Four tips for branding your series on YouTube

On YouTube, nothing feels better than creating a hit video. However, turning that hit video into a branded series lets the viewer know that there is "more where that came from," encouraging them to watch more videos and subscribe to not miss future episodes. You recently got a new feature to add intros into videos, and there are many more ways to brand your content, so we wanted to share a few strategies popular YouTube creators tell us about:

1. Use consistent tags and titles

For their Mythical Show series, Rhett & Link use the naming convention “The Mythical Show - Ep.# (Feat. Guest)” to establish that each video is one episode in a larger series. Viewers can quickly see that all of the videos are related, just by looking at the thumbnails.



2. Use consistent branding to start your videos

Tastemade starts each episode with the show’s title “Thirsty For...” overlaid onto the drink of the week, and ends with a preview of the following week’s recipe. Every drink is different, so each video has its own unique typeface and music, but the consistent format binds them together into a single branded series.



3. Share your upload schedule

Tati has a weekly segment titled Tip Tuesday, building her weekly upload schedule into the name of her show. At the beginning of each video, she lets viewers know that they can come back every Tuesday for new episodes.



4. Organize your videos to make it easy for your audience

Crash Course lays out their educational shows in ordered playlists on their homepage. Each show occupies its own channel section for easy browsing, and the viewer just has to click “play” to start a series from episode one.


For more tips on developing your creative strategy (and much more), visit the Creator Hub.

Devin McNulty and Jeremy Kaye, Programming Strategy, recently watched The luckiest unlucky man to ever live (Frank Selak)

Boost your channel’s recognition using new intro videos

Everyone knows the power of a good introduction. Imagine watching The Simpsons without its iconic opening sequence. Wouldn’t be the same, would it?

Many of you have asked us for a way to create a distinctive intro for your videos, so you can more easily build a consistent brand your fans will recognize. Well, game on. Starting today you can automatically add an intro video up to three seconds to the start of every video on your channel.

It only takes three easy steps to set up:

1. Upload the three-second intro video you’d like to use to your channel as an unlisted video.
2. On your channel's InVideo Programming page, click "Add a channel branding intro" and select the intro from a list of eligible videos.
3. Select which videos you want the intro to appear on. You can choose whether to add it to all of your videos, or just the ones you’ve uploaded after a certain date. You can always remove or change the intro later.

Note that these intros may not be used as ads, sponsorships, or product placements. We also don't recommend this feature be used by channels using their videos as advertisements.

As always, we want to hear how things work out for you. Send us feedback from your YouTube dashboard, or via Google+ or Twitter.

John Gregg, Software Engineer, who recently watched “Submissions Only.”

New playlist reports in YouTube Analytics

Recently, we tweaked YouTube to give playlists more love, with new features like the ability for viewers to collect their favorite playlists and access them straight from the Guide.

Whether you create videos with different themes or you curate videos from other creators, keeping your videos organized with playlists helps viewers easily find what they went to your channel for, and can also encourage them to watch more of your videos.

Today, we’re adding a number of reports to YouTube Analytics so you can see how your playlists are contributing to your channel’s performance. You’ll be able to see the total number of video views from your playlists, how many times your viewers started watching a playlist, the average time they watched, and more.

You can access data starting from February 1st, 2014. Check out channel and network-level stats by searching for a playlist directly or selecting the "Playlists" view.

Find out more in our Help Center and explore the new data today. As always, you can leave feedback on this feature via the “Feedback” link in the left sidebar or drop us a comment in the YouTube Analytics Google+ community.

And if you want to learn more about getting the most from playlists, check out these expert tips from Vsauce2’s host, Kevin Lieber.

Ted Hamilton, YouTube Product Manager, recently watched Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine

More love for playlists and a new look for YouTube

The way you watch YouTube keeps changing, so we’re making a few tweaks to YouTube to keep up with you. Starting today you’ll see some changes to make it easier to find what you want to watch on YouTube and collect playlists to watch again and again.

Like a playlist, watch it from anywhere

Want to quickly find your playlists or save Aloe Blacc’s favorite music videos playlist? Your guide now has all of the playlists that you created, as well as playlists from other channels you liked. If you make a playlist, you’ll also see a new page that makes editing easier. And if you’re looking for new playlists to check out from your favorite channels, check out the new playlist tab on a channel like this one from YouTube Nation.

We moved!

