds.
· Show, don’t tell.
· Ask viewers to subscribe in your video and with annotations.
Find out more about how to produce a captivating channel trailer that hooks your viewers and turns them into subscribers.
Change or remove the channel trailer
1. Go to the channel you want to manage.
2. Hover over your channel name and click the edit icon
.
3. Select Change trailer or Remove trailer.
12. Global Audience: Best practices for localized channels
As your audience continues to grow and your channel reaches global communities speaking varied languages, it’s common to consider whether it makes sense to separate content by language into individual, localized channels, or continue to maintain one larger (global) channel with multiple language content. Brands and advertisers often turn to one of three models to address their global audiences but ultimately it’s up to you to decide what works best for your channel and audience.
A. One channel with multiple language content
In this model, brands establish one main channel where content is uploaded in multiple languages for multiple geographies.
Branding
With one channel to represent your brand presence, your brand and any associated assets will be consistent across regions. If your audience uses the same terms for search across languages (ex. a product name) this channel will be highly relevant and easy to discover.
Engagement
Driving your audience to one global channel will consolidate your viewership and channel subscribers and make it easier for users to find your channel in YouTube search. Once discovered, it may prove more challenging to engage with your subscribers from across the world as a single audience since content can be available in varied languages. As such, your channel’s audience will be fragmented by language, and your channel community will see
posts, comments, and feed updates in many different languages. To help your audience stay engaged, you might consider adding subtitles and captions to your videos to make your content more accessible and available to a larger audience. You might also create unique sections and playlists on your channel for each key market to provide a consolidated offering by language and drive watch time.
Management
With all of your content in one place, your team can focus all resources on managing this single channel and make it easier to maintain consistent global branding and tone. Of course, the actual number of resources needed to manage a channel will depend entirely on the regularity of uploads planned and the intensity of your individual channel strategy. Being consistent with uploads, ensuring brand equity and audience management is critical to growing a successful channel.
B. Multiple channels each with unique language content
Here brands create multiple channels, each featuring different language and geography content. This can be very helpful for languages with various alphabets or search terms.
Branding
With a unique channel for each geography or language, brands will have the opportunity to customize each channel to the local audience and easily incorporate local events and promotions. If your brand identity varies slightly in different regions, this will allow you to respect those differences and incorporate them into your channel strategy.
Engagement
While your viewership and subscribers will be split across multiple channels by language preference, this does allow for you to have focused communications with a specific, engaged audience. All items on the channel will be targeted to a language specific audience which may result in an improved user experience. Users may be less likely to get confused or disengaged because of varying language content once they discover the brand channel in their preferred language. Don’t forget that you’ll want to specify which language a particular channel targets since users may see various channels available in search and
typically larger channels trump smaller channels. It will be important to cross-promote your various language channels amongst each other to help improve discoverability. A great way to ensure that you’re cross-promoting effectively is to add channels of interest to the “featured channels” section your channel’s about tab.
Management
With your channel content spread across multiple regions/languages, each local channel will need to allocate resources to manage the channel on an ongoing basis. Whether your channels follow a predefined framework or rely on local teams to manage, you’ll want to be sure your brand can devote enough resources to launch and maintain each channel with a regular upload and engagement schedule.
C. One global channel and supporting local channels
With a single channel to serve as the main brand hub to feature global campaigns in the main brand language and territory and supporting local channels targeting different languages and regions, brands can foster a larger global presence while still connecting to their local regions with specific content.
Branding
With this distribution of channel content, you can still showcase consistent global branding in your hub channel while using the various local channels to feature local events and promotions. It may be helpful to adopt templates for your video metadata and video thumbnails to help maintain brand consistency across your various channels.
Engagement
With so many channels, viewership and subscribers will be segmented across multiple channels but users are able to find the relevant content for their specific language and receive a consistent experience when viewing content and engaging with the channel community. It will be important to use the main global channel to help drive viewers to your local channels using video metadata, channel descriptions, and featured channel
programming. Depending on upload frequency, more frequent uploads on the local channels may result in those channels receiving a more prominent placement in search.
Management
This channel organization structure requires coordination between global and local teams but allows for flexibility when it comes to customizing the brand message for local markets or featuring local campaigns. This may be the most resource-intensive channel organization structure as you will need to dedicate time to both a larger global channel and several local channels but the actual number of resources will depend on the regularity of uploads and engagement strategies implemented on each channel.
13. Opt in to channel recommendations
You can opt in to have your YouTube channel listed on other channels that your potential viewers might be watching. This section is called "Related channels" and you can see it on the right side of channel pages while using YouTube on a computer.
Channel recommendations are created based on:
· What channels are watched by the same users
· Whether the videos are about similar topics
· Whether the channels are suitable for the same audience
You can't control what channels appear in the “Related channels” section on your own
channel, but you can opt out to remove the section completely.
14. Turn your channel recommendation on or off
1. Sign in to your YouTube channel.
2. In the top right, click your account icon > Creator Studio.
3. In the left menu, select Channel > Advanced.
4. Under "Channel recommendations," opt in or out:
· To opt in: Select "Allow my channel to appear in other channels' recommendations." This allows your channel to appear in "Related channels" sections across YouTube.
· To opt out: Select "Do not allow my channel to appear in other channels' recommendations." This removes the entire "Related channels" section from your channel page.
15. YouTube - How to add weblinks to your channel
Web links may include:
· A link to your social profiles (Twitter, Facebook...)
· Your email address.
· A link to your website or blog.
Here's how to get started:
· Sign-in to your YouTube channel.
· Click on the Menu button > My Channel.
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· Go to the About tab and click on +Links.
· Enter your email address in the first field:
· To add a link to your blog or website, scroll to the CUSTOM LINKS section and click on the Add button:
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· To add a link to a social profile, scroll to the SOCIAL LINKS section and click on the Add button. Use the drop menu to select the service of your choice and paste the URL of your social profile in the adjacent field:
16. How to close a YouTube channel?
· First log-in to your YouTube account.
·
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Click on the small avatar located top-right > Settings
· In the Overview section, just under your Username, click on the Advanced button
· Click on the "Delete channel" button and follow the procedure.
17. Connecting a YouTube channel to your social accounts
This allows YouTube to share you public activity (new video upload, likes..) on your social channels.
The procedure is as follows:
· Sign-in to your YouTube channel.
· Go to YouTube Settings > Account Settings > Connected accounts:
To connect to a Facebook page or profile:
· Click on the Connect button.
· Enter your Facebook credentials and click on Log in:
Chapter 3
Tips on Starting a New and Successful YouTube Channel
Truth be told, there is no set formula for a successful YouTube channel. But there are a few key ingredients that will make your chances of YouTube fame all the more likely.
YouTube megastars like Ryan Higa, Ray William Johnson, and Bethany Mota have amassed billions of views simply through vlogging. This has almost certainly raked in seven figures or more in revenue, while leading to untold opportunities outside of YouTube.
And then there are the channels that house much more substance, while still remaining impressively popular. Take Creative Live, the Ask Gary Vee Show, and Big Think.
These channels may all be entirely different, but share the common factor of regularly being watched by huge numbers of people. This is because they’ve stuck to at least some of the key ingredients below.
· Making the Most of Metadata
Successful YouTube channels often need more than just engaging videos to become popular. The metadata — title, description, keywords, and tags — are incredibly important, too. It’s based in large part on this data (in combination with other things) that YouTube ranks your videos in their search results. In other words, good metadata ensures your videos are discoverable.
Take Gary Vaynerchuk, for instance. His descriptions include timestamps that not only help viewers navigate his videos, but are also full of relevant keywords. Links mentioned in the video are posted in the description. There’s also a short explanation about what different
series’ of Gary’s videos are about, along with information on where you can find out more
about him.
When it comes to crafting your own metadata, use resources such as YouTube’s autocomplete search bar, YouTube Trends, and Google Trends to find the best keywords and tags to use. Include your most important link above the fold, as well as two sentences to describe the content within the video.
Also make sure to describe what your channel is about, and let people know where else they can follow you. Lastly, include a call to action (usually asking people to subscribe to your channel).
If you’re so inclined, producing and publishing a transcript of your YouTube video is also a sensible move.
· Carefully Craft Your Title
Your video titles should be short and snappy, offering a quick and intriguing insight into
the content of your video. Don’t forget to include your main keyword(s), too!
The best way to do this is to look at your title as if you’d never come across your brand before. Would you click on it? If you’re not sure, change it. This often means moving any personal branding within the title to the end, so the main keywords appear first. It also means including episode numbers for serial content. And very importantly, be honest. Don’t promise content that you don’t deliver on.
· Vary Your Content
Speaking of content, in very broad terms, there are two kinds of content you can produce and publish on YouTube.
The first is “Pull Content”. This is generally evergreen content, with a wider, more viral
appeal. This pulls new people to your channel and convinces them to subscribe.
The second is “Push Content”, which you push to your subscribers because it’s what you
know they want to watch.
Your channel should be made up of a mixture of these two types of content. Take Jimmy Fallon as an example. Fallon has a huge following, but a relatively small number of his videos attract a disproportionate number of views. An obvious example is his video with Obama, which 12 million people have watched (this always seems to happen when Obama appears on YouTube). This content has a wider appeal than most of Fallon’s other content, but has likely been responsible for a large number of his almost 10 million subscribers.
You should be looking to mix your content up like this, too. Not all of your content should be too niche, because you need to reach new audience members who will look forward to your push content.
· Video Thumbnails
If you’re aiming to create a popular YouTube channel, you’re going to need consistent
branding. This branding need to be recognizable for people who learn to love your content.
The School of Life is a perfect case study here. They use the same, large font mixed with fun imagery and bold colors for each thumbnail. This means that when one of their 650,000 subscribers is on a School of Life binge, they can easily recognize more School of Life videos from the suggested videos sidebar. Naturally this leads to more views, and means they don’t need to write “School of Life” in every video title.
· Keep Things Consistent
To take things further than simply consistent branding, your content should be consistent, too. People will only subscribe to your channel if they know what it is they’re looking forward to.
If your audience loves your rants, publish a rant on the same day every week. If it turns out a certain structure for your videos was well received, make that your normal structure. If you’re answering audience questions, make sure it’s a regular show.
Ryan Higa’s 16 million subscribers know that he’ll have one video uploaded for them each week. This keeps people looking forward to that next episode, knowing that they won’t have too long to wait. You could even use a tool like Wips to create a chrome extension to alert users when you publish your next video.
· Create An Effective End Card
YouTube allows you to add an end card (sometimes called an end slate) to the end of each of your videos, so make the most of it. Many You Tubers don’t use this feature at all. Others simply use it to display their logo. This is a waste.
You should be setting up an interactive end card that not only prompts people to subscribe to your channel, but also cross promotes your other videos. When you do this, at the end of your videos people will be able to see a couple of your other titles. Even if they don’t want to watch them now, they may think “this channel has some cool stuff!”, and subscribe so they can watch later.
Again, check out Jimmy Fallon’s end cards to see some fantastic examples.
· Engage, Engage, Engage
When people are giving you their attention, especially when they go to the effort of commenting on your videos, the least you can do is base. How YouTube is a social network. Even if you don't run a channel, YouTube can be useful for interacting with the community.
After all, when people feel they have access to the person behind the brand, their loyalty rockets. This isn’t implying that you have to reply to every comment, but at least wade in occasionally to let people know you actually pay attention to what they think. Though by all means, ignore the YouTube trolls.
To bring Gary Vaynerchuk back, this is someone who’s engaged with his audience hundreds of thousands of times. He responds to a huge portion of the tweets he receives, and reads virtually every comment on YouTube, while replying to many of those that arrive first. If he can do it, so can you.
· Involve Your Audience
Allow your audience to become part of your channel. You can do this in various ways, from reading out comments, to asking them#QOTD (question of the day).
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Photographer Chase Jarvis occasionally publishes videos like these (above), where he asks people to submit their photos so he can offer a professional critique. This is a perfect
way to enable your audience to have a real stake in your channel, allowing them to direct the content, if even in a small way.
If you want more ideas, read about various ways you can involve an audience during a presentation. Many of these apply to publishing YouTube videos, too.
· Collaborate With Other YouTubers
If you have a fairly popular YouTube channel already, chances are that another YouTuber with a similar audience will be happy to collaborate with you.
By producing a video with other collaborators mean their audiences will get to know you, and vice versa.
