There was never a time when people did not link a video from YouTube. As much as Facebook videos have become popular lately, people would still share countless of YouTube videos on their social media. Right now, there are about a billion users on YouTube and almost ⅓ of those viewers have already generated up to a billion views> out of the millions of hours that they spent watching.

This Google platform shows no sign of being buried by new and upcoming streaming networks, and with video content becoming increasingly important, now is the best time to start looking into creating a YouTube channel and optimizing it. Here we list down ways in which you can maximize the potential of having a YouTube channel.

Reasons for Optimizing your YouTube Channel

The results of optimization tells a narrative, if you think about it. We start, like everyone else, at square one: making videos. What we do with these videos influence how our company’s narrative flows. So here is the story template your business should be following.

Increase Rankings

Right now, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world,
behind Google. More than just the biggest video sharing platform, it is also one of the best ways to discover new information. From TED talks to independent performances, YouTube has given individuals and small groups alike a chance to show their work to a billion potential patron

As a business, ignoring this would be a little bit reckless. Optimizing your YouTube channel, or at least starting to create videos for it, is the best way to get closer to your audience. A video is more personal than any article you write for your business. Of course, this is not to say content writing is useless because it definitely is not; but videos have people talking directly to the audience, someone who can show their expressions, various tone differences in their voices, and a face they can put on the product.

And ultimately, getting your videos seen by many people through optimization helps boost your rankings in search engines. Remember, creating the videos is just the first step. This process also requires sharing the links to social media networks countless times, getting views, targeting the right queries, and more. Yes, you need to apply a little bit of elbow grease, but once it is done, you will be topmost result whenever people search for topics related to you.

Increase Awareness

There are probably a lot of people involved in your industry, both business owners or just experts in the field who have a great influence in siphoning an audience to a certain company they deem worthy. This is the reason why we work hard to deliver the best possible quality in our work that we can churn out. But most of all, it helps to be on top of the people’s minds when they think about your product.

Videos are the perfect way to create awareness simply because people can easily digest what you are offering and how it benefits them. The thing with raising awareness is people need to remember it. So here are some tips in increasing awareness using videos:

1. Be creative

Do not just put out videos, make sure that they can be creative. One of our worries as creators is that our videos may not be as unique as we think, a lot of people have been churning out ideas before us. But here is our advice: take away that fear. The same thing is happening with writers and musicians, and yet they are still able to find different angles to work on, even if they have the same idea as hundreds of other writers and musicians. That is what you need to do, find a new perspective and capitalize on that. The great thing about making your own videos is that there are no boundaries when it comes to producing it, use that to be creative and keep your target audience in mind.

2. Comment on other videos

Another great tip for first-time video creators. What you do is find other videos that are related to your business or company in some way, those who are in the same industry for instance. Post a comment, perhaps a compliment or an added information type of comment, then post your video as a response. This will increase your viewers, especially if the video you have commented on has a lot of views or subscribers.

Coca-Cola is an excellent impossible for this. Whenever people talk of sodas in general, Coke is almost always the first thing that pops into people’s minds. When people think about those poignant video advertisements, Dove is easily the first thing people recount.

Now, this does not mean that you failed if you did not achieve the same kind of virality. What it means is you have a specific kind of audience, and that needs to be your priority. Coke and Dove are general products, everyone uses them. But if you are offering SaaS tools or deadbolts, that is an entirely different market.

3. Increase Revenue

Obviously, an increase in rankings and awareness will ultimately lead to an increase in revenue. Why do we want to optimize all our pages anyway? Well, if you are a blogger, you do it so that other people will be able to read your articles. Your opinions about the world, your reviews, and maybe share them with other people. But as a business, we do it because we want to sell our product. When you started your company, you had an idea that you think will change people’s lives, and you should be able to translate that into the marketing strategies that you have for it. Video is probably the most helpful tool to get that same passion across. You will be able to directly tell your audience how you can solve certain problems that they face more often than they are used to.

Tips to Optimize YouTube Channel

Now to the technical part. We have been talking about the benefits of optimizing your YouTube channel, now let us go in-depth to the actual optimization. As much as the results tell a narrative, optimization is a process that leads to that narrative. The great thing about this process is once you have it done, you can find new ways to innovate per optimization tip and tailor it to something that perfectly fits your company.

It starts with treating your YouTube Channel like a website. How you want your visitors to feel, what you want them to think should reflect on your channel. These are questions you need to keep in mind when reading through our tips. Here is how you get started:

1. Channel Design

This is one of the ways to introduce your channel. Think of it as a calling card, it has your company logo on it, the colors, and everything. YouTube allows you to upload a custom channel icon and art, so make sure that yours is edited well. Do not just rely on paint (unless you are very talented with it) or other free online editing websites. If you think your icon and art still needs work, go on and call professional graphic artists to do it for you.

This is an example of a channel icon and art:

From ReelSEO YouTube Channel

The icon is the square image you see at the top left of your channel, and it is the image that appears below every single one of your posts. As YouTube puts it, “Your channel icon visually represents your channel everywhere across Google and YouTube, so make sure it looks good.”

The channel art is the header image. Think of this as a website banner, you can put little tidbits about your company there, maybe your tagline. But make sure that it is not too cluttered or else it is going to be so confusing to the audience.

