Youtube Channel Basics : What You Need to Know

The Basics of Youtube

In this article, we will give you an insight into all you need to know about Youtube from why it’s beneficial for your business to how to create and manage a Youtube channel.

What Is Youtube?

Youtube is a website created in 2005 designed for sharing videos. Every minute of every day, more than 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

As of April 2022, YouTube has 2.6 billion monthly active users that are based worldwide. This number of users continues to grow and shows no signs of slowing down with new users joining the platform every day. 

In terms of daily active users, YouTube sees approximately 122 million users per day. 

Why Should Your Business Be On Youtube?

After Google, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. This is why as part of a business marketing strategy, including Youtube as one of your channels as well as investing in video content can create many benefits from brand awareness to increases in website traffic and sales.

Video Content Strategy

When looking to create a Youtube channel and video content for your business, it’s advisable to first review how often you will update your channel.

Creating a Youtube video needs a significant amount of time allocated to the creation process from filming and editing to the upload process.

The Youtube algorithm rewards the channel with consistent posting and help the reach of the content to a wider audience. When you also begin to accumulate an audience on your channel, audiences react more positively to channels with a regular posting schedule rather than inactive channels.

This is why preplanning your video content before you make your channel or begin posting can help support your video marketing strategy.

How to Create a Youtube Channel

Creating a Youtube channel for your business is a simple step-by-step process. Firstly, all you need is a Gmail account, preferably one connected to your business if it’s a channel you are creating for your business.

When you open Youtube, if you are not already signed in, you will see a “Sign In” button in the top right-hand corner and you should proceed to sign in.

Once you are signed in, in the top right-hand corner, you will now see an icon which generally will have an initial connection to the name on the account and once this is clicked, a drop-down menu will appear. From this menu, select Settings.

When you are brought to the Settings page, you will see a list of options on the page. One of these options is “Add or Manage Channels” and this is what you need to click next.

This will then open a page where all you need to do is add your business name for your Youtube channel and confirm.

Now you have a Youtube channel for your business and are ready to customise and fill with your video content.

Youtube Studio

Once you have your Youtube channel created, it’s time to prepare the channel with your business information and branding before you begin populating it with your video content. 

The epicentre of your YouTube channel can be managed in Youtube Studio – this is where you can manage your videos, comments and analytics.

Within Youtube Studio, there are a number of different tools you can use for your Youtube channel.

Dashboard

The dashboard of your Youtube Studio is where you can find a general overview of the stats of your channel including views, watch time and subscribers as well as a breakdown of the most popular videos on your channel and notifications of elements that may need to be actioned by you. You can also find content from Youtube being recommended to you for ways to improve and support your channel. 

Content

In this area, you will find all the video content you upload to your channel despite the visibility status of the videos.

Here you can optimise and manage videos while also having an overview of the different performance metrics of the videos.

Comments

Comments on the videos of your channel are a great way to gain feedback from your audience as well as a place for you to create a relationship through engaging with users that leave comments. 

In this area, you can manage comments across all of your video content with the title of each corresponding video found on the right hand of the screen.

Youtube has a built in filters to restrict comments with harmful language and links. These can sometimes pass through but can be removed and blocked from the channel.

Interacting and responding to comments left on your videos is not only a great way to build a relationship with your audience but the engagement created through the interaction between comments works well with the Youtube algorithm.

Analytics

YouTube Analytics are similar to other social media analytics and Google Analytics but provide a greater insight into who your audience is.

Analytics can be broken down into

• Overview
• Content
• Audience 
• Research

The audience tab can show you the other Youtube channels and video content they enjoy which you can explore and create a strategy for your own content for similar content you can create to what these other channels are unable to do that you may have the resources for.

Playlists

Creating playlists on your channel can not only support in making your channel look organised, especially in the different topics of content on your channel, but it can also increase the number of time users will spend watching your content.

When you create a Playlist, it’s important that if possible, your playlist title contains keywords related to your content as well as a description added to your playlist containing keywords.

Subtitles

Subtitles are not only beneficial to your Youtube channel for accessibility but there is research that shows algorithms respond better to video content that includes subtitles/captions.

If your video content only contains music, this isn’t an element that you need to be concerned about. 

Subtitles can be created and edited within Youtube itself and there are other external resources, such as Rev, that can have video files uploaded and captions created for a fee. 

Copyright

In this area, this is support for when you find your content on another channel. You can submit requests for your content to be removed and this is where the status of your requests can be monitored.

Customise

In this area, this should be a priority when you create your channel before you populate the channel with video content to ensure it looks professional and consistent with your other business branding.

There are three areas of customisation that can be updated on the channel;

Layout

The layout of your channel can help create a more organised and professional outlook to the user. 

This can be broken down into the channel trailer/featured video and playlists with both providing benefits for your channel.

The channel trailer and featured video will always autoplay when set up on your channel which can help increase your channel/video views and watch time. Your featured video for returning subscribers can be benefitted from being updated each week with your new video to create a new focus each week and increase the engagement on new content.

Playlists can not only give your channel a professional and organised outlook but in the early stages of your channel, it can help it look more full as you continue to add more video content each week..

Branding

The branding of your channel should be consistent with the branding that would be seen across your other social media channels – this would include logo and branding colours.

With your channel logo, you want to ensure no element or text is clipped by the circular format of the logo while also ensuring the logo isn’t pixelated. 