If you want to keep things simple, you could just give a shout-out to a channel you recommend, and ask another channel to do the same for you. This is a simple and effective way of gaining new subscribers and views on your videos.
· Integrate your channel in your website and social
You have a website and now a YouTube channel. Great! Now it’s time to share your videos outside of YouTube and your website should be their first stop. Here are a couple of ways to showcase your videos on your website.
· Front and center: Your videos take time and effort to create, so why not show them off? You can add your YouTube video to the home page on your website so it’s one of the first things that a visitor will see!
· Blog all about it: If you have a blog on your website, then your YouTube videos have a home away from home now. You can embed them right into new blog posts and even tell your website subscribers by sending a newsletter!
· Add a YouTube Playlist
· Sync your website with your YouTube Channel or Playlist:
· Go Social: Take pride in your work and share your content on your business social networks. The more you share, the more exposure, and that’s what this is all about. Share it everywhere!
· Think about investing in YouTube ads
If you’re looking to target a specific age group, gender, interest, or location, YouTube
Advertising can help you do it all.
It’s not imperative that you use YouTube ads, but it could very well be a suitable offering for your channel. Just remember that with the right combination of content and engagement, much of your growth will be organic. YouTube ads can just be the icing on the cake.
· Analyze, optimize, repeat
Even the best can do better. Once you have a foothold on your channel, it’s time to get a bird’s-eye view of how it’s performing. YouTube Analytics will help you along the way and will guide you in the direction of how you may want to optimize your videos for the future. Analytics will allow you to get insight on the people who are watching your videos, which allows you to hone into your target demographic even further. It’ll also give you a better idea as to why one video may have performed better than another. It’s a powerful tool for your budding channel.
Conclusion
These ingredients to a successful YouTube channel are nothing unless you implement at least some of them. No one ever said becoming YouTube famous was easy, but by following some of the commonalities that many successful channels share, you’ll have a much greater chance of succeeding, too.
Chapter 4
How to monetize your YouTube Channel
How does YouTube monetization work?
With over a billion users, YouTube is the largest video hosting website in the world. In
fact…
· People watch hundreds of millions of hours every single day on YouTube.
· Around 300 hours of video are uploaded every single minute.
· There are over a million companies advertising on YouTube.
· Partner revenue is up 50% year-over-year.
So there’s lots of opportunity to make money on YouTube.
How Does YouTube Monetization Work?
YouTube monetization is fairly straightforward. Companies create advertisements that get placed at the beginning of your videos. These are called pre-roll ads. Each time a viewer watches an ad all the way through, you get paid.
To monetize your videos, you need to follow a few basic steps:
1. Verify your YouTube account.
Until you do so, you won’t be able to take advantage of YouTube live, hangouts on air, or
upload videos longer than 15 minutes. It’s very easy to do, and doesn’t take very long.
2. Join the YouTube Partner Program
Once you’re in the YouTube Partner Program you’ll be eligible for pre-roll ads. There are a few more criteria for this program, but nothing too difficult.
Mainly, YouTube wants to ensure that you are uploading only original content, content that is advertiser-friendly, and so on. Beyond advertising, benefits include advanced product features, strategic and technical support, as well as access to advanced programs, such as YouTube Space and development programs.
For more information on what it takes to become a YouTube Partner, visit YouTube’s
Working Together page.
A Few More Ways to Monetize Your Videos
Becoming a YouTube Partner is the most basic way to earn money as a YouTuber. But pre- roll ads aren’t the only way to make money from YouTube. Here are a few other ways to monetize your YouTube channel:
· Sign up your own sponsors.
If you’re really passionate about what you do, you’ll be able to build a YouTube following. And the more people you get on board your channel, the easier it will be to get your own sponsors.
There are plenty of successful YouTubers who take time in their videos to promote other products and services – and each time they do, they earn money.
· Promote your own products and services.
This is where the real money is at, because you don’t have to split revenue with anyone else. When you create and sell your own products, you keep the vast majority of the revenue.vWhen you use videos this way, your videos are simply a form of free advertising.
· Build an affiliate relationship.
Affiliate marketers are like advertisers. But instead of earning a flat fee for advertising, affiliates earn a commission for each sale. This can be much more profitable, especially since there are so many high-paying products out there.
To create affiliate relationships, you can either sign up with a major affiliate network, such as Clickbank or Rakuten Linkshare, or you can work out an individual relationship with a business.
· Create a separate paid video stream.
Locking some premium videos behind a paywall can be another way to earn more money than you’d get from advertising alone. YouTube has experimented with this feature in the past, with mixed results.
Vimeo offers this type of program. And other vendors, such as Amazon and PayLoadz, allow you to upload and sell downloadable video content.
· Create a Patreon account.
Patreon is a service that allows your fans to become your patrons. Each time you release a new piece of content, your followers donate money to your cause.
As you can see, advertising is only one way to make money online. You can sell your own products, become an affiliate, or turn your fans into patrons. However you choose to make money, make sure you put lots of effort into marketing – the more you self-promote, the more money you’ll be making.
How to Monetize YouTube Videos With AdSense?
One of the easiest ways to monetize YouTube videos is to enable the monetization option for your YouTube account and link your channel with your Google AdSense Account.
Google AdSense is a Google program that helps publishers make money from their content. As a YouTube creator, you can join the publisher program to start making money from your videos.
YouTube Monetization with AdSense
Monetizing your YouTube videos with Google AdSense is one of the most common and easy ways to make money from your YouTube videos.
Once you have associated your YouTube channel with an AdSense account, you will have the option to submit your videos for monetization.
Your video will be approved for monetization if it passes YouTube monetization requirements. General criteria of meeting such requirements include provisions that your videos to be advertiser-friendly and that you own the rights to the content to use it commercially.
In this chapter, we will walk you through steps that you need to complete to monetize YouTube videos and start making money from your videos.
YouTube Monetization Update: YouTube has introduced some changes to its Partner program limiting only channel over 10k views to enable ads on their videos. For new YouTube channels, you will need to fulfill the minimum threshold of 10,000 lifetime views to apply for the YouTube partner program and enable monetization.
Summary of Steps – YouTube with AdSense
Here’s the summary of steps to associate YouTube account with AdSense for monetization if you know your way around both YouTube and AdSense.
1. Go to your YouTube dashboard by clicking on your YouTube account icon and Creator Studio.
2. From your Creator Studio dashboard, go to the Monetisation page under Channel Menu on your left sidebar (Channel > Monetisation)
3. Under the “Guidelines and Information” section, you will see information about FAQ – “How will I be paid?”.
4. Click on the AdSense Association page and follow the next step that directs you to AdSense and YouTube association page.
5. Sign in with the Google Account that has AdSense enabled and the one that you want to associate with your channel.
6. Once you have logged in, click to accept the association on the page.
7. You will now be redirected to your YouTube account and soon receive message and notifications to enable monetizations for your videos.
Follow the detailed guide below with all the steps that are involved in the YouTube monetization process with AdSense.
Link YouTube Account to Google AdSense
Follow the steps below to enable monetization on your YouTube account and link your YouTube account with Google Adsense.
Step 1: First, you will need to go to your YouTube Creator Studio dashboard. When you are on YouTube, click on your icon on the top left, and click on the Creator Studio button that takes you to your creator studio dashboard.
Step 2: When in Creator Studio, navigate to Channel > Monetization and here you should see an option to enable Monetization. Click on the Enable button and you will be guided to complete a monetization agreement.
Additional note: Your channel needs to be verified to complete this step. Getting verified status for your channel involves associating your phone number with your account.
You should be able to see your channel status as Partner Verified before you proceed with other steps.
Step 3: Once you enable the monetization for your account and complete the YouTube
monetization agreement, there’s one more step left to do.
You now have the option to monetize your videos, but you will need to link your YouTube account to an Adsense account.
Step 4: At this point, check to see that your account is enabled for Monetization under the Account Status.
Although there’s no link or button to configure the AdSense account on this screen, there
are few ways you can go ahead from here.
You should immediately receive an email outlining the steps that you need to take forward to be paid by YouTube.
Step 5: The email as you can see in the screenshot urges you to link to an AdSense account and provides you with a link that you can click and start the process.
Alternatively, you should get a notification bar on top of your dashboard urging you to link your channel to an AdSense account.
“Almost there! Don’t forget to link your channel to an AdSense account to earn money and get paid for your monetized videos.”
Step 5: The email as you can see in the screenshot urges you to link to an AdSense account and provides you with a link that you can click and start the process.
Alternatively, you should get a notification bar on top of your dashboard urging you to link your channel to an AdSense account.
“Almost there! Don’t forget to link your channel to an AdSense account to earn money and get paid for your monetized videos.”
Step 6: Proceed by clicking on the link by using any of the methods above and you should
see this “Welcome to AdSense” screen.
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If you already have an AdSense account, you can simply sign in with the Google account that you have used to sign up for Adsense. If you are signed into AdSense already, you should see a screen that asks you if you want to sign in using the same address.
One important thing to note here is that you don’t need an AdSense account associated with the email account of your current YouTube account. You can link to your any other independent AdSense account.
Creating an AdSense account is another big topic but if you need to signup for an account – Sign in with your Google account first, and you will be guided to apply for an Adsense account.
You should obviously have used a Google account to setup a YouTube account but if you want your AdSense account to be on a different account you can click on “Create Account” and it’s easy to follow along.
Step 7: Assuming you have an AdSense account already, click on sign in and it will now take you to Step 2 in the process where it will simply list your YouTube channel under my website.
(The YouTube URL shown here is ID-based URL of your YouTube Channel. Learn how to claim custom YouTube URL here. )
Accept the Association with your Adsense account and it will redirect you back to YouTube Confirming all the details.
That’s all you need to do to link your YouTube account to AdSense account! You should
now see options for AdSense settings and to review and change your AdSense association.
There’re few more steps that you need to do to start making money from your videos.
Enabling Monetization for YouTube Videos
Step 8: Like mentioned in the email that you receive after enabling monetization, you will need to go to your Video Manager and enable monetization on all of your videos published already on your channel.
You should also receive an email saying that your AdSense account association with YouTube has been approved and that you’re ready to start making money from your videos.
Click on monetize my videos to enable monetization on videos that you have already published on your YouTube Channel.
If you have many videos uploaded on your YouTube channel, you can monetize all your videos at once by navigating to Channel > Monetization. You will see your videos left to monetize on this page. Click on “Monetize Videos” (see screenshot).
Step 9: For videos that you upload after associating with an AdSense account, you will see an option to enable monetization for each of them directly in your upload manager.
When you upload your videos, go to your Monetization tab and flip the switch button for Monetize with Ads. You will also be asked to agree with the terms that you own the rights for the video and its content.
Ad Formats to Monetize YouTube Videos
As you can see above, you can choose from all the available Ad formats that will decide the type of Ads that will appear in your YouTube videos.
Here’s the list of all available Ad formats for YouTube videos that can help you decide to choose from. Select all Ad formats so that YouTube can choose and decide itself to display the most relevant Ads to your viewers.
§ Display Ads – Ad sizes of 300×250 or 300×60 appearing on the right side of the videos on desktop devices.
§Over lay Ads– Ad sizes of 468×60 or 728×90 appearing on the lower end of the videos on desktop devices.
§ Skippable Video Ads – Full sized video ads that play before your video in the player and can be skipped after 5 seconds. The Ad play on several devices and can be inserted before, during, or after the main video.
§ Sponsored Cards – Displays cards with related products featured in your video, on desktop and mobile devices.
You don’t see in the screenshot above under Ad formats options but depending on your account, you might also see options for Bumper Ads (6 seconds long, Non-skippable video ads) and Non-skippable video ads up to 30 seconds long, available to monetize Youtube videos that you upload.
Chapter 5
Tips to Promote Merchandise on Your YouTube Channel
How YouTubers Can Make Good Merchandise For Their Channel?
You probably already know that selling cool branded merchandise is one of the most popular ways to make money with your YouTube channel, right? It’s not only a great way to bring in some revenue, but it’s also a great way to increase brand recognition and grow your overall reach.
When people see their friends wearing fun t-shirts with your logo on them, they’re going to wonder what your brand is all about, and you’re going to get more recognition. Of course, to make this strategy work, you have to create products that really stands out, so let’s talk about a few tips on how to make merchandise for your YouTube channel that will rock.
