7 Tips to Make Your YouTube Channel Pop

Our experience of managing YouTube channels for organisations and individuals has given us a first hand insight into what happens when you manage your channel well. None of the tips are magic bullets to get thousands of subscribers overnight, but they will certainly give your subscriptions a boost, make you look professional and convey the message that your YouTube content is great and you’re not afraid to work it.

Here’s our cheat sheet with some graphics to illustrate the points below.
YouTube_Channel_ManagementA4

There’s no down side to doing any of this, and you’re really just using the facilities that are built into YouTube, so let’s get going:

1. Brand Account

   Pulling the trigger on changing your account type to a new Brand account is scary, but (probably) the worst that can happen is that you’ll lose any comments you made when your account was classed as an individual. The gain is that you can now appoint others as Manager accounts to help you run the channel.

2. Tags and Descriptions

   In your channel’s upload defaults, create a set of relevant tags that can act as a base set for all of your uploads and then modify them with extra tags specific to each video. This will act to group all of your videos in the Up Next bar. Similarly, create a basic boiler plate with your web site URL and any other high priority references that you want viewers to see – you can make these Google Analytics Campaign URLs to and shorten them if you want to get all data-analyst on it.
   

3. Channel Art

   Download the Channel art templates (PSD or PNG) from YouTube which has size guides to help you create artwork which will display on mobile, desktop and TV.

4. Custom Posterframes

   Out of all of these tips, this is the one that affects whether people actually decide to play your videos. Create a design look which will telegraph your brand and style and can also be used across all of the videos you upload to your channel. Pro-tip: keep the basis of the design a frame that is actually from your video. Viewers feel there is something impenetrable about a posed PR shot or something which is not indicative of the video that you want them to watch.

5. Use a Branding icon

   There’s an option to add a logo or icon to the lower right of each of your videos. The image that you upload is overlaid when the video plays, not embedded into it. A major advantage of adding this is not limited to pushing your brand, it will give viewers another route to subscribing to your channel. This is what we want, so don’t be wimp out on this one.

6. End Screens

   These are applied individually to each video and not so long ago we used to have to fake this effect by doing a picture in picture in the video edit and then craftily annotating it but YouTube have now built in the tools for you to add a channel Subscribe button and a link to the next video that you suggest your viewers go to. This gives you two easily selectable options to offer your viewers. You’ll still see many videos where presenters make a request for viewers to subscribe at the end. It makes sense to just ask people to do what you want them to, but just depends if thats your style or not.

7. Google Analytics

   This one seems odd when you do it at first but if you add your GA property into YouTube, hits to your channel will appear in your analytics alongside hits to your other web pages.