Youtube Channel Tips

If you’re an artist, you’ve probably looked at another artist on YouTube or even at the Colour in Your Life YouTube Channel at some point and thought “Hmmmm…….pretty sure I could do that!!”.  Well!  You really can.  It’s super easy to start your own Youtube channel.  Becoming a viral screen sensation who earns thousands of dollars in Google revenue is a different story.  But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.  And with Youtube, it’s about being consistent, doing some research about your niche, and making it unique.  Luckily you are uniquely you and there is no other “you” in the world, so the unique part is easy too :)

Here’s a few pointers for you in starting your own Youtube channel.

Keyword Research

With each clip you put up, make sure you do some keyword research first.  There are some great, cheap tools out there for finding out what people are searching for, (and more importantly, if you can capture any of this traffic).  Tubebuddy and VidIQ are two that are great.  But just be aware, if it’s a popular keyword, don’t use it at the top of your tags list or in your title – at this young stage of your channel’s development, you won’t have enough “pull” to compete for it.  Feel free to put it further down the list, but try to find a keyword for the top of your tag list and title that is searched for enough, without being too competitive.  For a good free starting point with keyword research, start typing into the Youtube search bar what you’d like to search for, eg “how to paint…….”  the most popular keywords will automagically appear in the drop down box eg “how to paint easy”, “how to paint kids” and “how to paint acrylics”.  Again though, you don’t want the most popular keyword with a fledgling channel.  When your channel is huge, thriving and wildly successful, you won’t even have to worry about keyword research, as you’ll be making the keyword trends!

The Meta Data

Whatever keywords (tags) you put on your clip, make sure you put those high ranking ones first up (as I said before, these are not necessarily the most searched for keywords, but ones that you can also compete for).  Make sure you put it in your title and description too.   Use your description area to put HEAPS of info.  They allow 5000 characters in the description, so you might as well use it!  Some people transcribe their whole clip in this area.  Build yourself a little template and then you can copy and paste it for each clip, modifying it for each one.  This can include materials you use, your website and social links, links to other YT clips, heaps more.  Note – don’t try and “stuff” keywords into this section. It needs to make sense to human readers!

Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world, second only to Google, and is owned by Google, so the more information you can put on the backend of your clips, the better your chances are of being found, and end up in the elusive “recommended” videos on Youtube side bars!

Make sure you are using the cards and end screens to help direct your viewers.  Cards are interactive elements added to YouTube videos that can be used to promote videos, playlists, websites, merchandise or channels. You can use cards to link to other videos on your channel that are relevant to that part of the video where you place the card; you can also link to approved websites (this function is not available when your channel is young) , so when you get your tutorials up and running you can link to there.

Duration

When you’re first starting your channel clips between 6 – 10 minutes are fine.  Make the content as engaging as you can.  You really, really, REALLY want people to watch until the end.  The main way your clips will go to the “recommended” area is if people are watching more than 50% of them, consistently.  And this is where those elusive Google $$$ are!

When your channel gets bigger (say over 10,000 subscribers), you will actually be penalised under the Google algorthim if your clips are shorter than 8 minutes. Eep! So make them at least 12 minutes. It is extremely, EXTREMELY difficult to hold people’s attentions for longer than about 3 minutes on Youtube. This is why you will be rewarded by Youtube, by having your video in the “recommended” area if at least half of it is consistently being viewed !

Copyright Matters!

Be copyright conscious. It may go without saying – but only upload your own videos to your Youtube channel. They have plenty of tools at their disposal to match content to what already exists on Youtube, and you don’t really want a Copyright strike against your good name. This also means making sure any music you have used in your clip you own the rights to, or it is a free licence (Youtube offers free music via their user dashboard under “Audio Library”), or via a creative commons licence (incompetech.com is a great resource for music). Make sure you credit the musicians at the end of your video if you need to!

Success!

Finally, YouTube want you to succeed as a YouTuber.  And they have PLENTY of resources to help creators in all aspects of developing your channel. It’s just a matter of spending the time doing the research and the admin on the back-end – it’s worth it, people!

Enjoy making videos and remember to save your bloopers, they’ll be worth a fortune someday :D

Or

Not ready to make your own video channel?

Leave it to the professional team at CIYL and we’ll get you and your art in front of an audience of Millions!

Read more here about being on the Colour in Your Life TV show here

Be on the Show