Making Merchandise for Your YouTube Channel
First of all, you don’t have to be super crafty or a professional graphic designer to make YouTube merch. If you have a cool logo and brand colors, you really have the essential components to get started, and you don’t even have to worry about physical inventory or shipping and handling, either.
Making your merchandise can actually be as simple as a few swipes and clicks. Just find a print on demand (PoD) site that you like, such as Spreadshirt or District Lines, upload your designs, experiment with additional design options (wording, photo art, etc.), and choose your merchandise. Then you can set up your online store, embed it in your website, and/or link to it from YouTube. It’s really that simple.
Get Your YouTube Channel’s Viewers Involved
Of course, you’ll want to make merchandise for your YouTube channel that viewers will want to buy, but that’s actually pretty simple, too. Just ask them. In your videos, blog posts, and social media posts, ask your viewers for feedback about the kinds of merchandise they’d like to see from you. Poll them on which designs they like best. You could even run a design contest with your viewers, too.
Make Merchandise That Interest People
As you decide which items to sell and which designs to use, keep in mind that you want to create merchandise that your viewers will really want to wear and use. Create really attractive designs, and use engaging wording that is relatable, funny and/or insightful, and make sure that it’s in line with your brand voice and the persona that you present on YouTube.
Use Your YouTube Channel’s Brand Colors
Unless it really goes with your channel’s branding, you don’t just have to go with a simple black print of your design on a white t-shirt or a white mug. Why? Because it can seem too generic and doesn’t really have that “stand out” factor.
As you make merchandise for your YouTube channel, it’s important to remember that you want to increase your brand recognition. Using your channel’s brand colors can do that while making your merchandise more attractive and fun.
Go for High Quality When Creating Clothing
We cannot emphasize this enough. When choosing the materials for your YouTube
channel’s merch, you’ll be given some options. Do not go with the cheapest t-shirts that you
can find. They’ll be thin, weirdly sized, and they won’t make a good impression on your viewers. You want them to fall in love with the way your merchandise fits so that they want to buy more just because they love wearing it.
Order Samples Before Promoting the Final Product
If you’re not sure about a t-shirt, mug, or other piece of merch, just order one for yourself before you start promoting it on your YouTube channel and on social media. This is an inexpensive way to make sure that you’ve made the right choice for your products, and it’s a great way to start promoting them, too.
When you get the products in, if you love them, you can start wearing or using them in your YouTube videos. If not, you can make the changes you need to make to ensure that you’ve chosen the right products to promote.
Most Print-on-Demand sites don’t have minimum orders, so you can get just one item to make sure you’re on the right track and to test out the customer experience on the site you’ve chosen, too. After all, you don’t want to go with a site that’s difficult to work with or your viewers won’t buy your merchandise, no matter how cool it is.
Aim for Marketing Success with Your YouTube Merch
In the beginning stages, you want to think of your branded merchandise as more of a marketing effort than a revenue builder. This is an opportunity to get your merch in more people’s hands, so set a really reasonable price that your viewers won’t mind paying when you make your YouTube merch. It’s important to remember that in order to get people to buy something, you must give them great pricing and value.
How Vloggers Can Promote and Sell YouTube Channel Merchandise?
So you’ve decided to make and sell merchandise for your YouTube channel. You have some really cool designs that feature your channel’s name, your logo, and/or a phrase you use a lot. You’ve chosen quality products that your community of viewers want to buy and will love using. Now how do you get the word out about your merch as a YouTuber?
Check out these tips for promoting your YouTube channel merch and see how much more you can sell.
· Show Viewers Merchandise in Your YouTube Videos
First of all, the easiest way to let people know that you have cool merch is to display it in your YouTube videos. Order one of each of your items, and then wear or use them during your videos.
Wear that cool hoodie, hat, or t-shirt that you’re selling online, or put them up in the background. Place a branded coffee mug or water bottle next to you on your desk or table when you’re filming. Hang a branded poster behind you. There’s so many things you can do!
Then, at the end of your video when you get to your call to action, be sure to mention the YouTube channel merch you have made available for sale that is shown on screen. For example, you could say something like, “And if you like this shirt I’m wearing, check out the link in the description to get your own!” Or you could add an annotation link in the video itself that takes your viewers to your online store.
· Link to Merch Store in Your Descriptions and About Page
Whether or not you mention the YouTube channel merch you wear or use in your video, be sure to include a link to your online store in your video description. If you want to make
sure that your viewers see it (and, of course, you do), you’ll want to put it in the first three lines of the description so that it appears before the “Show More” link.
In addition to putting a link in your video descriptions, you should also include a link to your online store in the “about” sections and pages of all of your online presences. Link to your store on your channel’s about page, Facebook page, Twitter bio, and more. Wherever you can, make sure that people get a direct link to your online store so that buying your YouTube channel’s merch is easy.
· Showcase Products in Your Social Media Posts
Speaking of social media, you also want to post pictures and links to your products on all of your social media pages. Take photos wearing your new hat, t-shirt, or hoodie, and post it on social media with a link to where fans can buy theirs. Feature new products that have just become available. Repost and share pictures of your fans when they post photos of themselves wearing or using your YouTube channel’s merch.
The more you do this, the more recognition you’ll create. You can even create your own branded hashtag for people to use when they wear and use your merch and clothing. Then you can go through the pictures and posts that have that hashtag to find great images and links to repost to your own account.
· Use YouTube Cards to Promote Your Channel’s Merch
YouTube cards are basically a way to take annotations to the next level. A card could be a link to a specific URL, a customized image, or a call to action.
When a card is added to a video, a teaser will appear in the video, and then after the teaser disappears, the viewer can access the card just by hitting the “i” button in the top right corner of the video for more information. Then they can scroll through the cards you’ve added to the video and click on them to go to your online store, check out a specific product page, etc.
Conclusion:
There you go – six things to consider when you make merchandise for your YouTube channel so that you can effectively get your channel’s brand out there and make some money while you do it. Have fun with your designs. Don’t be afraid to get creative. And don’t forget to promote your cool new merch in your YouTube videos and on social media! Keep these tips in mind to get more people to see your store and buy your YouTube channel merch.
Chapter 6
How can Beauty Vloggers grow their YouTube Channel?
Do you have tons of beauty tips and tutorials to share with the world? The beauty vlogging community on YouTube is a warm, accepting, and great place to experiment with new looks and styles, share your secrets, and learn from other beauty gurus like you.
Your expertise on all things makeup can take you a long way in the beauty vlogging community, but it never hurts to have a few really great tools and resources to make things easier for your YouTube journey. Check out these helpful tools and tips that can benefit you as a YouTube beauty vlogger.
And, with the help of these simple and effective tips, you should be able to grow your audience and establish your YouTube channel as a place where your fans and other YouTubers can get great content, ask questions, and give their own feedback on tips and techniques that have worked for them.
· Start a Beauty Blog
First of all, you can get more viewers for your YouTube channel by creating and maintaining a companion blog for it. By sprinkling relevant keywords and phrases naturally throughout your content, your blog will start showing up on Google searches for those keywords. If you post quality entries with great tips and other fun and informative content, people searching for beauty tips will find your blog and start reading your content.
Then you can help your YouTube channel out with your blog by embedding your YouTube videos in your posts, and your new readers will soon become new viewers and subscribers.
· Mention/Tag Brands Used in Your Beauty Vlogs
Mentioning and tagging brands that you use in your YouTube videos is a great way to get more exposure, too. When you use branded hashtags, those brands’ followers will see your posts when they search through those tags. When you tag and mention the brands using their usernames on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram they’ll have a higher likelihood of seeing your content, too. Then they’ll be more likely to retweet or repost your content and give you a shout-out. Those brands have many followers, and a simple retweet or repost can give a boost to your YouTube channel.
In fact, if you do a great job of creating quality content and you showcase a brand’s products well, they may even approach you and offer to sponsor one or more videos on your YouTube channel.
· YouTube Collaborations are Effective
Look around online for YouTube beauty gurus who vlog about related topics to yours, and you’ll find a lot of opportunities for collaborations. From collab videos to guest appearances and guest vlogs, YouTubers help each other out all the time by collaborating and sharing their fan bases, and you can, too.
Reach out to beauty vloggers like you, and offer to exchange shout-outs, mentions, and YouTube links, or ask if they would be interested in cross-promotions on social media. The more you collaborate and build each other up, the more you can grow your YouTube channel.
· Always Disclose Sponsors and Sponsored Content
Next, if you’ve landed a YouTube sponsorship, don’t hide it. If you’re upfront about your sponsorships, your audience will appreciate your honesty and will know that they can trust what you have to say. You can do this by simply stating something like, “Today, thanks to [Cosmetics Brand]’s generous sponsorship of this episode, I’ll be using their new mascara for this eyelash curling tutorial…” This way you’ve shown the brand in a positive light, and you’re not hiding anything from your audience.
· Pinterest and Instagram Marketing
Beauty vlogging is very visual. When you film a make-up tutorial, you’re showing your viewers how to achieve an end result, and you should be able to showcase that result in images. That’s why Pinterest and Instagram are such great social tools for beauty vloggers on YouTube.
On Pinterest, you can use your pin boards to link to your YouTube videos and playlists, images of other beauty gurus’ work, and much more. If you’re pinning one of your videos, make sure that you set the thumbnail to be a still of the finished look that shows what your audience can expect to achieve.
On Instagram, you can link to your YouTube channel or a playlist on your channel in your profile. Then post the finished results of different tutorials and tips on a daily basis. Be sure to mention in your captions that viewers can click on the link in your profile to see how it’s done.
· Interact and Engage With Your Viewers
Now, remember that your audience is really a community of people interested in makeup, hair, and skincare. They all have different experiences with different products and techniques, and some of them are beauty gurus like you, too. Get involved and engaged with your audience, and you’ll see them posting, tweeting, and sharing your YouTube beauty videos more and more often.
For really effective engagement, read the comments on your videos and respond to them. Get involved in the conversation there and on social media. If one of your YouTube videos has been up for a few hours and hasn’t gotten any comments, don’t be afraid to post a comment of your own asking your viewers a question about the video.
And, of course, you can also engage your viewers in your videos. Give shout-outs and mentions for great comments and feedback. Ask them to tell you their thoughts in the comments. Get the conversation going in your video, and then keep it going in the comments and on social media.
· Network With Other YouTube Beauty Gurus
Finally, reach out to other beauty gurus on YouTube for more than just collaborations. Network and build relationships with them. Talk about them positively on your social media platforms. Respond to and retweet their tweets. Get to know them and help build a sustainable community around beauty vlogging, and you’ll be setting your YouTube channel up for long-term success.
· Get Royalty Free Music with YouTube’s Audio Library
First of all, do you ever find yourself wishing that you had some royalty free music to use in your YouTube videos? You’d love to use some of your favorite tunes, but you know that there are copyright issues there that you don’t want to mess around with. Instead of limiting your beauty vlogs to no music, though, you can use YouTube’s audio library to download free music for your videos.
You can find the kind of musical beats you’re looking for with searches by genre, mood, instrument, or duration. Be sure to read the attribution requirements on the music you pick, though. Some songs are licensed differently and will require you to include artist attribution with your beauty vlogs. Other than that, have fun finding the best songs and sound effects for your YouTube videos without spending any money.
· Check Your YouTube Stats with Social Blade
Social Blade is a well-established YouTube statistics tracking site that lets you monitor your channel’s growth. On a daily basis, you can track subscriber and view counts to see gains and losses, but that’s not all. You can also compare your metrics with up to three other channels at the same time so that you can look at your progress in terms of other channels in a relevant niche.
· Stay Organized as a Beauty Vlogger with Trello
Whether you’re scheduling collaboration, sponsor meeting, social media chat for viewers, or anything else in regards to your YouTube channel, Trello is an incredibly cool visual organization tool that will help make it easy to stay on track!
It’s not only a website, but you can also download the Trello mobile app so you can stay organized, update checklists, and make notes for your YouTube channel on your phone or tablet, too. Trello makes it easy to create schedules, agendas, and task lists, so you can streamline everything you need to do for your YouTube channel on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
· Design Things for Your YouTube Channel with Canva
Interested in designing custom thumbnail images for your YouTube beauty vlogs? Looking to create cool graphics for your social media posts? Want to make great images for your content? Check out Canva.
This graphic design site makes it easy to create professional looking graphics in a number of different formats. Plus, the site offers a huge database of stock images. It’s never been easier to create custom thumbnail images and/or design graphics for your YouTube channel. Try it out today and see how much more you can add to your beauty vlogs and social media presence.
