7 Tips on This Article How to Setup your YouTube channel to get more Views

I'm going to be talking about seven tips for setting up your YouTube channel for optimizing your YouTube channel so that you can get more views get more subscribers and ultimately build your income and impact with your YouTube channel, I like to think about or my youtube channel as we dive into this and one thing to also note here is there actually is a new YouTube layout right now and you can actually see it at any time you want you just go to youtube.com forward slash new and it'll let you switch on the new channel layout the cool thing is that these tips and principles are relevant either way moat like all seven tips are still relevant so you can get more views and subscribers from your YouTube channel but there is the new YouTube channel rolling out and it's not going to be it's not fully out yet but well yeah it's it's coming so if you want to see that this this training is relevant for that new thing as well alright so I've into it seven tips, 

Tip number one is your YouTube channel name that's the first thing that you want to think about it's the name that goes right here this is it your URL there's actually a YouTube channel name so you can really two things to do here the first one is it could be your name like I have a channel you can see it right here actually it says Sean kennel that is my name it's a personal brand Channel or it could be your brand name so in the case of video influencer is a project that I work on with Benji Travis um it's a brand name so it's usually one of the two or it could be a hybrid it might be cooking with Sean kennel you could kind of combine the two and one cool thing about this is you can actually change this later so you might be wanting to do some rebranding some some you know thinking about this or switching this up you can change that later if you want to and you can update it I don't recommend changing it very often or really ever at all but if you do want to rebrand your channel you can do it and the reason you wouldn't want to change it too much is just because of SEO like being found search engine optimization being found in search you definitely want to come up with a good name and stick with it. 

Now talking about custom URLs what's as far as your channel name this is where you could get a name like youtube.com forward slash video influencers or youtube.com forward slash think media TV if you have not done this yet I encourage you to do this and sign up for that because it's great for putting it out on social media it's great for sharing and there's a couple qualifications that you need to do that but let me also take you into the creator studio and I believe the way you get there is you go to channel now this kind of weird because I don't think I've even enabled my custom URL but it back in the Google+ days it was a little bit different so I do have a custom URL and it's really confusing but in your creator studio if you go to channel and then you go to your custom URL make sure you grab that if you haven't done it before but the key thing to know here is that you need 100 subscribers your channels to be at least 30 days old you have to have uploaded a photo as your channel icon and channel art and then you should be eligible to grab a custom URL and I would really think about this I mean one other tip here is if possible I like to keep this is congruent across social media as possible so we have like there actually wasn't enough characters on Twitter so we have like Twitter comm 4 slash video influence sir no s because it was the max characters we have like video influencers on Instagram video influencers on YouTube and that's just kind of like some strategy if I'm ever starting a new brand or something I'm curious what URLs are available on social so okay so that is tip number one,

Tip number two is you want to have a custom avatar now how do people make a mistake here right if your avatar right now is two letters meaning you didn't upload a picture it's like your first and last name you need to update it if your avatar is got you know isn't is just nothing right now update it and a couple of practical tips about this is if you're going to do a headshot for like a personal channel consider your emotion like are you fun-loving is it is it matte is you know is it something that invites people to join the channel then then do that you know put a good picture and put some thought into it don't be 20 feet away from the camera because it's so small people aren't going to be able to see it and so put it a great great picture if you have like a personal brand or you could do a logo it's so like for video influencers in thick media TV we have a logo and another thing you do is you can do a hybrid in fact I'm probably going to be updating think media TV sometime to be like more of a picture of me but then like having some graphics on it that says think media TV but you want to update your avatar and make sure that your this is not your channel cover right this is the avatar of your channel it's also shows up when you're commenting and so consider that like when you show up in other people's comments on other channels do you have kind of a magnetic attention getting image or not that's something to think about when it comes to your avatar.

Tip number three is your cover image and this kind of gets interesting because what you see here is the current video influencers cover image but what you'll typically see on the channel is just a wide view that kind of cuts through here you're not going to see this other stuff now the reason cover images look like this is because YouTube wants you to upload a cover image that will work on multiple devices 

so I put a link to this it's not even something I design but it's in the youtube description and you can get this template so what you can see the safe area right like this is what most people are going to see and so that's even why on this last image that's why you can see why strategically like our names are and our tagline is in a certain place is because that's the safe area it says your website links are going to appear here and then it starts saying tablet's will see this a full desktop will see all the way across here and then the big one is smart TVs and so it's not probably doing anything at all but for instance one of the reasons why we put this little URL in here is like a little Easter Egg for Smart TVs like if you're on Smart TV you'd be able to see this this URL but nobody would see that on tablets or phone or desktop but think about the you know shot the way it's set up and this is also we reverse engineer taking this photo with the thoughts of a cover image right because we could crop in right here for what most people see but we shot it a little bit bigger 

