Chapter 5
Making Plans Both Large and Small
In This Chapter
- Mapping out your viewers' experience with your YouTube channel
- Determining what content will best engage your audience
- Understanding how and why scheduling is critical to channel success
YouTube is a truly massive online community with over 6 million hours of video watched each month, where millions of new subscribers are added each day, and where a significant proportion of subscribers (both new and old) not only engage with YouTube creators but also frequently take some sort of action while on YouTube, such as buying a product. With so much content to choose from, you need to be authentic, well organized, and consistently active for your channel to attract a growing fan base. Effective planning and a continual review against your goals is critical to success on YouTube. Fortunately, getting your plan together is straightforward, but your goals need to be measured and adjusted on an ongoing basis.
Proper planning is about looking at the big picture first and then working your way through the details in a methodical way. YouTube audiences know the difference between great channels and mediocre ones because the best ones are always well planned. Planning makes all your other YouTube and marketing activities more efficient. You may feel the need to rush out and produce some videos, but you'll be better served — and get better results — if you step back and think about how audiences, channels, and content all come together. This chapter is about planning your YouTube strategy.
Go back to the basics if your existing channel isn't attracting or engaging viewers. Effective planning isn't only about creating new YouTube channels and uploading more videos — it's also about laying the groundwork for some cool marketing strategies. Fortunately, planning ahead goes a long way toward getting your present channel moving and your audience excited about your work. Don't be surprised if some of your viewers want to collaborate and offer to help you out.
Establishing Your Channel's Mission
Your YouTube channel is a great way for you to present yourself and your brand to an audience (that's potentially massive). You may balk at considering yourself a “brand,” but we're here to tell you that it doesn't matter whether you're an independent creator, a Fortune 500 company, a cutting-edge digital agency, or a local business — every organization and YouTube creator has its own brand, whether they know it or not. Your brand value is tied to its uniqueness and how it appeals to your viewers. That's why YouTube is so important and effective for showing what you or your company represent, far better than words can ever do.
Successful YouTube strategies incorporate a channel presence well beyond simply uploading your videos for free. Your channel is a place where viewers should come regularly to discover and consume content. This is an opportunity to grow, engage, and inspire communities of passion.
Upon arriving on your YouTube channel, viewers should quickly understand what you and your channel are all about. The success of your channel is tied to making your brand and channel mission resonate loud and clear. Khan Academy, shown in Figure 5-1, is an excellent example of YouTube integration with its brand. Visit the channel at www.youtube.com/khanacademy to see a live example of a YouTube channel with a clear mission.
Figure 5-1: Khan Academy's mission aligns with its YouTube content.
If you have other online properties, such as a website, Facebook page, or Twitter account, make sure your YouTube channel has consistent branding and messaging that aligns with all your social networks and websites. Viewers commonly move across these properties as they engage with you, so your mission must be unified and clear.
Determining your goals
Your YouTube channel showcases something you're passionate about. What drives you to create a YouTube channel and content isn't so different from what motivates you to do other things in life, such as
- Host a fundraiser
- Write a blog
- Support a cause
- Give something back to society
- Earn some income
- Learn a new hobby
The reason that YouTube is such a great place for you to share your passion is because video is a supremely effective medium for getting your audience to engage with you. Learn to put that medium to use for you.
Though building your channel is one major goal, you'll likely have additional goals. Here are some other reasons for creating your YouTube channel and the content it contains:
- Build a brand. There's no better way to show who you are, either as an independent creator or as an organization, than by way of a video or series of videos on your channel. The content might include different types of videos — something you've created, straight news, information about you, or a combination. Your motivation for brand building could be to obtain a new job, attract attention from industry luminaries, or make people feel good about your products.
- Educate your target audience. Most people love to learn, and much of the successful content on YouTube revolves around education and tutorials. Educational content includes home repair, product configuration, justification for social causes, and many more topics. Educational content also helps drive brand awareness.
- Entertain the crowd. People love to laugh, enjoy music, and get engrossed in a good story. These genres are all forms of entertainment, and all work especially well on YouTube.
Many forms of entertainment are highly subjective, so be sure to tailor your content so that it connects with the specific audience you're trying to reach.