Chapter 7
Tips to create a Gaming Channel on YouTube
If you’re a big fan of gaming content, then you probably already know that there are a lot of YouTube gaming channels out there. Maybe you’ve followed them to beat tricky stages or levels. Maybe you’ve watched reviews to see if you should check out a new game that you’ve been wondering about. Maybe you’ve watched them just for fun.
Whatever your reason for tuning in, you know that you’re not the only person online who
wants to make or watch gaming videos on YouTube.
You know that there’s an audience for the kinds of videos you want to create, and you know that you have a lot to contribute as a YouTube gamer. That’s awesome! As you make a YouTube gaming channel and begin your journey, keep these five things in mind:
· Create a Unique Experience for Your Gaming Videos
First of all, you don’t just have to create a gaming channel with a bunch of videos of you playing through games without commentary or any input. These might be useful to a lot of viewers, but they don’t really give your viewers any particular reason to choose one of your videos over any other play-through video.
Take some time to add your own personal spin to your videos. Let your personality shine through to give your content a unique vibe. Provide viewers with a reason to choose your content, and make them look forward to seeing new gaming videos from you.
· See It as a Marathon and Not a Sprint
Next, as you make a YouTube gaming channel, remember that you’re probably not going to get a huge following overnight. You’re not going to put up just a couple of gaming videos and miraculously get millions of viewers. Expecting that is like taking off to run a marathon
thinking that you’re running a sprint race. In other words, you’re going to burn out fast, and you won’t hit your goal.
Your channel will grow, slowly but surely, and you’ll see new viewers and subscribers engaging with you on YouTube and across social media. It might not happen all at once, but if you stick with it and let your passion for gaming push you through the hard times, you’ll get there.
· Viewers Are Essential to a Gaming Channel’s Growth
However, you can’t really get there if you ignore your viewers. They’re the people who tune in, like your videos, and subscribe to your gaming channel. They’re the ones who’ll share your videos on Facebook and Twitter, and they’re the ones who’ll help you really grow your channel – if you engage with them.
The more you build a relationship with your audience, the more they’ll support you and the
faster your gaming channel will grow.
This means responding to their comments, taking video requests, giving them shout-outs, and inviting every opportunity to engage with them, from asking questions on Facebook (and responding to answers) to making Q&A videos on YouTube that specifically answer the questions your viewers have asked in the comments.
· You Need to Build a Presence Outside of YouTube
In addition to your YouTube presence, when you make a YouTube gaming channel, you need to have presences across social media. Create pages and accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram, and use these platforms to give your audience content that they can’t get from your videos. Take them behind the scenes. Show them some bloopers. Share gaming tips and content. Host a live streaming Q&A. There’s a lot you can do!
Have fun engaging with your audience and providing them with more content on social media, and your channel’s brand will see a lot more recognition. Make sure that you post different content to each of your social media pages, though. You want to give your
followers exclusive content, posts, and videos on each platform so that they have a reason to consistently follow you on all of your online presences.
· Maintain an Uploading Schedule for Gaming Videos
Finally, when you make a YouTube gaming channel, you have to be consistent with your videos. Post your uploading schedule on your channel’s home page, on your social media profiles, and in your video descriptions.
That way, your viewers will know when they can expect more content from you and when they should click over to YouTube for more videos. This helps create more momentum for your channel because your return viewership will increase as people know when to come back for more content.
Of course, just posting your uploading schedule isn’t enough. You also have to stick to that schedule. Choose a frequency that you can live with. If you can’t upload a gaming video every day or every other day, that’s okay. Uploading one video per week consistently is better than uploading randomly and constantly falling behind on your promised schedule.
Conclusion:
These are five important things to keep in mind when you make a YouTube gaming channel. If you understand them and take them into consideration throughout the process, you’ll be able to create and grow a channel with successful results. Have fun gaming!
Chapter 8
How to Guest Vlog on YouTube and Get More Channel Views
One way to grow your YouTube channel’s audience is to exchange guest vlogs with other vloggers in your niche. Although it’s a marketing strategy that bloggers have been successfully implementing to expand their presence for a while now, can YouTube vloggers also do the same?
Yes, definitely! We’re going to look at exactly why that is, and how you can use guest
vlogging to grow your YouTube channel.
What Is Guest Vlogging on YouTube?
Guest vlogging is pretty much just like guest blogging. The basic idea is that you provide content for another YouTube channel, possibly in exchange for a guest vlog from your partner for your own channel. There are many ways to achieve this – you can collaborate on a single video idea together, make separate videos for each other to upload to your own channels, and more!
Growing Your YouTube Channel with Guest Vlogs
Much like YouTube collaborations, guest vlogging can potentially increase your channel’s reach if done correctly. The most obvious way that this occurs is by sharing each other’s audience. Ideally, you’ll find a partner whose audience is similar to your own.
Their viewers will follow the guest vlog back to your channel, earning you more viewers in
the long run. In addition, the same process occurs when you host your partner’s guest vlog
– their viewers will visit to your channel to watch one of their favorite creators, and some will likely stick around to see what else you can offer them.
How Do You Guest Vlog on YouTube?
After determining what you want to get out of guest vlogging (solidifying your position as a niche authority? Growing your own audience? Getting more exposure for your website or product?), you can then begin finding the right collaborator, and reach out to them about guest vlogging.
The most straightforward method for guest vlogging is to create your own video, just as if you were creating it for your channel, and send the video to another YouTube vlogger to be published on their channel. Your collaborating partner will also do the same. We’ll cover a few important key points for success when making a guest vlog, shortly below.
· Collaborating with the Right Partner
Your guest vlogging partner’s viewership should be similar to your own. Perhaps you don’t want to target your own niche, but you can find another YouTube vlogger who targets a related sub-niche. Additionally, it’s a good idea to work with a partner that has a style that goes well with your own.
Someone who creates relevant content with a similar format can be a great fit. Why? Well, because they’ll also be creating a video for your audience, and having an audience with similar interests will really help bring results!
· Understand Each Other’s Audience on YouTube
If your audiences are similar, but different, then you’ll need to do some basic research to learn who you’ll be speaking to on YouTube. A great way to do this is to watch their previous videos, putting yourself in the shoes of their audience. Take a look at their most popular YouTube videos and content that has the most interaction.
You don’t want to copy their format, but this should give you a good idea of what their audience is interested in. It will help you understand what to focus on in your video to best engage their viewers.
· Create Content That is Relevant to Viewers
On that note, it’s important that your content is relevant to their viewers, specifically. Find a way to relate your channel to their interests, and decide on how it will connect to the typical focus of the host channel. Be sure you aren’t repeating a topic of conversation that your host channel has already covered before.
· Add Branding to Your Guest Vlog
It’s also important that your content makes it easy for new viewers to find your YouTube channel. In other words, be sure to add branding to your guest vlogs. Put your channel name and social media handle(s) in your video intro or as in-video graphic(s). End the guest vlog by mentioning where viewers can best keep up with your content and updates (keep it short and avoid too much self promotion).
A great strategy is to include a link in the video description that directs the host channel’s viewers to a custom playlist containing videos that you have grouped together specifically based on their interests. It’s much more effective than just linking to your YouTube channel’s home page.
· Make the Guest Vlog Engaging For YouTube Viewers
Of course, all videos that you create for YouTube should be engaging, and the guest vlog is no different. Not only do you want an engaged audience, so does your host. Your clicks and likes are theirs as well, in a sense. If you create engaging content that encourages conversation and interaction, there’s a good chance you’ll have more guest vlogging opportunities in the future.
· Just Be Yourself
Even though you’re guest vlogging on someone else’s channel, be sure to showcase your unique personality. It can sometimes be tempting to try out a new persona for a new channel, but this will probably only disappoint, for two reasons. The first is that viewers who enjoy your guest vlog will want to see more of the same on your own channel. The
second is that the YouTube creator hosting you probably agreed to do so based on your channel; if you change your style now, they may feel blindsided.
However, it should be noted that, for the most part, you should focus first on targeting the host’s audience, and second on maintaining your own style. If your host always offers quick, bite-sized list videos, their viewers probably won’t want a 20-minute long unboxing video. Check out their usual format, and then insert your own style and personality into an appropriate vlog type. Be creative!
· Avoid a Sole Focus on Self-Promotion
As mentioned earlier, don’t just spend the video talking about your own channel and why people should subscribe to you on YouTube. Instead, focus on creating a high quality video that viewers will enjoy, and that will encourage them to visit your channel naturally to see more great content. The best way to do this is to film the vlog as if you were creating it for your own YouTube channel.
· Don’t Let Guest Vlogs Disrupt Your Schedule
Your YouTube viewers have come to expect and look forward to videos on your channel. When you’re hosting content from your guest vlogging partner, don’t sacrifice an upload of your own unless your uploading schedule is normally flexible.
Keep your own schedule consistent to keep your YouTube channel growing, but add in the guest vlog as additional content on your channel. This will allow your regular viewers to continue getting the content they want, but also provide them with “something extra”.
It also ensures that any new visitors from the guest vlogger’s channel will see brand new
material when they visit your YouTube channel.
· Build Buzz with Your Viewers Beforehand
Finally, it’s important for both partners to let their audiences know about the guest vlog
content beforehand, and to encourage them to support and share the guest vlogs they
watch. You can explain why you’ve decided to guest vlog and what you enjoy most about your partner’s channel and content, and get excitement built up before the vlog is uploaded.
It’s also a great strategy to help benefit your partner and their host channel, as it brings more viewers to their content. Your partner should be excited to do the same when guest vlogging on your YouTube channel.
Conclusion
As you can see, guest vlogging can be a really cool way to grow your YouTube channel. Just remember, the key to guest vlogging on YouTube successfully is for both partners to create great vlogs for each other, while hosting and promoting the guest vlogs published on your channels to your respective audiences. If done right, it can help both collaborating vloggers grow their YouTube channels.
Chapter 9
Advanced Tactics for Promoting Your YouTube Channel and Increasing Subscribers
Here are 9 tactics that will give you the best chance to rise above the noise:
1. Create thumbnail images that draw viewers in
2. Give your videos irresistible titles
3. Use search keywords that show mostly video results from Google
4. Include calls to action
5. Make sure you’re allowing people to embed your videos
6. Cross promote your YouTube channel like a pro
7. Make playlists
8. Consistency pays off big time
9. Engage with viewers through contests, response videos, and collaborations
300 hours of YouTube video are uploaded every minute—if you want to get noticed, you have to get serious about promoting your channel. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not going to happen on its own. Let’s take a deeper dive into 9 best practices and how they can help you grow your numbers.
1. Create Great Custom Thumbnails
You have a split second of a viewer’s attention as they are deciding which video to watch. Other than your video’s title, your thumbnail is critical for enticing that click. Don’t miss this opportunity to design an image that reinforces what your video is all about. VICE’s use of thumbnail optimization led to a promotion on YouTube’s homepage, and one of their most popular videos to date:
Keep a few rules in mind for the size of your custom thumbnail because it will also be used as your preview when someone embeds your video on their site. Google recommends that your thumbnail:
· Have a resolution of 1280X720 (minimum width of 640 pixels).
· Be uploaded in image formats such as .JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG.
· Remain under the 2MB limit.
· Try to use a 16:9 aspect ratio.
You can upload a custom thumbnail as soon as you upload a video by simply choosing the custom thumbnail option. To add one to an already-existing video, go to your Video Manager, click Edit for the video you want to work with and then click custom thumbnail.
2. Give Your Video a Killer Title
You want something descriptive enough to make someone want to watch, but not so long that it’s cut off when displayed. You need to make it sound exciting, but not so over-the-top that it looks spammy. Try to include keywords for search and irresistibly clickable adjectives.
3. Reverse Engineer Google’s SERPs
There are several different YouTube optimization techniques to improve your search rankings, but the SEO tactic that will have the most lasting effect is all about keyword research. One way to think about video keyword research is by reverse-engineering Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
The idea here is to focus on keyword searches in google that will almost always serve you video results. For example, if someone googles for “cool dance moves” it makes sense that google would serve a results page full of videos because nobody really wants to read an article about cool dance moves. Here’s a screenshot of that search:
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If you find a lot of video results instead of just text listings on page one, that’s a great keyword to work with. You may want to try related queries such as “awesome dance
moves” or “cool dance skills” to see where you may be getting results that are more related
to the video you are producing, and potentially less competitive to rank for.