and so again download links to this and everything else I talked about is in the YouTube description so that you could download this template to your computer and then you could upload it to something like Photoshop or even free editing software like canva comm or PicMonkey and then just stack on the elements that you want so they're in the safe area and then a lot of times I also have to do some tweaking I upload it oh my god it's not right I move the text around even with the template I usually have to do like three or four covers before it looks right and so all right we're talking about seven tips for getting more views from your channel and here's what you just think about on your cover image one consider doing a tagline and this is also just a bigger kind of 30,000 foot level for your YouTube channel branding in general your tagline could be kind of clever but it also could describe what's on the tranel so for us on video influencers we say that like basically we're pitching what you're going to get on the channel you're going to get interviews and training videos that'll help you build your influence income and impact with YouTube and online video so our tagline is like helping you build your influence income and impact with online video but we kind of put it in a sentence and so what is your sentence and I would love to hear that in the I've chatter if you're watching the replay in the YouTube comments do you have a tagline yet I want to hear that from you and again we'll get any Q&A in just a bit so thanks for hanging out here and let me know your tagline though do you have one have you thought about it what's the kind of like value proposition of your channel right what people can expect and why it should matter to them you also could post your posting schedule now because we haven't been faithful to a posting schedule we haven't done this but a lot of channels will say new videos every Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. or new videos every Tuesday and Thursday or new videos every day so you can let people know if you do have a posting schedule what it is in that safe area another thing you could include is I would say powerful images and what I mean by powerful images images that illustrate the content of your channel and I have an example of that in a second another ideas Authority and credibility a friend of mine was featured in a couple different places like Forbes and some other places and she included like those quotes as seen in those types of things so depending if you're like an author speak or you want to build your kind of you know celebrity go to expert Authority or something you could include some as seen on or some different things on your cover and you also would want to potentially include a call to action and that could be an arrow because remember your website's going to be right here so let's say you wanted to give something away or have people go watch something you could have like an arrow that says get access to my free this or that so you could include a call to action on there as well so here's a full-size example of think media TVs current cover and this is also what I mean by images again really all you see in the cover is what's in here and what I was trying to do with the images I need to update this with some the tagline and some other things but I did want to almost let you know pictures speak a thousand words so I figured if it's showing lighting it's showing smart phones headphones it's showing gear and showing me holding gear which obviously is the what this channel is mostly about like helping you with find the tools for creators cameras lighting microphones so so what kind of images would show up you know be good for your brand and actually let me give you another example that I did on on my personal channel that I don't post a ton of stuff there but it I do post there from time to time and so you can see here like I wanted to show it's going to be about like me and my wife Sonya passionate about health kind of products with the green juice and a little bit of product reviews since we say that and then whatever so product reviews life hacks kind of a three whatever it's a couple ideas for you that you could apply to what you're doing as well and so okay can you see this alright and then the video influencer is full-size so you've seen that we have took a photo and put that all together okay so that was your cover image. 

Now let's talk about your about page Tip number four is your about page and this is a chance for you to pitch your channel now keep this in mind is that you want to keep the viewer in mind right and so what I mean is you should pitch again the value to the viewer in this particular case 

and so a lot of times I just I think one of the biggest mistakes people make on YouTube is actually they kind of our self focus as opposed to viewer focus so they don't pitch things in terms of like how to add value to you they're like you know check out my channel for my random thoughts my favorite things and my point of view which that might work and depending on your level of influence you know your status again that could work 

but I think you always succeed most when you lead with how you're going to help others so consider doing an about page you know that talks about what not only what you're doing on your channel but why it matters to people you also have a chance to let people get in touch with you and then a power tip that you can do here is also include like a a survey and I'll show you what I mean so on think media this is actually the new channel layout right now 

and so I'm actually going to go back to the old one restore classic you YouTube here not sure when that all switch over whatever so here's my description and you can put some things in here thanks for checking this out introduce yourself on this channel here's what you're going to find weekly tech video gear lighting audio review tutorials plus tips for creating videos podcasts YouTube whatever and then and then sign off now you have a place to do business inquiries but the power tip was and we're about to launch this we're going to delete that email section and we're going to include in the description a link to a survey to work with brands or podcast interviews or anything's like that and I learned this from my friend Sierra schultzy and what's nice about it is you can force people to fill out more fields so you don't get as much spam if you've put your business email out there you've probably noticed a bunch of like weird M CMS contact you all the time maybe a lot of like not quality product reviews contact you so we just actually want to give people a few more hoops to jump through like you know what is it you're interested in do you have a budget if it's like a brand deal tell us more about the project etc and so that we could filter more quick you know whether or not that would be something we would want to do so fill out that about page and I hope that if you're taking notes or anything you write down a checklist looking at your own YouTube channel right now and thinking about how some things that would work for leveling up your YouTube channel your own YouTube channel alright.