- Sell something. It doesn't matter whether you have a product to sell, a subscription to offer, or a candidate to elect, your YouTube channel is a great way to demonstrate to your audience that they want what you're offering. People are turning to YouTube to make buying decisions about future purchases. Make sure you understand that YouTube is now a primary source of information used to influence a sale. In the past seven years, YouTube searches for video reviews have more than doubled.
- Earn a living. We've explained that your videos can make money by driving and influencing sales. You can also earn a living from people watching your YouTube videos by monetizing your channel (as explained in Chapter 14).
Don't quit your day job — at least not yet. Making money from YouTube takes time, creativity, and persistence. Even the best-laid plans can't guarantee results if you don't (or your content doesn't) resonate with your target audience. Don't fret: Your YouTube channel may be a nice source of supplemental income, eventually.
Don't feel that you have to keep your goals separate. Michael Stevens' popular Vsauce channel (www.youtube.com/Vsauce) does a great job of combining educational goals with entertainment to keep his audience (almost 8 million subscribers) coming back for more.
Embrace discoverability
At the end of the day, YouTube is about one thing: getting people to watch your content. Simple, right? In theory, yes, but your challenge is to help viewers find your channel and your content. That's what discoverability is all about: placing your content in front of the right viewers so that they can watch. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't share the secret sauce for getting found, but you can help improve the odds of your videos showing up in YouTube and Google Search as well as in Suggested Videos on the Watch page. What can you do in the planning phase for aiding discoverability? Make watch time an important goal.
Watch time is one of the most important factors that trigger YouTube to put your content in front of viewers. In 2012, YouTube made watch time more important to discoverability than the number of views the video received. So what exactly is watch time? In its simplest form, watch time is the total amount of time viewers spend watching your videos. People who watch your content are telling YouTube, “Hey, this is important stuff; make sure similar viewers know.”
Watch time doesn't indicate whether your viewers watch the entire video (although that's a good thing, too) — it indicates that a relatively high percentage of the video is being viewed. How much? Again, YouTube isn't specific. Note that it doesn't matter whether your videos are short or long; what's important is that viewers are engaged. The secret is to make legitimately good content. Good content increases watch time, which increases discoverability.
Creating viral videos shouldn't be your goal. Betting your YouTube strategy on producing viral videos is like betting your entire retirement savings on winning the lottery. Attain your goals through proper planning and execution, not through chance.
Being different, being valuable, being authentic
YouTube has over 1 billion unique visitors every month, and this number continues to grow. Now, that might sound intimidating, as in “How can I get anyone to notice me?” but our advice to you is to jump right in. The trick is that, you simply have to be different enough and interesting enough for people to care. Your content (or the content of those videos you choose to curate) must connect with your audience while tying into your brand. In an increasingly congested space, you need to be authentic to establish credibility and aid discoverability.
Yes, it's possible to make a little money in the YouTube world by hiring yourself out as a spokesperson for a third party, but being a paid spokesperson is a risky strategy. You'll find that your YouTube audience is rather astute and will quickly weed out channels that lack authenticity from their subscriptions and playlists. If you get paid to include product placements in your videos, be sure to notify YouTube when updating your monetization settings. You must follow all of YouTube's ad policies if you're paid to include product placement in your editorial content. For more on monetization settings, see Chapter 14.
Surveying the YouTube landscape
Your channel-planning blueprint must include a clear understanding of the community you're aiming to reach. Ask yourself these questions:
- Who are the influencers and thought leaders? Discover spokespeople who share your passion to determine their tone, style, and content approach. Determine how they engage with their fan base and with whom they collaborate.
- What channels are popular? Use YouTube Search to determine which channels are the most popular with the subject matter planned for your own channel. Enter keywords into the search bar to discover popular channels and videos. Look at the number of subscribers, views, likes, and comments. Find out why these channels resonate by looking at style, branding, publishing, scheduling, collaboration level, and personality. See how the channels organize videos and playlists, repurpose content, and promote new videos.
- How engaged is the community? You need to gauge how viewers are reacting to the content they watch. Determine what normal levels of likes/dislikes and comments are for your target audience. Identify the vocal members of the community and capture their constructive criticism and content recommendations. Comments are a great source for telegraphing audience needs.
- Is my idea different enough? Figure out whether there are gaps in the content being produced. Assess whether your approach covers some of the fan base content recommendations now unfulfilled by existing channels.