4. Use Calls to Action to Engage Viewers
Having a viewer watch your video and then leave means you may not have given them a chance to do anything else to engage with your channel. According to YouTube, there are four main types of user action: subscribe to the channel, watch more videos, like or share a video, and leave a comment. YouTube gives several options for including CTAs within a video to get people to take one of these actions:
1. Direct Host-Mentions. This is actually a style of video where you talk to the camera and tell people what to do. In this video example at the 4:30 minute mark, you can see that the author directly tells you to “let us know in the comments down below.”
2. End-cards. An end-card works similarly to a card except that they appear at the end of a video and take up the whole screen. For example, in the screenshot below you can see College Humor’s end-card featuring large subscribe button. This button is clickable so it makes it easy to take that next step.
3. Video Descriptions. Video descriptions are important. Put a link to your website or your social accounts in your description and actually ask people to click! Below is an example of a very thorough description section from ThinkTank:
5. Allow (and Encourage) People to Embed Your Videos
When uploading videos to your channel, you will have the option to either allow or not allow embedding. The embed feature allows people to take your video and then publish it on their website, blog, channel, etc., which will help you gain even more exposure. Just make sure you specify that you must get credit each time your video is re-published. You can turn on the embed feature by visiting the Video Manager, clicking Edit under the video you want to edit, then going to Advanced Settings and making sure the embed option is checked. Below is a screenshot of what you’ll see:
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All someone needs to do in order to embed your video is copy and paste the link that will show up when she clicks share, so the more shares you get the better.
6. Cross-Promote Your YouTube Channel Everywhere
This may not seem like an advanced tactic, but you’d be surprised how many people forget the power of their other owned properties for advertising their YouTube channel. Be consistent about how you incorporate videos into your email newsletter, blog, email signature, and other social media accounts. Find ways to make your videos relevant to all your other content and leverage those eyeballs.
Quick Case Study
Life Net Inc. found in their study that the highest YouTube views occurred during the active advertising of the video, but not surprisingly, this ongoing optimization was required to keep the momentum going. Simply optimizing a page and then moving on to the next video isn’t enough. You have to continue to promote, perform keyword research and make changes, and moderate and respond to comments in order to keep your numbers up. Below is a screenshot from the case study that shows how your numbers can change the minute you stop optimizing
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7. Behold the Power of Playlists
There are lots of reasons to group your videos into playlists. Playlists make your videos easier for people to find, they can help up your search rankings, and most importantly, they make the next video in the list autoplay after a previous video finishes. That’s one less click a user has to make to watch more of your content. You can experiment with including some videos in the playlist that aren’t yours but are very popular, hoping to snag viewers through search who will stick around to watch your stuff. Playlists also give you more opportunities to associate your videos with keywords. The playlist description can associate new keywords with your videos and open up new search opportunities.
8. Create a Weekly Video Series
This is the perfect reason to subscribe to a YouTube channel. If you know what to expect, such as a video on a certain topic or with a certain person every Friday, you will be more likely to subscribe. Probably one of the best examples of this is Moz’s Whiteboard Friday videos. They keep internet marketers coming back for more, and on their page you can see that they are all located in one place on their channel page because they are so regular:
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As you can see, Moz has a very organized channel thanks to the different categories they’ve
created.
9. Engage With Your People
Engagement goes both ways: if you want people to engage with you, you’ve got to engage with them. This can mean responding to comments, subscribing to other users’ channels, creating response videos, running contests for viewers, collaborating with other brands, and anything else you can dream up. YouTube is in many ways a social media community, and as with any social media, your engagement needs to be real-time, relevant, and genuine. Engaging directly with viewers through contests and responses will keep people coming back and create loyal viewers. Engaging and collaborating with other brands will expose your videos to a whole new audience. The more you understand YouTube to be a two-way engagement portal, the more successful you’re going to be in the long term. Don’t talk at people, talk with people.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these tips will give your video promotion a kickstart or the boost you need to keep your subscriber numbers climbing.
Chapter 10
Best Tips on Profitable YouTube Advertising & Promotion
Video should become a critical piece of the marketing puzzle because of how much video content your audience is consuming.
But, with many other companies knowing this, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out amongst your competition. This is why advertising spend does need to be allocated to services like YouTube in order to gain visibility from your target audience.
Although similar to paid search spend, the world of YouTube advertising can seem a bit overwhelming and complicated to navigate at first. Below are six tips to help you spend your YouTube ad budget in a smart way to actually gain attention from the people that matter the most, your future customers.
1. Choose Your YouTube Ad Format Wisely
The first complicated fact about YouTube advertising is that there are many different ad formats available. From bumper ads to sponsored cards to display ads to skippable or non- skippable video ads (take note that non-skippable ads are being killed in 2018).
Where should you start? Well, you should first start by reading about each individual format on the YouTube help page here, and then considering what your main goal is.
For example, if you’re looking to raise brand awareness with an engaging video ad, then it would make more sense to run a TrueView in-stream or discovery ad. On the other hand, if you’re looking to be more targeted and gain leads to your website that are genuinely interested in your offerings, it might make sense to use sponsored cards.
Make sure to follow the specs outlined by Google to ensure the dimensions and quality match up. It can be worthwhile to invest in market research to understand the ad format that will help you reach your business goals.
2. Segment In-Stream and Discovery Ads into Different Campaigns
Similar to how you should be separating your Google AdWords campaigns into search vs. display network, you should be doing the same with your video ads. Why? In-stream ads and discovery ads (previously known as in-display ads) are very distinct from one another,
What’s the difference? In-stream ads play before, during, or after other videos. Discovery ads appear next to related YouTube videos, as part of YouTube search results, or alongside other content across the Display Network.
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Example of a YouTube discovery ad
Because of these differences you should have a different budget and strategy which is easier to control on the campaign level.
3. Take Advantage of YouTube Targeting Options
Just as you should when advertising on Facebook, Twitter, or Google, you need to pay close attention to the audience that is consuming your messages. Why waste money on unqualified and irrelevant eyes that are unlikely to be interested in your offerings?
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YouTube allows great flexibility to take control over who sees your ads. Starting with demographic targeting, you can then layer on affinity audiences (to target people interested in a certain topic), custom affinity audiences, and in-market audiences.
For example, if you’re selling golf lessons in a certain location it would make sense to advertise in that region to the demographic of your typical customers who are already interested in golf.
4. Set Up Video Remarketing
Remarketing is by far the most effective targeting method in my opinion, because you have the security of knowing this audience has already expressed interest in your company by visiting your website.
If you’re unfamiliar with remarketing, it’s a way to follow your website visitors with advertisements in other places (think social networks, websites via the display network, and YouTube of course). It might sound creepy, but it’s effective, and has likely even worked on you before. For example, the time that new pair of shoes kept showing up on your Facebook feed so you finally purchased them. Yup, that was remarketing!
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“To put it simply, it works,” says Anja Kicken from Veeroll. “People that have already visited your website are simply much more likely in whatever you have to offer than people who’ve never heard of you.”
The great thing about remarketing is it’s relatively easy to set up, and once configured there isn’t much you need to do aside from tracking the effectiveness.
5. Create Compelling, Human Content that Feels Native
With so much video content on the internet, and the option to skip over and x-out of most YouTube advertisements, it’s important to focus on producing high-quality video content. Think of quality as something that does not feel like your typical advertisement, as in it’s not an annoyance or disturbance.
Whether it be a compelling story that pulls at the heartstrings or a joke/prank that has your audience on the floor laughing. Including people and making a relatable experience that feels natural and native is what you should aim for.
6. Drive Action by Adding Interactive Elements to Your Ads
Did you know that you can link up your shopping cart with a TrueView video ad? You can also add calls-to-action, cards to showcase products, or even auto-end screens encouraging the viewer to download your app.
Conclusion:
Whether your business model is B2B or B2C, you have some goal in mind that has led you to advertise, so why not capitalize on these features to drive action? Having a great ad is one thing, but actually getting tangible results and new business from that ad is another, so explore these actionable features to reach your video ad goals faster.
Chapter 11
How to drive sales using YouTube Cards?
Adding a YouTube card to your videos creates a clickable call to action (CTA) that prompts viewers to respond.
In this chapter, you’ll discover how to create and use YouTube cards in your business videos.
Why YouTube Cards?
YouTube cards are the solution for driving actionable results from your video content. They let you add more visual components with underlying objectives to your YouTube videos instead of just annotations, making your videos more interactive.
The cards can appear at any point in your video, and can include images, outside links, and
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even content that’s downloaded when viewers click.
You can add five different types of YouTube cards to your videos:
1. Video or playlist: Promote your video content.
2. Channel: Promote another channel.
3. Donation: Feature a nonprofit or cause of your choice and encourage donations.
4. Poll: Encourage viewers to engage in a multiple-choice poll.
5. Link: Link to an approved website off of YouTube.
You can add up to five cards in one video. YouTube cards can be displayed on mobile devices and you can add them to TrueView ads.
Add YouTube Cards to Your Video
To create and add cards to your YouTube video, go to your YouTube Video Manager and
find the video you want to add a card to. Click on Edit below the video’s title.
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On the next screen, click the Cards tab in the top navigation bar.
Here you can create new YouTube cards to add to your video. Click Add Card and then click Create to the right of the card you want to create.
You’ll be asked to fill in the necessary information to create the card. For example, if you choose the Channel objective, enter the channel username or URL, a custom message, and teaser text.
Different types of YouTube cards will ask for different information but they'll all ask for brief teaser text.
Some cards have certain constraints. The Donation card, for example, requires the nonprofit to be an IRS-validated 501(c)3 public nonprofit. If the nonprofit isn’t in YouTube’s directory, there doesn’t seem to be another way to add it.
Once you’ve added the card to your video, you can adjust when the card will show up in the video. Just drag the card on the time marker below the video to the spot when you want it to appear.
Drag the YouTube card’s icon on the time marker to the spot when you want it to appear. After you set up the first card, you can add up to four more cards to the video. Watch the video and make sure that the cards appear where you want them to before you publish and move on.
Preview the video and YouTube card before you publish. Also double-check for typos and errors.
4 Ways to Use YouTube Cards in Your Videos
Businesses can use YouTube cards in a variety of ways, such as to drive sales for a product or leads to a landing page. But if you really want to stand out and leave an impression on viewers, consider one of the suggestions below.
Note: When using YouTube cards for business, there are a few additional general best practices to keep in mind:
· Place cards that are meant to direct users somewhere else (including other videos) toward the end of the video. While there are exceptions to this, you typically want viewers to finish watching your video before sending them elsewhere.
· Keep the cards relevant. Only place cards that send users to a landing page on relevant videos. If the video isn’t relevant to the landing page, send users to a second video that is relevant, bridging the gap.
1. Send Viewers to the Next Video in a Series
If users subscribe to your YouTube channel, they’ll be alerted whenever you upload new content. This has always made YouTube the best social media platform to release a video series that requires viewers to see each part.
Using YouTube cards to send users to the next video in the series (or to the playlist of the series) will help you get more views on the collection of videos overall.
Including both a YouTube video card and a playlist card will help drive playlist subscriptions and video views.
GoPro’s “Searching The Maya Underworld” series used both strategies in one video. At the end of the trailer promoting the series, they added two different cards to increase viewership.
The first card sends viewers to the next video. The second card sends viewers to the series playlist, which they can subscribe to. If users come into a series midway, a playlist card can also help them backtrack to see the content they missed.
2. Direct Viewers to an Influencer’s Content Featuring Your Product
Influencer marketing is an effective way to lend credibility to your business and get a lot of attention quickly. YouTube cards can help you capitalize on this.
Feature industry influencers in your YouTube videos and then use a card at the end to send viewers to their channel or one of their videos. This works a lot like guest posting on blogs; you both benefit.
Few businesses have mastered influencer marketing quite like Red Bull, so it’s no surprise that their YouTube marketing reflects this. The under 2-minute video in the image below shows athlete Shane McConkey in action.
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At the end of the video, a YouTube card appears with a link to Shane McConkey’s documentary trailer. This is a solid incentive for an influencer to contribute to a video, helping you connect with new audience members.
3. Get Viewer Input to Drive Content Development
Use polls for a truly interactive experience and to drive engagement. They also let you gather opinions on what content viewers want to see next.
