Hand holding phone with youtube logo on the screen

 

Half of 18- to 34-year old YouTube subscribers would drop what they’re doing to watch a new video by their favorite creator. YouTube is an awesome place to build a foundation for your video marketing strategy. Maybe you have a few videos all set and ready to go to be published on the second largest search engine, YouTube. Optimizing these 7 characteristics of your videos will help you make the best of your content.

1. Title of Your YouTube Video

The title is the first thing a user will look at before deciding to click on your video. So, make sure the title is enticing and clear. Before a user clicks on your video, they should have a pretty good idea about what your content will be about by reading the title. Also, don’t waste characters on unneeded words. Keep it concise.

2. Description of Your Video

The official character limit for the description is 1,000 characters. You’re more than welcome to use all of that, but keep the most crucial parts in the beginning. Users will have to click “show more” after your description exceeds about two or three lines of text.

3. YouTube Tags

Tags help YouTube understand what your video content is about and put it into context. The platform will associate your video with ones that are similar. Keep the most important tags at the front.

Also, as a note of caution, don’t use tags that are unrelated to your video in an effort to reach more viewers. Google does not like that, and they could take action against your video for doing so.

4. YouTube Video Thumbnail

The video thumbnail helps give your video’s first impression to potential viewers as they search for videos. You can use auto-generated thumbnails, but it’s much better to upload your own custom one most of the time. However, you can’t do so unless your YouTube account has been verified by the platform. To do that, you’ll have to visit https://www.youtube.com/verify and proceed through the process.

5. Category of the Video

After you upload your video, you can assign it a category. Like tags, a category will help your video find its place with similar videos on YouTube. Deciding on which category to choose for your content won’t always be simple. Your content may potentially be appropriate for multiple categories because these categories are pretty broad, from “Pets & Animals” to “People & Blogs.” Often, it’ll be helpful to do a bit of research into what kind of content works well within the specific category that you intend to include your video under.

6. Subtitles & Closed Captions

YouTube will auto-generate these if you’d prefer. Most of the time though, the auto-generated subtitles will need a bit of help. You can manually edit them or upload your own. If you have to edit them yourself, the process can be a bit tedious, but we don’t advise you to skip over this part. Subtitles and closed captions can be really helpful for viewers who are trying to view your video in spaces where listening to your video’s audio just isn’t ideal.

Conclusion

Sometimes the quality lies in the details. Improving these aspects of your YouTube videos will help your video reach more people that are looking for awesome content like yours.

Brew City Marketing offers quality video production for small businesses in Milwaukee. Take a look at some of the videos we created for Milwaukee area businesses. Contact us to schedule a meeting with us today!

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