The YouTube community is quite collaborative, especially among better channels and viewers. If you're in a competitive market, your audience will provide a competitive advantage by promoting your channel and making content recommendations. If you have a product or service, don't be surprised if your audience gives you feedback on that as well.
With more than 100 hours of video now being uploaded to YouTube every minute, you'll realize that you'll have to search through, watch, and analyze a good deal of content so that you can determine whether your YouTube strategy is sound. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, so take a reasoned and disciplined approach to determine where you fit — or where your organization fits.
We recommend visiting comparable channels, watching their videos, and then exploring the video recommendations to determine whether your channel will be unique enough to build a following. You can use YouTube Search to track down the competition, or you can try one of the specialized tools recently made available, such as Pixability's Video Marketing Software (www.pixability.com).
YouTube provides some valuable options to discover content that is important to your target audience or relevant to your discovery. Working directly from the YouTube search bar can be helpful; anytime you begin typing a search query into YouTube, you see a list of possible search results displayed; these are the high-volume searches that YouTube feels may be relevant to your current query.
YouTube's basic search feature is a good tool to use if you want to gauge whether you're creating content that is in high demand. Using the advanced search filters, however, is much more efficient if what you want to do is find specific channels and videos. Figure 5-2 shows an Advanced Search Filter query for the term monster trucks. (Note that it has nearly 1.2 million relevant videos — who knew?)
Figure 5-2: Using YouTube advanced search filters.
Mobile YouTube viewing and mobile search must be significant parts of your channel strategy. Understand that not all mobile apps have complete functionality, including the advanced search filters referenced.
Be sure to look at recommended videos under the What to Watch section of the guide we describe in Chapter 2. Your previous viewing and search patterns influence what shows up under your recommendations, so you may see a blend of content from different searches, both professional and personal.
Just as independent software tools, such as Adobe Creative Suite and Apple Final Cut, are important to the video production process, new independent tools, including Pixability (www.pixability.com) and Tubular Labs (www.tubularlabs.com), are quite valuable to the channel discovery process on YouTube. These third-party products often combine YouTube data with information from social media sources, to offer a more granular analysis of important channels, demographic information about your targeted fan base, and a detailed look at what your audience watches and shares. Figure 5-3 shows the critical channels around a specific topic base.
Figure 5-3: Important YouTube channel identification using Pixability.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Your channel's success is linked to how well you know your audience. In Part III of this book, you can find out all about building your audience and determining whether they're finding and hanging out on your channel. Your core audience on YouTube is a community of passionate individuals who collectively care deeply about a specific subject.
To be truly effective on YouTube and get your audience to engage, you need to share their passion and be creative enough with your content, channel, and social interaction that your commitment comes through loud and clear to them. Your goals are to be either part of the community proper or an expert who provides value to the community.
Going narrow versus going broad
Sharing your passions most effectively often means focusing on your niche. Many aspiring YouTubers feel that going after the largest audience possible to start with is the clearest path to success. Not necessarily. In fact, we want you to consider a few factors that may make you reconsider your plans to try for the broadest audience possible:
- Getting found: It takes time for your channel and content to infiltrate a popular subject area. You're likely competing with millions of videos, some of which have proven immensely successful and will dominate search results for some time.
- Producing unique content: With so many videos in a popular category, you'll definitely have challenges standing out — at least initially. Channels that have been covering your topic space have also had time to refine their brands, another factor that makes their content stand out.
- Reaching influencers: Popular and important industry spokespeople and personalities are constantly being bombarded by creators and viewers. You'll have a tough time attracting their attention at the beginning, no matter how insightful your vision or how creative your content.
- Having help: The channels at the top have lots of promotional help from subscribers or other advocates in social media. That didn't happen overnight. Invest time in developing relationships and proving that you bring value to the table.
Start off being the big fish in the small pond, and choose a specific topic space carefully. Your channel and your content will be more discoverable and increase the likelihood of connecting with both key influencers and the fan base.
Knowing why your audience matters
Treat your audience as an adjunct to your marketing department, public relations firm, sales organization, and design group.
The right audience will
- Spend time on your channel. The length of time that your audience spends viewing your content is important. Videos that receive more watch time are more likely to appear in YouTube search and watch recommendations.