4. Highlight a Nonprofit You Support
Charitable actions and giving back can have positive impacts on your business’s reputation. While most YouTube cards prioritize driving new leads and sales (which are smart decisions), some businesses produce entire videos dedicated to highlighting nonprofits, accompanied with a donation card at the end.
Charitable actions can improve a business's reputation and can be especially powerful for small businesses in tight-knit communities.
Final Thoughts
On social media, interactive content is becoming essential to capture users’ attention, and YouTube cards are designed to do just that. They can drive specific actions or add more depth to your video. Because videos are dynamic and engaging on their own, cards serve as a fantastic touchpoint that will appeal to users and help you build rapport.
Whether you’re sending viewers to your blog to learn more or using a poll to make your videos more interactive, YouTube cards are strong tools for marketers.
Chapter 12 YouTube SEO Tips 2017
YouTube videos are everywhere. And YouTube isn’t shrinking; no matter how popular Facebook Live is, no matter how viral Instagram stories are, and no matter how trendy Snap chat is.
YouTube isn’t dead. It isn’t old school. It isn’t lame. YouTube is a red hot tool for search engine power, and you can benefit from using it. In this chapter, we will cover some of the advanced ways to increase your YouTube search visibility.
1. Write long, detailed descriptions for each video
The longer and more detailed your video description, the better you’ll be able to rank for relevant searches. Here’s why: Contextual keywords are at the heart of all Google and YouTube searches.
What do you do, then? You create a long and detailed video description that will inevitably contain some or all of the relevant keyword verbiage.
The below example of Dove’s video description shows how a hashtag and website link can be used in the video description field to maximize ROI.
Because it hosts user-generated videos, YouTube is often referred to as a social network. Detailed video descriptions are often applauded by the YouTube community and can help you gain followers.
Long-tail keywords are as important on YouTube as any other site as they allow you to provide specific information on five- to seven-word key terms through the usage of contextual information.
2. Carefully research and select the right keywords for each video
Since YouTube’s videos are also searchable through Google, it makes sense to optimize for both search engines.
In fact, YouTube is second only to Google as the most heavily used online search engine.
Here’s what video results look like on SERPs:
Know that the devil is in the details. Adding as much text information to a video as possible provides both humans as well as robots (and whatever hybrids, like Stephen Hawking, may exist) with the necessary contextual information.
3. Embed and share videos wherever possible
Direct video SEO for contextual keywords is great (70% of all Google search results in 2012 included video), but where YouTube is very useful in hosting video content is for videos used on social media and the web.
Video embedding and sharing buttons are already included in your default options, so you don’t even have to do anything special as a creator unless you want to limit the distribution in any way.
The more websites, forums, chat rooms, and social networks link to your video, the more likely it is to be found. This is basic SEO backlinking applied to video content.
4. Curate themed playlists
In addition to having videos as a way to increase viewership, having playlists (curated lists of videos) also increases channel time, engagement, video length, and other important KPIs that improve your ROI.
Anyone can create a YouTube playlist by clicking this button:
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When you’re in a playlist, you’ll see a list of videos in it while watching the current video.
You can then navigate through the playlist.
This format provides a more immersive channel experience, and curating great playlists can have a greater impact than creating videos. Spotify built its entire $10 billion brand in the face of stiff competition from Apple, Pandora, and even YouTube because of curated playlists.
Here’s what it looks like:
Playlists are heavily promoted by YouTube, and your video is more likely to be viewed as part of a playlist than on its own in YouTube’s ecosystem of over 1 billion unique monthly users.
5. Watch your metrics, and grow your subscribers
On YouTube, having subscribers equals having clout. In fact, you can even link your YouTube account to Klout to find out a general estimate of your YouTube clout in relation to other social media platforms and influencers across all channels.
For brands, businesses, and organizations on YouTube, the key metrics to measure the success of video content marketing campaigns are a bit different. Here’s an idea of key metrics to look for in video SEO:
Subscribers do increase views, which can increase your Adsense affiliate revenue, but
that’s just a side project to help the channel pay for itself and sustain itself.
Where your video ranks in YouTube searches, the click-through rate of people who view it, and the bounce rates of people leaving after watching only one video are your true measurements of video content marketing success.
6. Optimize videos for the correct length
If you’re creating a video ad, the requirement is less than 1 minute (30 seconds is even better), but for video content, you’ll need videos that are ideally 10 minutes or longer.
Hollywood has taken note, and Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg explained during a sit- down discussion at CTIA’s Super Mobility Week that studios are focused on providing 3-5- minute video clips with the Game of Thrones level of production.
Shorter videos are also often preferred when making live clips on other social networks, like Facebook, Vine, or Instagram.
With mobile video usage on the rise, a 5-10 minute video will suffice, with 20+ minute videos serving as tent poles to draw viewers.
Some podcasts and vlogs stretch longer, but until you get the hang of things, these are the lengths you should focus on.
Remember, quality counts. Most popular videos are shot in at least 1080p, and both 4k and 360-degree videos are on the market, while TVs are reaching beyond 8k as of this year’s CES trade circuit.
Spend the time, money, and resources to professionally shoot, edit, and animate a video to increase the likelihood it will be viewed more widely.
7. Consider crowd sourcing views
Market research is an important part of marketing, but to perform this research with online videos is difficult.
You can solicit views, but you need to keep in mind YouTube’s community guidelines. Some companies have found success using services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to crowd source video views.
Here’s how it works:
Instead of directly buying views, firms hire crowdsourcing platforms to perform market research: “Watch this video and let us know what you think by filling out this survey.” Each person is compensated $.10 to $1.00 for their time.
This market research increases views, which does help your videos rank, and it also provides the extra benefit of giving you hundreds to thousands (however many crowdsourced tasks you pay out on) of surveys about the video’s quality. This feedback can be invaluable in creating more content.
8. Be thorough
Have you ever noticed how much information is crammed onto the packaging of anything you buy, from candy to electronics?
Businesses succeed by pushing through mounds of paperwork and grinding away at providing the most information possible. There’s no example of a popular YouTuber who doesn’t meticulously label their videos.
Here’s what YouTube’s video upload form looks like, asking for closed captioning, language, category, tags, descriptions, and other information:
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Fill it all out every time before publishing to increase visibility.
You can also add filming time and location, enable/disable commenting and ratings, control whether your video can be embedded on external sites, add annotations, and more. Watch a few YouTube videos, and you’ll see how often these features are used.
Conclusion
Having a presence on YouTube is incredibly important, especially with the push for spherical video content and video search results. Creating professional video content is only the first step.
Making it visible requires meticulous labeling and attention to detail to create a finished product.
Chapter 13 YouTube Analytics
Measuring the Performance of Your YouTube Campaign: Google Analytics and Adwords
If you already have business videos or the capability to create video content, YouTube can bring you a lot of traffic for very little money. But keep in mind this audience will be different than those coming from other marketing channels and you may discover short attention spans with the content you publish. So how do you know if your YouTube campaigns bring a positive ROI?
The goals of your campaign will determine which metrics to monitor in YouTube, AdWords, or Analytics and suggested metrics for each goal type are provided below.
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Google AdWords Video Metrics View performance
In your Google AdWords account, you will see raw numbers of views in addition to the view rate which advertisers are already familiar with. View rate is similar to the CTR for clicks and impressions on your other ad types. This will also show the average amount you pay when viewers watch your videos or engage with your ad. You can see the maximum
costs for views, similar to the maximums you see for clicks with your search ads. These metrics indicate how many people are becoming aware of your brand.
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Once viewers are aware of you, you want them to take the next step beyond viewing by clicking on your ad. Engagement includes clicking on cards on your video or your call-to- action overlay. Earned views also measure YouTube engagement because it indicates people watched other videos on your channel after seeing this initial video ad. Even better, some may choose to subscribe so you know they want to hear and see more from you. And of course likes are nice, but shares are even better.
Reach
Reach is how many people viewed your ad and how often your ad was shown to each person (as determined by cookies). You can also see how many times it was viewed for each viewer.
Video playtime (Watch Rate)
This measures how much of your video was viewed in quartiles: 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. If viewers rarely make it past that first quartile, it does not mean completing scrapping the video. You may be able to edit what you have into a shorter run time.
Segments – Network
On which network are your videos being displayed? Video Discovery ads (formerly known as In-Display ads) are shown next to related videos or in a YouTube search results page. In- stream ads are shown on YouTube as well as the Google Display Network. Since these are very different networks, you want to know if one format is better than the other both in terms of cost as well as views.
Segments – Mobile users
What about device type? Is there a difference in cost and views depending on whether the video was viewed on a computer, mobile device or a tablet? If most users view your video ads on a mobile device, you want sharp images that will stand out on a smaller screen.
Review the Video Targeting tab
If you are new to YouTube advertising or perhaps a little uncertain about your exact audience, you will want to target a broader group initially. As you gather campaign performance data, you may want to add or exclude demographics. Similarly, you may discover interest, placements, or affinity groups to add or exclude. These metrics are all available in the Video targeting tab of your AdWords campaign.
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That’s a lot of data available to you as an advertiser. We have data in YouTube. We have data in AdWords. Do we also need yet another place for data in Google Analytics? Yes. Because nothing we do in marketing happens in a vacuum. We use multiple channels and strategies to reach our prospects and we want to understand how our marketing channels may work in conjunction with each other.
Google Analytics Video Metrics YouTube Visitors
This is a simple metric in Google Analytics and a good starting place available under Acquisition. Who learned of your web site from YouTube (New visitors) compared to your other channels? You can drill into Video Campaigns specifically or compare it in the context of all your existing AdWords Campaigns.
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YouTube Referrals
Remember that YouTube is a social channel. So while you will want to review this in the context of your AdWords campaign in Google Analytics, also compare it to the other social channels you use to drive traffic – paid and unpaid – as well as other referral sources. From here, you can view basic engagement metrics as well as also conversions. For example, do your YouTube visitors complete the goal of signing up for your email newsletter?
Multi-Channel Funnels
You may not see direct conversions with your YouTube visitors, such as immediate email newsletter sign-ups. Visitors may come to your site but not complete a desired action during the first visit. With Multi-Channel Funnels, you can see the visitor’s journey through your website and the influence of video. By understanding the impact of each marketing
channel compared to the others, you can make better decisions about how to budget moving forward.
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Conclusion
Determining the purpose of your paid YouTube campaign will guide your decisions about what to measure. And these metrics are available in multiple places: YouTube Analytics, AdWords, and Google Analytics. Start with YouTube Analytics to see how your videos perform on their own, not compared against your other channels. Next spend some time in AdWords to view how paid campaigns are contributing to your goals and bringing a positive ROI.
Finally, explore YouTube performance in Google Analytics to determine how your marketing channels work together, keeping in mind that a YouTube campaign will likely bring different results than your other marketing channels and explore that data with the goal of brand awareness. Of course, brand awareness does not immediately translate into revenue, but website visitors do need to first hear about you before doing business with you so brand awareness is a worthy pursuit.
Chapter 14
How to make YouTube a part of Successful B2B Marketing Funnel?
With both its long-tail discoverability and potential to educate clients about in-depth features, the YouTube platform offers some incredible benefits for B2B companies. And yet, surprisingly, YouTube is one of the most frequently overlooked social media platforms when it comes to building a successful B2B marketing funnel.
To be sure, YouTube is no longer the only social media platform for posting native video – Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now all have their video offerings. On these platforms, though, organic views are all about “the feed,” meaning that for a short period of time after you post the video, it will be shown in the feed of some percentage of your followers, depending on factors such as the Facebook algorithm or whether a user accessed their account during the window of time a video might have appeared. Of course, a feed-based distribution strategy can be successful for gaining significant “Day One” views, the non-paid viewership that occurs when you first upload the video. And, certainly, well-targeted paid campaigns can also be quite effective in the feeds.
But social video is not all about the feed, and for B2B, this distinction is key. B2B companies generally have higher-ticket items and longer sales cycles than B2C. During this extended period, clients will research their future partners as much as they can in multiple ways. Naturally, they will go to Google and YouTube to do their research, and can end up watching multiple videos about the products. And while on Facebook almost all views from a given week will be of your latest video, on YouTube, almost all of your views from a given week will be of your “greatest hits,” the old videos.
YouTube Long-tail Marketing: The Four S’s
Instead of being a feed-based social network, traffic on YouTube essentially comes from the four S’s: Sharing, Suggesting, Searching, and Subscribing. Potential B2B clients find YouTube videos about products, for the most part, because of one of the following factors:
1. Sharing: They were directed off-platform via a direct link or from the company, the media, a salesperson directly, or a friend or influencer.
