possible.
You should choose one main color scheme or design style and stick to it. Always look for ways to include your logo or
another brand-identifying element into your videos and other content. The more often people see it, the faster
they’ll begin to recognize it.
If you have
a great tagline, you should include that on your artwork. If you produce a lot
of videos (a new video every week, or every other day, for example), then include
that in your channel banner so that people know what to expect.
Remember that
YouTube can be viewed on many devices, from a smart phone to a television. On a
larger television screen, the channel art will appear in the background, behind
your content. On a desktop or mobile device, the channel artwork appears as a
banner across the top of the content.
You can also
create your channel artwork from scratch if you’re on a tight budget using a
free image creator like Canva. This free tool includes ready-to-go YouTube
templates that you can quickly and easily customize for your channel.
Link: https://www.Canva.com
Important Note: As you design your channel artwork, keep in
mind that “safe area” in the center of the template. That’s the area that will
be displayed on nearly every device. You want to keep your text and graphics
within that area.
Make sure
any important information like your website URL, taglines, and images are
inside of this space so they’ll show up on the device and not be cut off or
covered up.
Another
thing to think about is your linking text. YouTube lets you display links to
your channel – they show up in the bottom right corner, on top of your channel
artwork. Make sure you don’t have text, logos, or important images in that area
of your artwork.
Pro Tip: You could also create a hat, mug or t-shirt
with your channel logo and include it in every video. The more you can highlight
your brand throughout your content, the better.
Then later, as your channel grows in popularity, you’ll be able to sell these
items to your subscribers who want to support your business.
It’s easy to create a custom merch at places like: https://www.Printful.com or https://www.RedBubble.com
Step 4: Creating Shareworthy Content
Your first
video will probably not be everything you were hoping for. That’s fine –
practice makes perfect! The more you create content, the faster and easier it
will be and the quality will improve as will your skills.
What you want to do is practice making and uploading videos until you’re
familiar and comfortable with the way the platform works.
Watch a lot
of videos in your market and see what channel owners are offering. Pay
attention to their format and overall structure, along with their pacing. Take plenty of notes!
Then, create a content schedule and stick to it.
and upload them (you don’t have to
actually publish everything you upload). The more you practice, the better
you’ll become, just like every other skill you’ve learned.
The post
production process is very important as well, especially when it comes to
creating engaging content free of lag and poor pacing.
The main
thing to pay attention to during the editing process is to remove any unnecessary
pauses, lags and to ensure that you keep a steady pace so that your content
flows smoothly and keeps your viewers’ attention.
You can
also save a lot of money by learning how to edit your own videos. Popular
Vloggers like Jake Paul and Felix Kjellberg use Adobe Premiere to edit their
videos. You’ll pay just over $20 a month to use it, but it’s very intuitive and
comes with everything you’ll need to get started.
If you want to follow the lead of popular vlogger Casey Neistat, you can use the Final Cut Pro app.
Final Cut Pro is easier to use than Adobe Premiere and comes packed with useful features that’ll help you create stunning videos. It also includes outstanding organizational tools that will make project planning easier.
There’s free editing software available as well, including iMovie which has a minimal learning curve and comes pre-installed on Mac-based operating systems.
It’s a great tool for starting out, and will help you learn the basics of video editing quickly and easily.
YouTube
isn’t a difficult platform to learn. In fact, its popularity is mostly due to
how easy it is to use. You can upload videos in a range of formats and YouTube
converts them into Adobe Flash for you (this gives you a file extension of
.FLV).
Doing this
allows YouTube to play your videos on its flash player (which anyone can upload
for free and use).
Another
great benefit of this is that you can embed your video into a website just by
copying the HTML code and pasting it into your site. This lets any of your
website visitors watch the video on your site using the YouTube player.
This way,
you don’t have to host the videos on your own site and use up a ton of
bandwidth.
Bandwidth
is the range of signal frequencies you need to transmit data over the internet
– and you have to pay for what you use. Let YouTube carry the bandwidth burden
for you!
Of course,
most people will likely find your video by searching Google or YouTube’s on-site
search for relevant content. In order to help connect viewers with the videos
they’re looking for, YouTube utilizes a complex algorithm that’s made up of
over a million lines of code.
One of the main factors they use to figure out which videos to show is video metadata.
Metadata is
the title, description, thumbnail, and tags you give your video when you upload
it. That means you need to make sure your tags are relevant to the video
content (and that they match the keywords viewers would use to search for your
content).
YouTube
also measures video quality by measuring the length of time it’s being watched.
If a lot of viewers leave the channel before your video is over, this suggests
that your video had a misleading title (or thumbnail), or that it didn’t give
viewers what they were looking for.
If they
stay until the end, your video is likely appropriate for the search terms used,
and it will be given a higher ranking than videos left unfinished.
Tips: Spend some time watching videos from your
favorite channels, especially from creators in your niche.
Pay
attention to their overall style, how they create transitions, what their pace
is and branding style.
·
What kind
of voice and tone do they take when creating videos?
·
Do they
create head-talker type video content more often than other formats?
Take
notes! We’ve mentioned this already but
it’s important, especially when you are doing market research in order to
create a plan for your own channel.
You’ll want to reflect on this later.
And finally, give yourself the freedom to make mistakes. You’ll learn a lot
throughout the process and the kind of video content you create today will
likely look a lot different from what you create a year from now when you’ve
had the time and experience needed.
The important thing is to stay consistent, follow a content schedule that your subscribers come to rely on and stay true to your brand.