- Share your YouTube content with peers. Everyone dreams of having a popular video with millions of views. A video becomes successful when it's unique and compelling enough with the target audience that one viewer eagerly shares it with peers, who then just as eagerly share it with other peers, and so forth.
- Subscribe to your YouTube channel. Subscribers watch twice as much of your content as nonsubscribers. They also receive updates about your channel activity (new videos, comments) in their subscription feeds, keeping them informed about all the exciting stuff on your channel. Ask your viewers to subscribe in the video, and include annotations where appropriate to subscribe to your channel.
- Engage with your channel. Likes (or dislikes) and comments comprise the avenue for building a community around your channel. Motivated audience members may also include your content on their own channels or websites, expanding your reach and your opportunity to build your audience even further.
- Be your creative advocates. A great audience truly cares about the channels they subscribe to and can be an important source of great ideas and content. Encourage your viewers to use the Comments section below the video to submit ideas; this strategy gives you more content ideas and helps engage viewer interest for the current video.
Defining your target audience as precisely as possible is an important component of channel success. A target audience of “15- to 55-year-old men” is far too broad. Add a layer of detail to define a more targeted audience — for example “people who like cooking” is a much more defined audience.
Finding out the nitty-gritty about your audience
If you haven't yet thought about your online audience, we recommend Video Marketing For Dummies, by Kevin Daum, Bettina Hein, Matt Scott, and Andreas Goeldi (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). It provides a more in-depth look at audience needs and identification than we can offer here, but we do want to offer some food for thought. When planning your YouTube channel, have an image of your targeted fan base in mind at all times. Ask yourself these questions:
- Who are they? Marketing people like to use the term demographics to describe some of the characteristics of their target audience. Think about your audience and attributes such as age, gender, and interest. If you're selling baby products, for example, your audience may be new mothers between 24 and 36 years old. Be specific.
YouTube now attracts more 18- to 49-year-olds than most cable networks. However, if you're going after seniors, it may be a bit more difficult than if you were targeting a slightly younger audience. Fortunately, even some of our older friends are discovering YouTube as well!
- Where are they? YouTube works as well for small local business as it does for the big, international companies. Your social media efforts around your YouTube channel should involve influences in the geographic location you serve.
- How do they get their information? Make an effort to understand what your audience reads, where they go on the web for information, and what events they attend. This will influence the direction of your channel and its contents.
- Who influences them? What bloggers or YouTubers do your targeted viewers connect with? Pay attention to the style of how these web celebrities communicate.
Be authentic. Don't feel that you need to mimic an influencer, because your audience will see right through it.
If you have other properties, such as a website, Facebook page, or Twitter account, you likely have much of the audience information you need for your YouTube planning process. As your channel grows in popularity, don't be surprised if your audience changes as well.
Defining Desired Actions
Your channel-planning blueprint must spell out the type of action you want your audience to take. That's activation. You need clarity around the type of action you want because it influences the type of content you create and the steps you want your audience to take. We cover both of these topics in detail later, in Chapter 10, but you should identify these actions during the planning phase.
No matter how intelligent and independent your fan base, you need to guide them through the experience with your channel and its contents. Believe it or not, your viewers want you to tell them what to do. Some of that supervision may be as explicit as a Subscribe button, or more implicit with the automated viewing of a playlist.
This is an area where many people and organizations struggle. Define what you want the viewer to do and determine how you'll help them do it. If your audience is aligned with your mission, they'll entrust you to guide them through your channel and give them a call to action (CTA, for short). Look at the following CTA options and determine which one sums up what you want your viewers to do:
- Subscribe to your channel. Subscribers are much more valuable viewers because they statistically consume more content and engage more on YouTube and social media.
Don't be shy! Make sure to ask viewers to subscribe.
- Watch more of your videos. Content is often related. If a viewer has just watched a video of yours on house painting, chances are good that they'll watch a video on paint options or brush selection if you ask them to. In Chapter 10, we show you that playlists and annotations can help you guide viewers to watch more.
- Do something. What do you want your viewers to do? Vote? Volunteer? Run marathons? Cook Thai food from your recipes? Video is a strong motivator, so use that factor to drive your viewers to take action.
- Make a purchase. YouTube is now one of the places that people go to make buying decisions. If you're selling something, ask them to buy what you're selling, and be sure to let them know where they can close the sale — whether it's a physical location or a “virtual” store on the web.