YouTube now has a center-aligned look, fitting neatly on any screen size, and feeling similar to the mobile apps you’re spending almost half your YouTube time with. You can quickly flip between what’s recommended and popular in “What to Watch” like Postmodern Jukebox’s Timber, and the latest from your subscribed channels like iamOTHER in “My Subscriptions,” with both options now front and center. Click the guide icon to the right of the YouTube logo at any time to see your playlists, subscriptions and more.



To learn more, please visit the Help Center.

Yining Zhao, Web Developer, recently watched “18 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read”

Keeping YouTube Views Authentic

YouTube isn’t just a place for videos, it’s a place for meaningful human interaction. Whether it’s views, likes, or comments, these interactions both represent and inform how creators connect with their audience. That’s why we take the accuracy of these interactions very seriously. When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities.

As part of our long-standing effort to keep YouTube authentic and full of meaningful interactions, we’ve begun periodically auditing the views a video has received. While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video’s view count, removing fraudulent views as new evidence comes to light. We don’t expect this approach to affect more than a minuscule fraction of videos on YouTube, but we believe it’s crucial to improving the accuracy of view counts and maintaining the trust of our fans and creators.

As YouTube creators, we ask you to be extra careful when working with third-party marketing firms; unfortunately some of them will sell you fake views. If you need help promoting your video, please review our posts about working with third party view service providers and increasing YouTube views.

Four tips for fostering discussion from YouTube’s top teachers

On YouTube, engaging with your community helps bring viewers closer to your content and enables two-way discussions. There are great ways you can interact with your fans and keep it manageable, even when your audience is large. Here are four strategies that some of YouTube's most popular education channels use to push the boundaries of fan interaction.

1. Crowdsource a hypothesis

Before revealing the answer to a science experiment, Derek from Veritasium asked his fans to draw their own conclusions via video response. He addressed some of these responses in his next video, using them to represent the most common explanations reached by his viewers. You can see a quick recap of the experiment and some of the video responses from fans here:



2. Ask in advance

Many of the top education channels have been hosting intensive Q&As with their audience. In addition to answering questions in real-time through a livestream or Google Hangout, some creators solicit questions ahead of time, choose their favorites, and create content with their answers. Here CGPgrey uses his trademark animation style to answer his fans’ questions:




3. Feature viewer generated content

On their channel WeSauce, the hosts of Vsauce feature content created entirely by their audience. They have a variation of their popular Vsauce2 show BiDiPi (Build It, Draw it, Play it) called “Your BiDiPi”, which is dedicated solely to their audience’s work:



4. Build interactivity into the format

At the end of their current week’s video, the PBS Idea Channel features comments from their prior week’s episode. The host of the show, Mike Rugnetta summarizes each comment, highlights relevant points, and adds his own analysis. Building this interactive element into the format of the show encourages community discussion, and makes fans feel that their comments will actually be read. Here’s an example:



Here is Mike stating that he reads every comment and explaining what makes for a good comment:



It’s important to try new and inventive ways to keep your fans engaged and feeling like they are part of a community. For more information on building your community, check out our Creator Playbook.

Jeremy Kaye and Devin McNulty are watching Imperial Pants

Meet ActiveMelody: Your January On The Rise featured partner!

Congratulations to Brian Sherrill of ActiveMelody, our featured “On The Rise” partner for this month. You’ll see his channel and videos in the spotlight on the On The Rise homepage and then YouTube Spotlight channel today.

Brian is a music professional that has taken his passion for guitar online to help aspiring musicians. His expertise spans from Rockabilly to SRV and Delta acoustic blues. On YouTube, Brian goes one step further, uploading tutorials to share his experience and knowledge with fellow guitarists. It doesn’t matter which video you choose to watch; you’ll be impressed with Brian’s talent and dedication to sharing his knowledge with his viewers.



Here are a few words from Brian:

One afternoon, while sitting on the front porch playing the guitar, it dawned on me that I should share my love for playing blues guitar by creating how-to videos that provide a detailed look at the many nuances that most seasoned guitar players take for granted, and share them on YouTube. I launched my first guitar lesson video on YouTube back in spring of 2009 with a great amount of angst. At present, I release a new, detailed guitar lesson each Friday so come check out the ActiveMelody channel on YouTube if you enjoy learning new things on the guitar. I’m honored to be YouTube’s January On The Rise channel and would like to thank all of my subscribers and those who voted for the opportunity.

If you’ve enjoyed this monthly blog series and are interested in learning more or participating, we encourage you to visit our On The Rise homepage. You can check out all of our past featured partners on the Featured Partners tab.

Christine Wang and Kathryn Sahr, YouTube Partner Team, recently watched “The Query - Breeze.”