Because images appear differently across all devices, the best thing to do is to use a 2560 x 1440 px image as recommended by YouTube. But a safe resolution to use, if you are wary to use the previous one, would be 1546 x 423 px. Try putting all the necessary things within that resolution so that audiences can view it without any problem.

2. Create a trailer

If you visit different YouTube channels, you might notice that they have videos that are highlighted on their homepage. That is a trailer, and that is meant to introduce your channel to new visitors.

The great thing about it is it appears only to those who have not subscribed yet, so take this chance to introduce yourself, tell them what your channel will be about, what you do, and why they should subscribe to you.

YouTube has listed down ways in which you can create a good trailer:

• You must have a verified account in order to use a series playlis
• 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

Here is an example of a really good trailer:

What Video Creators is All About

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwys4vCTp2s

Now, if a subscriber returns to your page, they will not see your trailer. Instead, they will see a specific that you have highlighted, or a specific playlist you want more people to watch. If they have seen your highlighted video already, YouTube gives you the option to show your latest upload or latest activity.

3. Video Content

Now that you are done with the channel icon, art, and trailer, it is time to plot the kind of videos you are going to release. To be able to reach a wide audience, even if you are in an industry that has a specific kind of target market, you need to be able to create diverse videos. This includes, How-To’s, product demonstrations, testimonials, advertisements, animated illustrations, audience polls, and so on. Having a diverse set of videos makes it possible for you to be viewed by people who are not even into the kind of product that you are offering. For instance, if you are selling a SaaS tool that lets website owners run fly-out surveys, then there is a chance you can reach hobby bloggers if you have a video about running out of ideas on what to write and asking your audience what they want to read.

4. Page Layout

From Video Creators

Now that you have those in check, it is time to organize your page. Page layout provides an easy way for people to navigate through your channel. Because you have a diverse set of videos, it would be best if you can cluster them into sections so that people can go directly to the section that they need.

The videos that are part of The Player headline are part of a section. YouTube lets you choose which kinds of videos you can populate sections with like Popular Uploads, Playlists, and such. You can decide which videos you think will be the most relevant. YouTube goes in-depth about Sections here.

5. Playlists

Playlists are a great way to organize your videos and cluster them. Even if they are not highlighted in the Sections, you can still create a means for your videos to be accessible through making playlists.

In YouTube’s own words:

“A series playlist allows you to mark your playlist as an official set of videos that should be viewed together. Adding a video to a series playlists allows other videos in the playlist to be featured and recommended when someone is viewing a video in the series playlist. YouTube may use this information to modify how the videos are presented or discovered.”

But here are things you need to remember, according to YouTube:

• You must have a verified account in order to use a series playlist
• A video cannot appear in more than one series playlist
• Only videos uploaded by you and that you have the rights to can be added to a series of playlist

6. Thumbnails

From FUNimation

People do not realize this, but thumbnails actually affect optimization. When thinking about which thumbnail to use, always keep in mind that this is the first thing people will notice, and it is essentially the first peek of your video. Make sure that your thumbnail connects with the viewers emotionally, whichever emotion it is you want them to feel. And finally, your thumbnails should be enticing, no one has ever clicked on an ugly photo, remember that.

Additionally, make sure your thumbnails have a unified look. Do not just use thumbnails because you think they look okay.

7. Titles

Other than thumbnails, titles are what gives you clicks. Yes, you can use keywords for your title, infact, this is one of the best ways to use them. But if it sacrifices the quality of the title, it is best to stick to making it more enticing. Use the titles as some sort of teaser to what audiences can expect from your video, especially if it is a creative advertisement. Be wary though, YouTube has a 100 character limit for its titles.

From VSauce

8. Description

From ChannelFrederator

When you create your channel, make sure that you are able to fill-in the description box. Another ReelSEO article goes in-depth about optimizing description boxes, but before getting into the nitty-gritty, you have to understand its importance.

You are given 5,000 characters to tell people information that YouTube’s algorithm will not be able to weed out from your video. You can use secondary keywords here, but more importantly, it lets you write information about your videos, put external links, and more importantly CTA’s (calls-to-action) which will prod people to subscribe and ultimately buy your product.

9. Tags

For copywriters, they know how helpful tags can be. Think of tags as how your user will search something related in your industry, and use that as your tags. Think of the combination of words that they will use when looking for a video.

To help you, look at the tags other videos similar to yours are using. You can also use tools like vidIQ extension to help you with that.

10. Call-to-action

And lastly, do not forget to put calls-to-action in the description, as external links on the video, and even mention it on the video itself. Usual CTA’s include:

• Subscribing
• Commenting
• Liking
• Sharing
• Watching another video
• Clicking on official website for more info

But do not use them all at once, use at least just two so that they are not overwhelmed by it.

Final thoughts

If you notice, per tip still has a lot more to it than just simply putting descriptions or thinking of titles. Those things you need to really take time to study, but we implore you to take the time and digest our little nuggets of optimization tips and think about how you want to get started. YouTube may seem like a lot of work, but we can tell you now that the time you will invest in making sure your videos will reach a significant number of audience will be worth it.