- Share their experience. If a viewer enjoyed your channel or content, help them tell others about it. It's another helpful way to attract subscribers and views.
Planning an Outstanding YouTube Channel
YouTube rewards you with higher search rankings and supplementary video recommendations based first and foremost on your channel and individual video watch times. In addition, YouTube looks at factors such as viewer engagement and video sharing rates. Your job in the planning process is to identify and coordinate each component so that you're in a position to keep your channel active.
Having a spokesperson
Okay, you've analyzed your target fan base and figured out what motivates them on YouTube. Now you need to determine whether a specific channel spokesperson would be the right fit for your target fan base. This is a critical decision for both independent creators and organizations.
Typically, an audience gravitates toward either a personality or content, but not toward any old personality or content. Whatever you choose to prioritize, it has to have a high level of authenticity. If the viewers in your topic area engage more with personality, for example, be sure to choose a spokesperson with credibility and appeal.
Aim for the same voice across your content because it will provide the consistency that your audience needs across different types of video.
A good example of a brand with a consistent voice is the personal care company e.l.f. Cosmetics (www.youtube.com/eyeslipsfacedotcom), which consistently uses Achelle Dunaway as the voice of its videos. Achelle isn't terribly famous, but the fans of e.l.f. have come to know her and expect to see or hear her in every video the channel produces. They trust her and associate her with the e.l.f. brand. Often, they give her both feedback and praise in the individual video comments.
Branding
Branding can be a large and complex topic, but we're going to keep it simple: Branding is about naming and design that is unique to you. Need an example? Think about Apple. You see consistency in all its products, naming conventions, website, and packaging. Over time, that branding symbolism — the look and feel — becomes synonymous with who you are. Want to learn more? Check out Branding For Dummies, by Bill Chiaravalle and Barbara Findlay Schenck (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
Your YouTube channel and videos are powerful extensions of your brand. If you have an existing website, logo, or color pattern, bring it over to your YouTube channel and use it for the branded elements of your videos as well. If you give your viewers a great experience on YouTube, chances are that they'll end up on your website, too. Keep the branding consistent. Your viewers will appreciate it.
Planning the channel layout
Your channel must be visually representative of the video content you create. When a viewer first visits your channel, it's important that they understand what kind of videos your produce or curate. You also want viewers to be in a position to quickly find out when new content is expected from your channel. A great design layout makes these tasks a lot easier.
When coming up with a design layout, keep these elements in mind:
- Channel art: The banner you see across the top of your YouTube channel's home page is the welcome mat for your viewer, so make it as appealing as possible. A good channel art design is device agnostic — it looks good on mobile devices, desktops, smart TVs, or what-have-you. To help you make the creation of your channel art easier, you can download a customized graphical template for your YouTube channel at https://support.google.com/youtube.
- Channel trailer: The channel trailer is the first video that visitors see when viewing your channel. This is where you need to captivate your new viewers and get them to subscribe to your channel. You can customize the channel trailer for subscribers or nonsubscribers.
- Channel icon: This icon indicates who you are when you post a comment, release a new video, or show up in search results and many more locations across YouTube and Google+.
The channel icon can be changed only from the Google+ account associated with your YouTube channel.
- Channel links: The small icons that live in the lower-right corner of your channel art direct viewers to your other digital properties, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. The complete list of digital properties is under the About section of your YouTube channel, and you can choose whether to display icons for some or all of your properties.
- Custom sections: Visually dividing your channel page into sections is a great way to help your viewers find the most relevant content on your channel. One way to customize your sections is to create unique playlists or groupings of videos per section.
- Custom thumbnails: Thumbnails are visual snapshots of your video, similar to a poster for a movie. They are chosen by default by YouTube — three optional frames from the beginning, middle, and end of your video are provided for every video asset that's uploaded. You can, however, create a custom thumbnail for each video. If you do so, choose a thumbnail that is illustrative of the content in the video.
Thumbnails have a tremendous impact on a video's view rate. With that fact in mind, always choose or create a good thumbnail, especially for videos shown in sections.
- Featured channels: Channels that you own or like or that are simply relevant for your audience are best included in the Featured Channels section on the right side of your channel page.