Tip number five is your website and your social media 

and so connect your relevant keyword relevant social media accounts I don't think you should connect an account just because you have it because if it's not active or if it's not on brand it might not really support it and here's what I mean if your Instagram is private which a lot of people sometimes people do that I don't fully understand that again if you want to keep it private but same thing like if your instagrams private and you wake it up to your YouTube channel like why you doing that I mean just think through some of those things and I know some people their YouTube channel might be about like how to build your business but then on Instagram it's just not even about business does that make sense so I would say the social media accounts that you want to connect should just be relevant I mean if you're a personal brand then whatever it's all of them but then the other thing is like don't link to your tumblr if you have it posted on tumblr in a long time so this probably one of the biggest opportunities for cleaning up inactive accounts and a big opportunity for cleaning up broken links I see a lot of people that have broken links in their social media accounts 

and I'll show you this live in a second and then also connect your website or like a landing page where you could build your email list and maybe you know give something away free and things like that so right here you got Google+ it kind of forces you to Google Google+ because I mean who's using Google+ we got Instagram we got Twitter Facebook and then this is actually my website so interestingly enough - and what it does on the the website is it'll show your favicon so I was able to customize my website it's kind of cool little blue play button takes you over to Shawn channel calm but what right here is your main website and I think your biggest opportunity right here depending on what you're building is to do something like this so we we talk about this all the time on thick media TV 20 the newest edition is coming soon by the way and and it links you over to our gear guide which again gets people on an email newsletter which is a place where we can give you insider tips a summary of our weekly videos and so again it kind of just drives right on to our inner circle or inner community straight from that link and the way you do this is you go over to your about page and you link everything up the and you could do it right here and you can see I think the reason that gear guide is big is because it's the first one and then you've got the rest and as you can see I don't even have Google+ here but it kind of it forces it can I turn this off right here did I just did I just fix it I'm excited yeah done even better during the live is to channel training we have cleaned up my channel just like I would encourage you to do so you got the guide Instagram whatever and it links through and it can get people to again relevant social media accounts and so definitely link up your website and make sure again to fix any broken links or anything like that okay 

Tip number six and now we're getting these last two or where it really gets real this is where really the real gets real whatever created probably list so now you want to start creating playlists and playlists do a couple things you can organize and categorize your videos you can you should come up with value driven titles 

and then a power tip here is to think in video series as opposed to thinking in solo videos what I mean is I want you to actually be thinking on your content calendar not just in one-off random videos but in thinking in series and categories because it really has a lot of power if you do that and we'll explain some of those things so you come to your playlists and playlists are one of the most underutilized features by a lot of creators and so what I need is a couple things here you might want to do something like again here's social media marketing tips and tricks' 2017 a value driven title if you want to grow in social media this is the playlist for you right and you've got lots of videos that you can watch in the playlists and one of the biggest mistakes that I see a lot of people making is their playlists are usually just one word and they don't they'll say like Travel sure like okay like what do you mean or they'll just say you know 2016 fun well now it's like old and that's not even relevant or updated and so your playlist title should almost be as strategic or they should be as strategic as your video titles and the other thing is that is you're thinking through your content one mistake I see people make is sometimes they make videos that are too big in scope and they'll make a video that's

that should in my opinion be like for videos and if you put it in a playlist you have the chance to kind of create more watch time do a bunch of things but for this video in this training we're talking about playlists for the organization of your channel so we'll do a future video deep diving on playlists and actually let me know right now in the live chat or on the replay in the comments how's your playlist game is it updated you got good playlists they have good titles let me give you a couple rapid-fire best practices here make sure to upload a description a lot of people miss the description and one thing about playlists is they can rank in search that's what's really cool so just like videos could be found in search so can playlists so one example that cares just headphones or all headphones that are under a hundred dollars actually right and that one doesn't have a description bad example let's do I have a obviously in tech here you can see organizing different things best microphones videos with tips on the best budget and best all-around mics for YouTube and then at the different microphone videos so how's your playlist game or is it good do you need to work on it is it updated is it going is it happening let me know and let's jump into the next tip actually Lou dope says I should make separate playlists for my evolution episodes yeah there's a lot of opportunities of playlists and definitely if you're not subscribed to your to think media TV will be doing future training and go deeper dive on playlists embracing wellness says need to work on it sounds good that's what we're talking about so I'm glad you're here and let's keep going alright drumroll please because.... 

