Guide to Customising your Youtube Channel - Youtube Social Series

This post is the third part in Youtube Social Series, which is all about the recent changes made to Youtube earlier this year and how they affect the habits and Youtube users (Youtubers) journey across the platform; how they are encouraged to interact and engage with branded channels as well as sharing and uploading videos.
In last week’s post we looked at how Youtube’s navigational redesign has personalised the experience for users, which has also benefitted Channel owners.
This week I am looking at what you need to customise your own Channel to help build and sustain your subscription community.

​Customise your Youtube Channel

With Youtube’s new My Channel design you can choose how you neatly display your content depending on who your viewers are and where they have come from.
As mentioned in last weeks post, you really need to make the most out of customizing your channel - to engage potential subscribers from the onset, encourage sharing (to widen the social reach = more subscribers) gain (some) valuable feedback and discussion.
Viewers are given ample amount of freedom to choose who and what they subscribe to, but fortunately, for Channel owners, Youtube’s has built in intuitive navigational touch-points that integrate with individuals news feeds, Google+ communities and through recommended videos (through Google’s Search your World – see last weeks post)

​What is the reality for Channel owners and users? 
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Brands, Celebrities and even TV stations are realising the benefits of building a strong subscription bases and commentary feeds to collate and drive traffic through engagement.
They have realised the benefits of investing time in  optimisation and multi-device designs for their Youtube channel to showcase what they have, who they are, and fully optimising it to lead back to the home static sites, social profiles, product sites etc.
Here’s a quick run-down of the changes you can make to customise your Youtube Channel profile.


1. Build your visual brand into the design. As part of Youtube’s One Channel it’s important to create a recognised brand across the different visual materials for a range of devices (laptops, tablets, mobile, television). Do ensure your logo is somewhere in there to reference your online brand (social profiles, website, other content). If you are a personal site, or you are the brand, don’t put this where your profile picture goes (unless you really don’t want to be seen). Video is such a personal medium that to achieve a greater connection with your audience it’s valuable to put a face to the brand for people to affiliate with. You can download the different material template covers here- Youtube One Channel templates.
2. Optimise: Make sure you connect all of your social profiles, websites, product sites etc to reinforce the brand presence, make it easy for your audience to find you and strengthen your SEO ranking.
3. The Home tab: You can choose how your Home tab is viewed from the onset. Some channels will have a small piece of writing, but you can ground all of the background details in the ‘About’ tab. Some Channel owners simply show the latest uploads, which can be work depending on your video content. Or you can create an introduction video and decide whether only non-subscribers view it or everyone can see it. It’s a great way to personalise the experience for non-subscribers. But do keep the video short, 50 seconds is more than enough.
4. The Discussion tab: This is not as public compared with the previous design. Comments are important but they’re not central to the communities in Youtube. However your community manager will still need to keep an eye and ear on this to reply to conversational flow, or by deleting harmful comments (not necessarily inane). Youtube is renowned for its pointless spiteful comments, so don’t take it all to heart. It highlights the best and the worst of humanity, which is why it’s such a personal medium.
5. The About tab: The usual necessary branded copy with production details and information. This section is important as it grounds your brand, but keep the copy to a few paragraphs maximum.


6 Design a cover or introduction credits for every video to make it look more professional. Not everyone does this but by investing in your videos it reinforces the brand across platforms when the videos are embedded, and it shows that your brand is consistent and reliable, implying longevity, which will help you build your audience.
7. You can now group similar videos into playlist to encourage interested viewers to watch related videos, leading them to the CTA as part of the video message. Playlist play through each video without the viewer having to press play again.


8. Tag your videos: You can now group your videos based on the context of the videos, just as you would bookmarks and blogs. This helps your audience find relevant videos within your channels, in Youtube’s search engine and support SEO for your videos.



Google are always updating and making changes to their software and with Youtube for the matters I have discussed in previous posts – Google+ integration with Youtube and Youtube Personalisation. Check back here for more current updates when they happen.
Next week’s final post as part of Youtube's Social Series. I will be dissecting and showing examples of successful Youtube channels and how they’ve done it.


Did I miss anything? 
I really enjoy writing these posts but I struggle to fit everything in that I want to say and think is relevant. If I have missed something please let me know in the comments below. I will be collating the Youtube Social Series and turning it into an ebook. If I use your information from your comment I will reference your profile, company and comment.

Did I miss anything? 
I really enjoy writing these posts but I struggle to fit everything in that I want to say and think is relevant. If I have missed something please let me know in the comments below. I will be collating the Youtube Social Series and turning it into an ebook. If I use your information from your comment I will reference your profile, company and comment.