Under Featured Channels, you control the additional section Related Channels, which YouTube populates with channels that it considers to be like yours. Though YouTube doesn't disclose the exact criteria, it's likely based on content type and what viewers search for. You can turn off this feature, but by doing so, YouTube won't put your channel on the Related Channel feeds of other users. You benefit only by keeping it on.
- Verified name: A verification badge, identified by a gray check mark, signals viewers that a channel associated with a celebrity or brand is legitimate. You need a Google+ account with the name authorized to receive a verified name for your channel.
With so many channels on YouTube, viewers may think they're viewing the appropriate channel for an organization or famous personality. The verification badge shows up to the right of the channel name and helps alleviate any viewer concerns about the legitimacy of the channel.
Crafting a Content Strategy
Coming up with a mission for your channel is important, as is defining your audience and planning how your channel could best serve your target audience's needs, but at some point you have to define the content that brings it all together. Well, there's no time like the present, so get ready to tackle that task.
Recognizing that content includes video and more
When establishing a content plan, consider these factors that influence how your audience discovers your content and what action viewers take as a result of watching:
- Video: The channel trailer is the first video visitors see when viewing your channel. This is where you need to captivate your new viewers and get them to subscribe to your channel. You can customize which channel trailer is shown for subscribers or nonsubscribers.
- Intro and outros: Create consistent intro and outro styles for your videos. Think of intros and outros as what you see at the beginning and end of your favorite television show. In the first five seconds, a viewer should know that this is one of your videos; this consistency can be something as simple as the way you say hello and greet your viewers or as complex as an animated logo. Outros should be similar across your channel as well — a goodbye ritual or animated end cards, for example.
- Metadata: Metadata, or the words you use to describe your video, include the video title, keyword tags, and video description. In Chapter 9, you can see how to add and modify your metadata content.
Though the term metadata sounds like something out of a Star Trek episode, it's important for discovery and YouTube Search. Viewers can also find more information about the video or links back to your website if they want more information.
- Thumbnails: Thumbnails need to be descriptive of the content that a viewer could find in your video. Make custom thumbnails to help viewers discover your content above the rest.
- Annotations: Annotations are overlay elements that you can add to your existing videos. They allow viewers to do something when they click on the annotation, such as subscribe or get more information about you or view more content.
Don't worry about the nuances of making your videos interactive with annotations. You can see how easy this task is and understand the art and science of annotations in Chapter 10.
- End cards: An end card is a collection of one or more annotations at the end of a video that drives viewers to do what you want them to do when the video is completed. As part of your branding, you want your end cards to be consistent in both their layout and CTAs.
- Links: Use clickable links in your video description to drive viewers to a specific location on the web or somewhere within YouTube.
Your planning process should consider the viewer who wants more information from a specific video. Providing links in the video description or annotations is a great way to give the audience more information when they want it.
- Web assets: Where you send your viewers after they click on a video description or annotation is important for both your viewers' experience and for your channel goals. Your planning must take into account where you send your viewers and what you expect them to do when they arrive at your chosen destination. Be creative! Your target might be a Facebook contest, a Twitter page, a scientific journal, or anything else you can link to that is relevant for your viewers.
Looking at content formats
If you've been mulling over jumping into the YouTube world for a while, we're pretty sure that you've spent a lot of time wrestling with how to produce all that content to keep your channel fresh and active. With YouTube, you have several options for your content strategy:
- Creation: Regularly produce your own content. You can certainly build a channel without a stitch of your own content, but if you're going to stand out, your viewers need to see your genuine stuff.
- Curation: Mine the YouTube universe for content that complements your channel, and organize it in a logical way using sections and playlists for the viewer.
Think of curation in terms of what a museum does: Collect all this great art (content), and then pull it together into a themed exhibit. The YouTube playlist is the museum's exhibit. That's why museums put French Impressionist paintings together: because it's all about the viewer/visitor experience. Would you want to see an impressionist painting together with contemporary pottery? Probably not.
Channel owners generally love it when their videos are included in playlists, because it helps promote their channels and gets viewers watching their content. Done right, your curation favor will be returned many times over.
- Collaboration: You don't have to do everything yourself! Team up with other channel owners and create joint content. It's a popular and effective way to grow an audience and gain subscribers. Since a YouTube video can be associated with only one channel, your collaboration planning should take into account content that you'll own (create) and content that you'll help share (collaborate).