Tip number seven is where your channel comes together so far we've been checking the box on tips on channels and again we'll get into skew a just a second but tip number seven is optimize your homepage this is where your channel comes to life and so here's some things to think about this is where you can upload your channel trailer also we'll leave that for a future video a dedicated video talking about a good channel trailer you also can do your featured channels this is if you have more than one channel or you want to feature friends and other channels you can do a featured video a lot of people don't know about that you can highlight a video that you want kind of pinned people are already subscribed but it's what they see sort of at the top of your channel and then you also this is where playlists come together and really start to work so now we've updated our cover we have our avatar we have our channel name we've done our about page we've created some playlists and so now we can actually update our homepage so a couple things number one your new visitors this is where your channel trailer would be and you can change your trailer you can remove it video influencers 

I think is a great example of a channel trailer thick media does not have one yet so probably about the time that I make one that I'll probably make a video about how what my thinking was of it but video influencers is a is a pretty solid example I think of a good channel trailer that you could check out there and then here's the for returning subscribers so this is cool see right this is your featured content place and you could do your latest upload or you could delete this and you edit it changing things around you can even put some some text like this is custom just like a little sentence that sort of pitches this video and that is a cool featured place right so that is there so you have your channel trailer you have your kind of featured content and then the playlists start so what these are is there these are playlists and what you can do is you can go on your channel you can add a section and you could say I want to do a single playlist and I want it to be in my playlist and what I want to put on here is I want to do my best headphones review and gear and see now a new sex is added to your homepage and then you can move it up or down it's not working for some reason let me refresh here and if I wanted this one a little bit higher then that can go up or down etc and a lot of cool things you could do here so some best practices I've seen some people their first playlist is like watch this first or they'll put like top think media TV videos in this case it's just popular uploads these are going to be your most viewed content you can just do your latest uploads so that people to just come to the channel see the newest stuff and so that's where you start to build out your your channel homepage and so let me ask you as your channel homepage doing let me know in the live chat let me know in the YouTube comments if you're on the replay and and ginger says I think I have too many playlists what is too much you don't I don't think you need to worry about having too many playlists in your playlist section but I think your homepage should have should not be overwhelming you don't want to give people too many options so think about the user experience and think about like Netflix write Netflix kind of has a user interface Hulu does where it's like kind of showing you different thumbnails and considering and recommending content and so you could get really creative there Chan says my home page is trash mine sucks rocket gaming well good that's why we're doing this video and that's actually good exciting news because these tips are to help you get your channel ready and like what's powerful again about this is how does this drive more views well when people can begin finding your content checking out they might find one of your videos in search but then they go to your channel page you want them to be able to find your best stuff you want to lead with your best stuff you want to lead with your best videos and in driving more watch time the most important thing to YouTube right now is not views the most important thing to YouTube right now is not subscribers it's not how many comments your videos get the most important thing a hundred ex more important than everything else is watch time minutes matter most if you go into your YouTube analytics you'll see that the top analytic is minutes the second one is views and the third one is subscribers YouTube wants longer watch time so when you start using playlists right and you start optimizing your channel you can drive up the watch time and total time people stay on your channel and YouTube or will reward you for it you'll get more channel Authority your videos will rank and search more and you ultimately have a greater impact with your channel peter says total minutes or percent of video watch it's a great question Peter the answer is total minutes so YouTube's less concerned if somebody watches a hundred percent of a three-minute video because that's that's three minutes as opposed to if somebody watches 10 percent of an hour-long video they still watch 10 minutes now both is better Peter right but total minutes and the reason why is because YouTube is competing with TV they want to tell advertisers look people don't just come to YouTube to consume a 60 minute viral cat video and then bounce they come to YouTube to consume depth to hangout to really get substance and so watch time matters and if you can get higher watch time YouTube will reward you that's kind of why live streaming has a benefit to you that's why daily uploads like vlogging um can if you get traffic and people watch your stuff is a benefit that's why gaming has kind of taken over YouTube because a lot of gameplay and videos can have people watching for 30 minutes an hour two hours three hours and so it's so much watch time so what you want to ask is how can you increase your watch time but hey I have a few more tips for you and it will jump into Q&A and keep crushing and smashing some of these things so make sure to work on optimizing your homepage right your channel home page that's like your home base that's really where the magic happens get your feature channels I realize I didn't really show you that so over here you know we feature our channel video influencers plus my channel Sean kennel makes sense it's like kind of a second channel for me there's my old video production channel over here on the right Sean kennel productions and so you could do feature channels the related channels just auto-populates I guess you could disable it if you want but come on show love to to your friends and the people who are related to you and and yes so let's dive into let's keep going alright featured videos your playlists.