In this blog post you will learn how to use featured videos to increase your YouTube subscribers and views.
Before we start, let’s take a look at the breakdown of what you will be learning. In this training I will explain what YouTube featured content is, how it helps increase your subscribers and video views, and I will guide you through how to use this feature in a step by step screen shot tutorial.
So what is YouTube featured content?
Featured content in YouTube can be a video or a playlist. The purpose is to promote a new video to all of your audience.
How does featured content help increase your video views and gain more subscribers to your channel?
Well, it enables you to embed a chosen video or playlist across all of the videos on your channel and ensures that returning subscribers to your channel see your featured content first.
Featuring a video on YouTube is like having free advertising for your other videos on your channel. You can choose to make any one of your videos or playlists appear as a banner on all your videos at any time you wish. You just need to customize which video and you set the time that you want it to appear and disappear.
Other than that, by featuring a video across all your YouTube videos, you are also keeping your audience tuned in to your channel for a longer period of time.
Tuned in audiences often translates into engagement, which then increases the likelihood of top of mind recall when they think of the category that your brand is in.
For example, if you are a chocolate brand and you do a video animation about chocolate or something related, whenever your audience thinks of buying a bar of chocolate, there is a likely increased potential that they would pick your brand off shelf. Of course this is not the sole driving purchase decision of consumers but it assists in increasing the potential of sales to happen.
Featured videos is where YouTube will be taking note of how many likes, comments, or views your video is getting, and it will rank you accordingly in their search engine results. So this means that featured content can be used to increase your search engine ranking.
Now, let me show you how to enable featured content in your YouTube channel.
First, go to your YouTube account dashboard, click on the person icon on the top right corner, then click on the “Creator Studio” button.
Second, on the left column, click on the Channel tab. From the dropdown menu, click on Featured Content.
Then select Featured Content. A dialogue box like this will appear. Select the content that you’d like to feature from the available options.
Let me briefly explain on the two available options you can select from.
Most recent upload is where you choose to automatically feature the most recently uploaded video in your channel. This means that YouTube will automatically feature the video that is most recently uploaded in your channel in the current video you want to feature in.
On the other hand, specific video or playlist is where you can select any video or playlist you want to feature from your channel, or you can enter other people’s YouTube video or playlist URL.
So let’s just say you choose to feature a video or playlist.
You have to select an existing video from your channel that you want to feature. Then click on the Save button on the bottom right.
You will then be looking at this customization of your selected featured content.
There are three things you would need to customize.
First is display time. You can choose and specify when exactly you want the featured content to appear within the current video timeframe.
As for optimize timing, if you decide to tick at this box, YouTube will try to choose the best time to show your promotion, based on past viewer behavior in each video.
And custom message is where you can insert a message and it will appear alongside the featured content.
When you are done customizing, just simply click on the Update button and you are done!
A great idea is to utilize the customization options to promote and drive your marketing campaign. For example, you could use custom message to put in a link to your online store or a website and have visitors go through the sales funnel or even put in a marketing message that promotes 50% off a certain item. The possibilities are many and creative.
Bear in mind that the content you have selected will display consistently across devices in the bottom left corner and appear in what to watch next module for subscribed viewers. It will also include a label with the video or playlist information that appears when you hover over the icon.
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In the next blog post I will be discussing How To Use YouTube Live To Convert Prospects Into Clients
Until next time.
Moni Arora
Moni Arora’s Blog
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