Here are some examples of different types of content you can utilize for your channel:
- Episodic content: The idea here is to have reoccurring content that creates a series or a body of work on a specific topic. This is great content to produce for your channel because it's highly attractive to channel subscribers. Subscribers can be notified every time you release a video.
- Short- and long-form content: Creating a mixture of short- and long-form content can help you understand the sweet spot for your viewers. YouTube Analytics (described in Chapter 11) helps you plan better by identifying the optimal total run time for your videos. If you're creating ten-minute videos with short watch times, consider adding in annotations to lead viewers to a different video on a similar topic where you start to see the watch times decline.
- Create new edits, recycle footage: Don't be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to content creation. Reuse video outtakes, behind-the-scenes, and additional footage (called B-roll) to make new edits. Recycle your content when it makes sense for your viewers.
- Playlists: Reengage viewers with old videos in new playlists. Highlight videos that are still relevant on your channel page and in new playlists. You can choose to include your playlist updates in your channel feed to update your fans.
- Plan for Mobile: Mobile viewership accounts for 40 percent of global YouTube video consumption. Make your content easy to consume on mobile devices. Easy-to-see thumbnails and text onscreen are important for your mobile audience. Shorter titles are easier to read and understand on mobile as well. In Chapter 11, you can see how to use YouTube Analytics to check your channel traffic sources and understand what percentage of views are from mobile.
We conducted a major research study of the Beauty category on YouTube, analyzing 168 companies and their YouTube channels, 45,000 independent creators and their channels, and more than 800,000 total videos. We found that even in this very crowded part of YouTube, channels with a clear but authentic and differentiated mission had far superior channel performance. They had more views, subscribers, and engagement than many much larger beauty brands. The more savvy beauty brands, though, were quick to understand this new dynamic and then began including content from independent creators.
For example, Bobbi Brown, the beauty brand, put together an additional YouTube channel dedicated to beauty vloggers looking to create inspiring looks for their viewers. Check it out at www.youtube.com/ilovemakeupOFFICIAL. The brand provides products and inspiration to the vloggers, and the vloggers then go on to create videos for the I Love Makeup channel. This may sound convoluted, but it works well because each of the vloggers already has a dedicated audience following their content, each one is a trusted advisor to their audience on all things beauty, and now their fans watch them create content for one of their favorite cosmetic brands. It's a win for both vloggers and the brand.
Curation recycling
Multi-channel networks aggregate many similarly themed YouTube channels and personalities. Frequently, they help promote their managed channels' content on a single primary channel. To see what we mean, check out Tastemade (www.youtube.com/tastemade), which is a great example of an MCN curating its channels' content — they group videos from different channels into a unified theme and make it much easier for viewers to watch them. You don't have to own or be affiliated with a YouTube video to include it in your own channel playlist lineup. You can simply enjoy recipes and collect and curate them from your audience. There are no limits to what you can curate, although some content will resonate better with your audience.
Create sections and playlists on your channel that include videos from other creators. As long as it makes sense for your channel to include outside content, curating content is a great way to expand your channel's appeal and keep it active even if you aren't creating unique content.
Adidas, for example, has a ton of channels; it made a conscious decision to link many of its subchannels to sections and playlists on its primary channel, at www.youtube.com/user/adidas. Doing so encourages cross promotion of its other assets and channels.
Programming for Success
Suppose that you create a good channel and produce ten excellent videos that your audience would likely watch, share, like, and comment on. Uploading those ten videos all at one time translates into only one measly real event for your audience, meaning that you've left nine marketing opportunities unexploited.
The moral of the story? Don't rush to upload all your content to YouTube at one time. You'll get better audience engagement if you space out your uploads, in essence delivering your content on a regular basis. Programming dictates how best to deliver your content to your fan base.
Keeping your subscriber feeds active is an important part of programming strategy, but it doesn't need to be video based. Your other channel activity (such as playlist modification) and engagement (which includes likes and sharing) also keeps your subscriber feed flowing.
Delivering content consistently
A famous philosopher once spoke rather disparagingly about foolish consistencies and the danger of conformity. That may be a good philosophy for your branding and content, but not for your YouTube channel programming. Though YouTube differs significantly from broadcast television and cable networks, your viewers will want consistency and predictability of content scheduling.