2. Suggesting: They saw the video in the “suggested videos” column on the right-hand side of the page another YouTube video was on.
3. Searching: They find them by searching on YouTube or Google.
4. Subscribing: They subscribe to channels based on their interests and/or personalities, and those channels talked about the products.
#1 Encourage Video Sharing: YouTube & Beyond
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Certainly if you can get B2B blogs and influencers to post a link to your YouTube videos, you should do so. Outside parties particularly like to post announcement videos and short interviews (under four minutes) that feature industry superstars. A video is a great complement to any press release, and when reaching out to technical bloggers, the short, how-to video can get you some embeds and link-love.
But to take advantage of the YouTube long-tail, what about embedding the videos on your company’s own website and blog? This is one of the best ways of driving relevant traffic, and it affirms the YouTube video’s relevance by embedding it within a page chock full of
SEO-empowered text. And don’t forget to link to the video from your email newsletter (just
do a link, please – embedding video in email is a no-no).
#2 Boost Suggested CTR with a Great Thumbnail
It seems counterintuitive, but after direct links and embeds, most YouTube views come as a result of being related to other videos. And one of the most important ways to get more “suggested videos” from your own channel showing up in the right-hand column is to have proper custom thumbnails.
Your thumbnails can also benefit from a “branding stripe” running the full height of the left-hand side of the image. This is key because it makes them stick out in the suggested videos column. Remember, most people see these images very small (at just 120×68 pixels, to be exact), so the image has to pop.
The image below is a good example of a custom thumbnail: uniform branding stripe on left, close-up face, looking at the camera, eyes and teeth visible, expressive face, speaking mid- sentence. We wonder what he’s saying, so we’ll click. Note that it will still look intriguing at roughly 120×68, which is how many people will see it.
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Additionally, playlists are essential to driving suggested videos, because YouTube looks to
playlists to understand which videos are related. There’s practically no limit to how many
playlists you can create, and a single video can be in many playlists. Playlists take almost no time to create, and of course drive continuous views as well, so a good playlist strategy is essential in any YouTube long-tail marketing campaign.
#3 Understand YouTube and Google Search Factors
YouTube Search: YouTube is the second largest search engine after its parent Google. And while you’ll often get a YouTube video result embedded into your Google search results, videos will actually get more traffic directly from searching on YouTube.com.
Contrary to popular belief, videos are not ranked in YouTube search by how many views they get. Rather, the algorithm looks for how long the videos encourage people to stay on the YouTube.com platform. So to succeed, B2B marketers must pay close attention to key metrics, such as how long people are watching individual videos and which videos are referring additional views back to the same channel.
If you’re still shooting and editing your videos using the same methods perfected for television, you’ll benefit by using YouTube analytics to take stock of what’s working and what isn’t, and use those learnings to structure the video content more appropriately for the YouTube audience. It will benefit your brand’s visibility across the board.
Google Search: Often a YouTube video will come up in your Google search results. But how does Google archive the info from its friend YouTube? Well, title, tags, and description all help. After all, Google can only index video by text and code, so for SEO purposes, the metadata around the video is actually more important than what is shown within the video. Additionally, doing an optional closed-caption transcript will help Google better identify the content, because while YouTube’s automated transcription technology is getting better, it’s still comically inaccurate at times. These transcripts help both the Google and YouTube search engines determine the content.
#4 YouTube Long-tail Success: Subscriber Growth
Generally, subscribers – which are the “likes” and “follows” of YouTube – are very valuable to gaining targeted views. From my own research, an organic video can expect, on average,
about 15% views per subscriber (without other influences). So a channel with 1,000 subscribers can generally expect about 150 views per video.
Thus it’s important to encourage your potential client base to subscribe to your YouTube channel in every way you encourage them to follow you on other social media platforms – via your website, email, etc. And, importantly, get them to subscribe via clickable links in your videos and descriptions. Then, each time they find themselves on YouTube.com, they will be more likely to have your videos automatically promoted to them. They may also receive email updates from YouTube as well.
One caveat: YouTube subscribers tend to skew younger, which could leave out some of the older decision makers of your B2B clients. Even today, some tech-savvy people who watch YouTube videos still don’t even realize that you can subscribe to YouTube channels, or what a “YouTube channel” actually is. But don’t let this discourage you – each subscriber you get will give you an advantage over your competitors.
Bonus Tip: Re-optimize Your Video Content Every Month
YouTube is a hybrid platform. With its high sharability, it’s more like Facebook or Twitter. But with its long-term discoverability, its behavior for driving B2B leads can be more like a content-marketing blog. This is because once a video finds a place in a search engine, it will stay there, and the video can be a primary traffic driver to other content pieces or as a top lead conversion source.
But results can always be tweaked and improved, sometimes dramatically. We’re seeing this with blogs and top marketing companies like HubSpot are starting new divisions in charge of in-depth upgrades to “back catalog” blog posts, optimizing them in ways that improve SEO, conversion rate, and referral traffic.
These blog optimization specialists take content that they’ve already invested a lot of money in, and go back and squeeze more juice out of them, sometimes doubling the lead generation rate they were getting previously. The same should be done with YouTube on a monthly basis: Taking assets you’ve already invested a lot of money in creating and re-
optimizing them using a data-driven approach, taking into account the key analytics, trends and best practices. The result can be a significant increase of your ROI.
Each of your top videos should be audited and optimized (if data warrants it) once per quarter. If you’re a channel with a back catalog of hundreds of videos, for instance, and you want to focus on the top 200 videos, we recommend reviewing one-third of the greatest hits each month, then track how YouTube and Google re-index them over a several week period, then repeat the process each month.
So B2B companies – it’s time to take another look at your YouTube strategy. You may be surprised what is possible in the long tail.
Chapter 15
Tools and Apps to grow your YouTube Channel
A critical part of success on YouTube demands that creators produce engaging, high- quality content that viewers will enjoy. Also, having the correct video/audio equipment and editing software is essential to producing fantastic videos.
YouTube offers a basic video editor, but there are many free and paid alternatives including:
· Filmora Video Editor
· HitFilm Express
· AVS Video Editor
· Adobe Premiere
· Pinnacle Studio
· Final Cut Pro (Mac only)
· Sony Vegas Pro
Whatever video editing software you choose, that’s only half the battle.
You’ll need to consider how you’re going to succeed in channel development by understanding branding, SEO, analytics, marketing, etc. Here’s a list of popular YouTube tools, services, and resources to help you in these areas.
All-in-One Platforms
VidIQ is the first YouTube audience development and management suite that helps individuals, brands, networks, and agencies grow their views and subscribers through collaborative tools that empower teams at every step of their workflow. Their end-to-end solution includes analytics and reporting, YouTube SEO, influencer identification, comment management, and competitive intelligence tools. VidIQ’s professional services include brand strategy and channel optimization.
VidIQ’s Vision Chrome extension which enables you to:
· See video and homepage keywords/tags used by others
· Review search term metrics such as views and keyword scores
· See a snapshot of YouTube, Facebook, and engagement rate (ER) metrics for the top search results
· Track character counts for my titles, descriptions, and tags
· Easily manage, copy, and paste tags from one video to the next
· Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the premium tools to run an online business, and they’re the most widely used social media management tool. Users can schedule and post updates to pages and profiles for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, WordPress, and other sites from their dashboard. They offer 160+ free and paid apps through their app directory including YouTube, VK, Tumblr, and other well-established software applications.
With Hootsuite, you can do the following concerning YouTube:
· Upload, edit, schedule, and share YouTube videos across all your social networks
· Manage multiple YouTube accounts without the risk of sharing passwords
· Monitor YouTube activity alongside your teammates
· Schedule and share your YouTube videos
· Measure subscriber growth, analyze engagement levels, and pinpoint traffic sources
Hootsuite offers multiple plans including free, pro, and enterprise. They offer a free 30-day trial.
· TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy’s browser extension adds a layer of incredible functionality right on top of YouTube’s website. They offer features that cover several categories including productivity, workflow, SEO, promotion, and analytics. Some of the many things you can do with TubeBuddy are:
· Bulk updates to your videos such as adding annotations and cards with just a few clicks
· Conduct SEO audits of your videos to find the best opportunities and tags
· Find/replace on your videos just as if you were using a word processor
· Generate professional custom thumbnails using screenshots and branding/text layers
· Engage your audience quicker and more efficiently
· Export your list of subscribers and their social profiles
· Get details and analysis of competitor channels
· Promote your new upload across all other videos
YouTube Tutorials, Insights, Tips, and Tricks
YouTube Creator Hub and Academy
The Creator Hub is a destination for resources to help you make great videos, find your audience, and grow your channel. The Creator Academy has a vast catalog of tutorials to challenge and inspire your creativity. The lessons will give you the inside scoop on how to shoot and edit amazing videos, and make sure your viewers see them too. Also, they have a YouTube channel featuring tips and tricks. This is an excellent place to get well versed regarding all things YouTube channel development.
Tubefilter, Inc., the leading digital entertainment media company covering the online video industry, is the definitive source for industry news, program reviews, and industry events and online entertainment market intelligence services.
SEO, Keywords, and Tags
YouTube isn’t just about reviews and unboxing videos; it’s the second largest search engine on the web behind Google. Like Google, appearing on the first page of search results is critical to attracting clicks and views. To achieve this requires sufficient knowledge of YouTube search engine optimization (SEO) factors to improve your video rank.
Google Keyword Planner is a tool that helps to build new Search Network campaigns or expand existing campaigns. It will help you to get keywords and ad group ideas, historical statistics, keywords trend, etc. See this post for Keyword Planner alternatives.
SEMRush offers a keyword tool that is driven by its huge dataset of search data from 26 different countries. SEMRush results return keyword ideas, estimated search volume, estimated CPC, keyword difficulty score, and current ranking domains for a keyword.
This tool scrapes and suggests keyword ideas from Google, YouTube, Bing, and even Amazon. You can choose suggested keywords from every Google TLD, language, and location and there are similar options for the other engines they support. For free, you get hundreds of suggested keywords, but you need a paid plan to access search volume estimations.
· YouTube’s Autocomplete Feature
As you type into YouTube’s search engine, you see suggestions. These results indicate demand for these topics, for example, “how to increase sales.”
Channel Data and Analytics
Do you want to understand how your channel is doing through data and analysis? If yes, there are several routes to take.
Nestled within your Creator Studio side panel, you can monitor the performance of your channel and videos with up-to-date metrics and reports in YouTube Analytics. There’s a ton of data available in different reports, like the watch time, traffic sources, and demographics. To learn more about YouTube Analytics, check out these articles published by WordPress plugin and SEO experts Yoast (Yoast Watch Time and Engagement Reports).
Google Analytics is a free web service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing. The service is available to anyone with a Google account. It lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.
You can integrate your channel with Google Analytics to get a better understanding of visits to your actual channel page. This may be helpful if you use multiple Google products and want to share data across your linked accounts.
BirdSong Analytics is a leading pay as you go social media analytics tool. It’s used by social media practitioners, journalists, publishers, and researchers in 120 countries around the world. With every report, they provide in-depth analysis of audience and activity, with the option to export data for offline analysis. Their mission is to give the world social media data that is simple to use, reasonably priced, and without monthly fees. You can use them to access:
· Over 30 key metrics presented in user-friendly tables and charts
· Details of any public or private videos and channels posted on YouTube
Social Blade is one of the longest running YouTube statistics tracking websites that allow you to see your channels growth with ease. They also offer Instagram and Twitch statistics too, enabling you to track your reach across multiple social media platforms simultaneously. Here’s what they offer:
· Track your YouTube progress with subscriber & views statistics
· Compare YouTube metrics of up to three creators simultaneously
· Discover what multi-channel network or management agency a creator belongs to
· Find out when you might hit a milestone, for example, subscriber count
· Estimate how much money various YouTubers are earning
· Watch your subscriber and view counts update in real-time
· Tutorials for beginners and experienced YouTubers
· Consulting to build your channel
This is a free tool that displays your channel’s subscriber count in real time. It’s basically a giant ticker that updates every second. If you are running promotions or live streams, it provides instant gratification for your growth efforts. You can adjust the color of the Live Subscriber Count to match your channel and add sound. Also, some creators make it visible to live viewers to encourage channel subscriptions. Surprisingly, YouTube doesn’t offer something similar.