With your Youtube cover, the required sizing and pixels needed are outlined on the page as well as examples of what the cover will look like on three main devices – a mobile, a desktop and a TV. This is beneficial as many users will use Youtube across different devices so this gives a good insight to ensure the cover is off a high quality across the board.

The last option in this area is Watermark. This can be your logo and the requirements are also outlined on the page. A watermark isn’t a necessity for your Youtube channel but it is a great tool to deter other channels from downloading your content to pass it off as their own.

Basic Information

On your channel, there is a tab that will contain information about your business/channel as well as links to other pages and your business email address.

In your channel description, you want to share information about the business as well as content the audience/user can expect to see on the channel. The description should be formatted in a style that is easy to read and also be rich in keywords relating to the business and content, for example, a bakery business would ensure the keyword “baking” would be used throughout their description.

Monetisation

This section is activated once your channel qualifies for the Youtube partner programme showing a breakdown of the performance of the videos on the channel and the revenue created from these.

Youtube Partner Programme

Many businesses create a Youtube channel and develop a strategy for the platform with a goal in mind of using the channel to create revenue from the video content. The YouTube Partner Programme (YPP) provides creators with greater access to YouTube resources and monetisation features. It also enables revenue-sharing from ads being served on your content.

In order to create revenue from your Youtube channel, you must first qualify for the Youtube Partner Programme. The minimum eligibility requirements needed are: 

• Follow all of the YouTube Channel Monetisation Policies.
• Live in a country/region where the YouTube Partner Programme is available.
• Have no active Community Guidelines strikes on your channel.
• Have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months.
• Have more than 1,000 subscribers.
• Have a linked AdSense account.

Audio Library

The Audio Library within Youtube Studio is ideal for anyone looking to create video content for their channel, especially in the early stages, who struggle to find royalty-free audio to use for their videos.

In this area, users can listen to samples of audio files from Youtube and select music they would like to use and download It for their video edits.

Uploading and Optimising Your Content

Once you have your channel prepared, you are reading to upload video content for your Youtube business channel.

With each video uploaded, the content within the video needs to be optimised with keywords and custom elements to help the video appear in search results and suggested videos.

Title, Description and Tags

The main elements that are a key focus for the use of keywords are the title, description and tags of the video.

When working on the video optimisation, you should aim to use whatever keywords you use in your title are also in your description and added as tags. 

Within your description, you want to fill it with as much information as possible. Start your description with an insight into what they can expect about the content within the video and expand on why you are showing the content. Once you have explained the content, you should follow it up with a call to action for the viewer to interact with the channel and video, for example “let us know what you would choose in the comments” or “be sure to subscribe for more from our channel”

At the end of your description, you should add information about your business including a link to your website and other relevant links you would like to include. This section can be added to all your video descriptions moving forward as this isn’t specific to the content of each video.

Thumbnail

Having a custom thumbnail on the video content on your channel can make your videos eye-catching to a user and increase the possibility of them choosing your content to watch over other video results provided to them.

Youtube will always take three screenshots from your video content for you to choose as a thumbnail and these can always be used as a placeholder but it is recommended to always have a custom thumbnail created.

When you create a new Youtube channel, before you can upload a custom thumbnail, you need to verify your identity. This is a simple process of adding a phone number and adding a code that will be sent to you. Once this is confirmed, you will not need to verify it again.

A great external resource to use to create your thumbnails is Canva which has lots of eye-catching templates for different styles of content and industries for you to customise with your business branding and for each video.

Add to Playlists

Playlists can be created within a video as well as in a separate tab.

To add your video to a playlist, click the playlists box and you can select as many playlists that apply to your video as well as create a new one while within the video.

End Screen

The end screen of your video is a way to promote other content on your channel to the viewer as well as encourage them to subscribe to your channel. When creating an end screen, you want to ensure the placement doesn’t obscure any content at the end of your video as this can be off-putting to the viewer. 

There are a number of elements to choose from when creating your end screen. 

These are;

• Subscribe
• Video
• Playlist
• Channel
• Link

However, the link option in both End Screen and Cards are only available once you are in the Youtube Partner Programme. 

Cards

YouTube cards are the interactive cards you see in YouTube videos that will allow you as the channel to share clickable links to relevant content throughout a video. You can add up to five cards to each video and you can use cards in any video.

Like End Screens, a link cannot be added as a card in your Youtube video until you have qualified for the partner programme. 

COPPA 

The requirements from Youtube to declare if your content is made for children came into effect after YouTube settled with the FTC over the platform’s COPPA Rule violations. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a 1998 U.S. law created to protect the privacy of children under 13.

If you want to learn more about COPPA and whether your content would be considered made for children, you can read more here.

Youtube Shorts

Youtube Shorts are now an element of the platform that has grown in popularity as you can create video content using a mobile phone device.

Shorts is a new way to express yourself in 15 seconds or less, allowing your business to experiment and keep up with trends, try out dance challenges, bring your hilarious ideas to life, and more. 

• Tools you can use within Youtube Shorts are;
• A multi-segment camera to string multiple video clips together,
• The option to record with music from a large library of songs that will continue to grow,
• Speed controls that give you the flexibility to be creative in your performance,
• Timer/Countdown to easily record, hands-free.

When wanting to create a Youtube channel for your business, the key element is identifying your audience, the correct content and maintaining consistency with posting to beat the Youtube algorithm and find success.

Learn more about how we can support your business video content for your channel with our video marketing services.