The better YouTube creators put up content on their channels regularly. That's what a publishing schedule is: your upload plan. Check out the grid shown in Figure 5-4 — it shows the publishing schedule for Dulce Candy (www.youtube.com/DulceCandy87), a beauty-and-style personality with a popular channel. From the pattern, you see a continual stream of content being added. Her average is every 3.1 days between uploads.
Figure 5-4: The Dulce Candy publishing schedule.
Upload regular content weekly. Don't hide it. Let the audience know your publishing schedule on YouTube, and use social media to alert them when your content is live.
In addition to your social media outreach, remember that your channel feed will alert your subscribers whenever you upload new content.
Being flexible and reactive
Just because you're producing regular, addictive, episodic content that amasses both subscribers and views doesn't mean that you can't generate some additional excitement around your channel. You may want to consider certain triggers:
- Tentpole events: Significant cultural or industry events may play well into your channel and content strategy. If you sell zombie paraphernalia, Halloween is a perfect tentpole event for you. Identify regular events or happenings in your topic area. If your channel covers auto racing, consider certain events such as the Daytona 500 and Le Mans as tentpole events. Industry events may be a great way to capture footage with industry leaders and personality.
Make sure you have important YouTube apps installed on your mobile devices, especially at tentpole events. There are several apps available on both Android and IOS that allow you to work on the fly. Use the Capture app to record, edit, and upload video on the fly. Manage your channel with the Studio app. Just want to watch some YouTube videos? The YouTube app is great for that.
- Reactive: You should be prepared to leverage nonplanned events for your channel, which should drive additional traffic and viewership. Nonplanned events are about news, but only if it's relevant to your channel. Marques Brownlee (www.youtube.com/marquesbrowlee) is a major video reviewer who covers the consumer electronics business. If someone announces a new smartphone, you can be sure that Marques will have something on YouTube relatively fast.
Time-sensitive content may help you in search and recommended videos because YouTube likes to put trending content recommendations in front of relevant viewers.
- Momentum: You can repackage your content into video trailers to help drive channel promotion. Just did a YouTube live event? Put together a highlight reel to keep your channel active and your subscribers' channel feeds flowing. Don't be afraid to craft outtake videos, behind-the-scenes content, and more personal pieces to let your audience know that you're excited for this new content. This will help personalize and enhance the authenticity of your channel.
Going live for more engagement
You can deliver a much more interactive experience with your most passionate viewers by taking advantage of YouTube live events. You can live-stream any number of events, but remember that they should align with your channel's mission.
There are channel restrictions and some technical requirements for live streaming. Ensure that your account is in good standing with no strikes and that you meet the technical requirements. Don't forget to test sufficiently before using this service.
Consider the following statements before adding live streaming to your YouTube programming mix:
- Promotion is important: YouTube live streaming is clearly different from regular YouTube video — your viewers must show up for the live event to experience it as it happens. If they don't know about it, they won't show up, and all your prep work may be for naught. Be sure to get the word out, and don't be shy about asking your YouTube subscribers to help.
- Adjust in-flight: Your audience will provide feedback on the fly as your event occurs, so be sure to watch the comments and respond accordingly.
- Repurpose event content: A livestreamed event is a great way to capture rich and engaging content for use on your channel. Figure out how it fits into your channel after the event is over.
Reuse your livestreamed content and divide it into multiple videos if it makes sense. If you're going to include the event on your channel, don't feel the need to save the event as one video.
Before you use content derived from a live event on your channel, you will in some circumstances need the legal right to use the content. Don't worry: You won't need to hire a lawyer, because you can read all about it in Chapter 16 when you'll learn all about copyright.
Planning Doesn't End
Your channel is live. You created great content. You have views. Your audience is engaged. It's all smooth sailing, right? Hopefully, yes, but as the saying goes, “You have to inspect what you expect.” Look to see whether your audience
“Well, how do I all that?” you may ask. Fear not: You'll find the answers to all these questions (and to a few others as well) when we help you explore YouTube Analytics in Chapter 11.
The YouTube world constantly changes with new channels, new contents, new personalities, and new trends. Your channel makes you part of this world, and you're responsible for adapting to changes in order to stay relevant. Pay attention to what the viewers are telling you, and feed it into your ongoing planning process.