Monetization and Funding
Google AdSense is a program run by Google that allows publishers to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements, that are targeted at viewers. These ads are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. Publishers can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis.
YouTube earnings are added to your AdSense payments page before the 15th of each month and included in your payment if your total earnings exceed the payment threshold. However, estimated earnings will not be updated to include your YouTube earnings.
You can use fan funding to let your viewers make voluntary payments to support your channel. When you turn on fan funding, your viewers see a button on your channel that lets them donate money.
YouTube Super Chat (New Feature)
Super Chat is a new way for fans and creators to interact during live streams. Fans can purchase Super Chats to highlight their messages within the live chat stream. Super Chats stand out from other messages in two ways:
· Your Super Chat is highlighted with a color.
· Your Super Chat stays pinned in the ticker for a set period of time.
The color of your Super Chat, the period of time it stays pinned in the ticker, and the maximum message length are determined by the amount of your purchase.
Patreon is a way to get paid for creating the things you already create (videos, songs, whatevs, etc.). Fans pledge a few bucks per month or per item released and the money goes to the creator. It doesn’t matter where creators create, for example, YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, blog, etc.
Pixlr
Pixlr Editor is an amazing photo editor for all your editing needs. You gain full control over your images, including layers and effects. Their web apps are powerful and let you apply quick fixes, crop, rotate, and add style to make any photo beautiful.
Canva
With Canva, you can design presentations, social media graphics, and more with thousands of beautiful layouts. Also, you can enrich your chosen snapshot with text and design elements, or create a clean-cut thumbnail design for a synchronized playlist or channel. With their tools and easy-to-navigate interface, you can easily customize your YouTube thumbnails.
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Fiverr is the world’s largest marketplace for digital services starting at just five dollars. You
can visit their YouTube related services here.
VidIQ, Hootsuite, Tubebuddy, and Socialblade are available in the Chrome Web Store. These extensions are excellent and much better than one-off tools like Tags for YouTube.
If you have a Facebook page, there are countless YouTube “Apps for Pages” which enable
you to add a tab to feature your videos.
Channel development and management apps are few and hard to find in both Google Play and Apple stores. What you’ll mostly find are video creation and editing apps such as Flipagram, VivaVideo, and numerous others for mobile video production needs. Your best bet for channel management is YouTube’s Creator Studio app which makes it fast and easy to manage your channel on the go. Features include:
· Monitor channel and video performance with easy-to-use analytics
· Filter and respond to comments
· Get notifications when something important happens
· Update video details and monetization settings
· Manage playlists
Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation
Use Grammarly to check your YouTube titles and descriptions for errors automatically. It’s another one of my premium tools one can’t live without regarding blogging and vlogging activities.
Chapter 16
YouTube Marketing Trends in 2017
As the importance of video continues to grow, many marketers are watching to see if YouTube will keep pace in 2017.
To find out where YouTube may be heading in the coming year, we reached out to social media pros to get their thoughts.
#1: YouTube Solidifies Its Social Network Status
YouTube is often chalked up as the home of silly Internet videos. Companies recognizing YouTube as a search engine and content machine have leveraged the platform as a place to upload video, but they’ve focused their social efforts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Now, YouTube is allowing creators to communicate with their subscribers and channel visitors in more ways.
With the addition of features such as a basic status update with a photo, people who want to better connect with a video-obsessed audience will see YouTube as a social network rather than just a video collection zone.
This is going to be a game-changer for YouTube as a competitor in the social space, and marketers should be thinking bigger when it comes to what this platform means to their strategy.
#2: YouTube Explores Long-form Television-style Content
In 2017, YouTube will evolve to maintain its strategic position as a video platform that’s
the second-largest search engine.
To increase revenues, YouTube will tap into Google’s treasure trove of data to test production and marketing of longer-format television-type series. This competitive move is in response to the rise of original series creations by Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.
YouTube will also introduce new advertising formats during the video experience, since roughly a third of Millennials watch YouTube ads in their entirety. Specifically, we’ll see the addition of ads in the middle of videos longer than one minute, similar to Facebook’s approach.
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#3: YouTube Channels Embrace Quality Over Quantity
For a long time, the trend on YouTube was to create more content in hopes of building subscribers and views. Now, businesses are smarter and realize that making less content with quality keywords will give them a bigger ROI.
2017 will be the year we see an increase in educational content from businesses on YouTube, as that will give them the best chance of appearing in search and attracting a larger scale of potential customers.
Marketers need to focus on content that educates their potential customers and that will always give them a positive return on their investment of time.
#4: YouTube Integrates Third-party Software to Improve Broadcast Quality
YouTube will seek to acquire a third-party encoding software company like Telestream (which makes Wirecast), Switcher Studio, or Livestream.com (which develops software and hardware). When this happens, it will be easier and more affordable for us to produce high- quality, highly engaging video content for our fans and subscribers.
For example, Switcher Studio has already released a free iOS app that we can use to live stream on YouTube or Facebook.
No matter what, due to the strength of their search and discovery algorithm, YouTube remains a force to be reckoned with. Forward-thinking marketers should plan on a strategy that integrates live and recorded video alongside their written content distribution.
#5: YouTube Marketers Focus on Educational Content Delivery
As video continues to spread across social media channels, we’ll see videos on YouTube continue to become more meaty and robust. Instead of the 30-second video demos of recipes that have taken over Facebook, success on YouTube will require companies to create 1- to 5-minute in-depth demos, courses, and series that answer the viewers’ questions (some of which they may not have even known to ask, like whether a $27 or
$1,000 cake is more delicious).
Your YouTube channel should make your audience go, “Huh, I learned something.” Marketers can find inspiration from YouTube-focused publishers like Screen Junkies and BuzzFeed Video, whose videos are usually entertaining, often informative, and all just a little outside of the box. Even if you’re a financial services provider or a furniture company, your videos can and should do more than touting your services or the benefits of your product.
#6: Influencer Marketing Evolves Into Exclusive Partnership Programming on YouTube
In 2017, more brands will work with influencers on exclusive, longer-term engagements instead of the transactional, one-and-done “campaign” mentality we mainly see today. This will be in the name of producing programming, not campaigns or “content.” Nowhere will this be more obvious than on YouTube.
But here’s the catch: We have to stop thinking about influencers as glorified channels through which you pump pieces of your campaign.
The above approach and all its potential benefits to your company only come to fruition with more exclusive, longer-term relationships: a partnership based on mission-alignment and context built over time to unlock the potential sitting on both sides.
#7: Increased Socialization Features Improve YouTube Engagement
YouTube will borrow the sticky elements of other social media platforms to help channel owners attract, retain, and engage their fans. In addition, as the frequency of engagement increases, so will the number of daily vlogs. To stand out, marketers will need to deliver content that benefits their audience and consistently engage in two-way conversations with viewers.
#8: YouTube Promotes Longer Engagement Views
YouTube is actively measuring how long people spend at the site and will be promoting videos that engage viewers for longer periods of time. They are also keenly aware that younger viewers with disposable income are spending more time watching YouTube on a mobile device, usually a smartphone.
To take advantage of this shift, marketers need to do three things:
First, they should experiment with longer-form videos, provided those videos can hold viewers’ attention. Since the average YouTube session is now over 40 minutes, videos don’t need to be two minutes long.
However, YouTube viewers’ attention spans haven’t expanded, so a talking head droning on for half an hour won’t work. Instead, spend more time in post-production adding engaging graphic overlays. These can include cut scenes, closeups, freeze frames, countdown numbers, URLs, and even Easter Eggs that will cause people to stop and “rewind” your videos.
Second, if marketers are looking to drive traffic from YouTube to a website or landing page, they’ll need to use YouTube cards throughout the video. While YouTube Annotations were a great addition to creating clickable links within a video, they didn’t work on mobile.
YouTube cards allow you to create clickable, engaging calls to action within the video that show up wherever the video is shown, whether on a smartphone, tablet, or embedded on a website or blog.
Third, marketers need to invest advertising dollars on YouTube. Google is getting better at tracking users across devices, and YouTube will be a beneficiary of this additional targeting information. Coupled with keyword search, marketers will be able to reach their ideal customers with both pre-roll ads and sponsored video promotion.
#9: YouTube Improves Social Features for Creators and Fans
YouTube is an amazing search engine and distribution platform, but a social network? While YouTube has all of the hallmarks of a social network: videos spawn conversation and there are fans, followers, and content galore, the engagement engine (YouTube comments) is lacking.
Conclusion:
This coming year, look for YouTube to push back against Facebook’s, Instagram’s, and Twitter’s poaching of YouTube’s video space by offering more social networking opportunities for both creators and fans.
Savvy content creators and brands will leap on the opportunity to create engagement and dialogue with their fans and followers.
Chapter 17 Case studies
From comedians to gamers to beauty vloggers, YouTubers have generally built their followings outside of the control of media giants, even if they are signing big deals with those companies. And there is power and independence in having that huge fan base.
To get a closer look into which stars rule YouTube, we looked at the SocialBlade rankings to see who had the most subscribers.
1. Epic Rap Battles (ERB) — 14.2 million subscribers
Epic Rap Battles of History is one of the most successful YouTube series of all time. What started as a live improv skit by two friends has become an online sensation. The premise is simple: Founders Peter Shukoff (NicePeter) and Lloyd Ahlquist (EpicLloyd) pick two figures from history or pop culture and imagine what it would be like if they faced off in a rap battle. The videos are highly entertaining, with characters as varied as Darth Vader, Adolf Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Chuck Norris verbally battling one another in full costume.
2. Jacksepticeye — 14.8 million subscribers
Seán William McLoughlin is a 27-year-old Irish game-based YouTube star who initially came to fame when PewDiePie mentioned him in a video in 2013. Jacksepticeye calls himself the "most energetic video-game commentator on YouTube" and has trademark bright green hair.
3. Fine Brother (FBE) — 15 million subscribers
Brooklyn natives Benny and Rafi Fine are two online producer/writer/directors who created the extremely successful React video series. In React's various iterations (Kids React, Teens React, Elders React, and YouTubers React), TheFineBros show viral videos to subjects and film their reactions. Many consider TheFineBros to be two of the first YouTube stars, but they now have a full-service production company that spans movies and TV as
well. In 2016, they were involved in a controversy over trying to copyright the "react" video form, which drew widespread backlash and led to a campaign to unsubscribe from the duo's channel.
4. Dude Perfect — 16.2 million subscribers
"Dude Perfect" is a channel from twins Cory and Coby Cotton and three other "best buddies" from Texas A&M, all former high school basketball players. They do sports tricks and comedy, some of which makes fun of sports stereotypes.
5. Markiplier — 16.8 million subscribers
Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier, is a YouTuber focused on gaming. He has an energetic style that involves a bit of swearing and a lot of emotion. Fischbach has ambitions beyond YouTube, as well.
"I want to push myself into music and acting — more traditional media stuff," he told Variety last year. "If someone wants to make a movie and have me in it, I want to make sure I have the skill set to do it properly."
6. Yuya — 17.8 million subscribers
Yuya is a 23-year-old Mexican beauty vlogger. She posts makeup, hair, and other beauty tutorials, and even has a secondary channel where she talks about her day-to-day life outside of her tutorials. Many of the videos on her secondary channel star her brother Sergio. Yuya's beauty-tutorial channel has brought her so much fame that she's been featured in Vogue and on Mexican television.
Conclusion
YouTube is one of the most visited websites on the planet, with over 6 billion hours of video streamed monthly from the service.
Since YouTube is part of the Google universe (Alphabet Inc.), YouTube videos are integrated into Google search results. If you watch videos on Facebook, there’s a pretty good chance it’s a YouTube video (even though Facebook is fighting back).
YouTube videos are everywhere. And YouTube isn’t shrinking; no matter how popular Facebook Live is, no matter how viral Instagram stories are, and no matter how trendy Snap chat is.
The platform is a gold mine, and popular YouTubers like PewDiePie (who's estimated net worth is around $70 million) are out earning traditional celebrities like Allen Iverson, Meghan Trainor, and Hillary Clinton.
Like with Google, part of being discovered on YouTube is how you optimize for search.
YouTube isn’t dead. It isn’t old school. It isn’t lame. YouTube is a red hot tool for search
engine power, and you can benefit from using it.
Hope this training guide gave you the right tips needed to take your YouTube channel business to the next level.
Happy Learning!