Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
The Basic Info tab of the video edit screen allows you to add metadata that will help your content be discoverable in search:
- Video title. Video titles should clearly identify what your content is about.
- Video description. Video descriptions should give additional information about the contents of the video, as well as links to where you’d like your viewers to go when they have finished watching.
- Tags. Tags help with search discovery. Make sure to add tags that are relevant to your content. If you add keyword tags that are irrelevant to your content, they will drive unqualified views and hurt your watch time.
- Playlists. You can add videos to playlists, which can be organized by theme or in the specific order that you want the videos to be watched.
- Thumbnails. YouTube suggests three thumbnails for your videos. However, it’s recommended that you create your own thumbnails. This way, you can control the messaging and make it more impactful, since thumbnails are the first thing that people notice while navigating YouTube.
- Video state. Make sure you choose the correct video state. Do you want your video to go live right away? Do you want to keep it private? Or schedule it to go live at a specific time?
Choosing a video state
You need to choose a state for your videos:
- Choosing Public makes your content available to everybody on YouTube.
- Choosing Unlisted makes your content available only to those who have a direct link to your YouTube video. This can be useful for brands who only want their videos viewed through their website or shared with specific people.
- In the Private state, only you as the logged-in channel manager can see the video.
- Scheduled is a way to set specific times and dates when your video will go live. This can be useful for making sure that a video goes live when a marketing campaign goes live.
Advanced metadata
The Advanced Settings tab allows for more granular metadata to be added to your content:
- Comments. This allows you to turn viewer comments on and off.
- License and rights ownership. This allows you identify YouTube’s licence terms to assert ownership if anybody wants to copy your content. You also have the option of the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
- Syndication. Syndication options allow you to monetize on certain platforms or everywhere – which means that some views will not be monetized.
- Caption certification. Content that aired on U.S. television may be subject to FCC caption certification rules. You can add your caption certification if required here.
- Distribution options. These allow embedding, so users can embed your video in their sites.
- Category. You can identify the category your YouTube video falls into. Is it education? Entertainment?
- Video location. You can add where the content was recorded using Google Maps integration.
- Video language. You can identify the language your content is recorded in. This way, your content will appear to the right audience in their preferred language.
- Community contributions. You can decide if you want to accept community contributions to your video. Community contributions are closed caption contributions that you can add to each of your videos. Fans can help with closed captions in languages that you’re not able to serve.
- Recording date. This allows you to identify when the video was recorded.
- Video statistics. These make the video’s view statistics public or not.
- 3D video. This helps identify to YouTube that this is a 3D video and that it can be watched in 3D video platforms.
- Content declaration. If you’re creating content that is sponsored, you should identify this to YouTube. All paid promotions need to comply with YouTube’s rules.
Carlos Pacheco
Carlos Pacheco is the Vice President of Audience Development at Boat Rocker Media. Managing a team dedicated to online audience growth, Carlos has grown YouTube channels to have millions of subscribers and billions of views. Follow Carlos on Twitter on @carlospache_co for great social media tips.
