YouTube Creator Blog [UK]: October 2012

Keep your audience engaged with InVideo Programming

Friday, October 26, 2012

Programming tools like annotations help you drive longer watch times. Today, you have another tool in your arsenal. Looking to promote your latest video? Trying the new feature called InVideo Programming.

InVideo Programming allows you to feature a video across your entire video library. In addition to featuring videos, you can also promote your channel branding. If you change your branding in the future, you can replace it with a single update. The best part is, your InVideo Programming travels with your videos wherever Video Annotations are available.

If you are a creator in good standing, you can get started with InVideo Programming by accessing the tool in your Channel Settings. Go ahead and try the following types of InVideo Programming:

1. Launch a new show/series: Launching a new series? Use “Feature a video” to showcase a new video to drive some initial traction.

Example: Here you can see how Noisey used InVideo Programming to feature a new video across their entire library.

2. Showcase an old video: Have an older video that you want to promote? Go ahead and feature one of your favorite videos from your channel to drive some new viewership to that older video.

3. Reinforce channel branding: Make sure your viewers are aware of your channel branding. Use “Feature your channel” to promote your logo across your library and make it easier for viewers to visit your channel page and subscribe.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll launch reporting, to give you the ability to track the performance of your InVideo Programming, and we'll make UI enhancements to help you give your
viewers more context behind your promotion.

Michael Rucker, YouTube Product Manager, recently watched "Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn - Part 1".

Meet MaximNoise, October’s Partner Success Story!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Loads of our partners across Europe are taking advantage of the YouTube Partner Program, and becoming hugely successful on YouTube. We've asked some of these partners to share their experience on YouTube and within the program, and to shed light on how to best utilize the platform. This month’s featured partner is MaximNoise. Read on for his story and best practices!

Introduction
Please tell us a bit about yourself. What is your name and your channel name? Where are you from? Who makes up your fan base?

Hey, my name is Max. I’m from Neuss (NRW) and that’s why I’m called MaximNoise (pronounced like "Make some noise"). My artistname stands for "making noise for the good thing", because love makes no noise and it’s also the name of my YouTube channel, where I upload my music videos. Just like my music, these videos are pretty different and unique, featuring all kind of music styles: rap, pop and even some rock tunes. My fanbase is made up of men and women, both young and old, but all open-minded.

History
Please tell us how it all started. How and when did you start creating videos? When did you decide to be active on YouTube and become a partner? What was your first video on YouTube?

For a long time I only recorded music and travelled around Germany to do gigs wherever it was possible. I sang at weddings, birthday parties, in youth clubs and so on. When I realised there was something big going on on YouTube, I created my account to "book" the channel name "MaximNoise" but at first I didn’t create or upload any videos at all. In 2009, I created the first video for my song "Spiel auf Zeit" and the reaction of the community was incredible. From that moment on, I got a lot of ideas for videos, as well as help from friends to shoot them, and I also improved my editing skills!

Channel
Please explain your channel. What's the story behind your channel? How did you come up with your channel concept?

The story behind my channel is that music videos are a good way to support the feeling of a song, and videos (especially on YouTube) can be easily shared, commented and rated by a massive community. I never had a musical concept, so my channel features all kinds of music, from doubletime rap songs to melodic cheesy pop songs - also the topics are pretty different. Without the music videos, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to experience the content as fully as they do right now.

For example the three most popular videos on my channel are all very different.
"Herz-in-Takt" (650.000 views) is pretty sociocritical and emotional. Without the music video I’m pretty sure it would only be one song out of many, but with the support of this video, it became a song that inspired thousands of young people all over Germany. Evidence of this is the community-video where over 300 girls and boys joined me and sung this song with me.

Many people said I would never be able to top the success of "Herz-in-Takt" but I have a song called "In den Augen deiner Mutter" which got almost half a million views in only 4 months, as a flow based rap song. It’s my second most successful music video on YouTube.

The third most successful video on my YouTube channel is "Nur der Nase lang"
which talks about a good feeling and the possibility to just follow your own path and you’ll find the reason of being :) It`s a collaboration song with Nicki. I wrote it for us and it has got over 300.000 views in a year.

YouTube Partnership
Please share your experience of being a YouTube partner. How has being a YouTube partner helped/changed your business and personal life? Were there any surprises? What are your plans for the future of your channel and YouTube partnership?

Becoming a partner meant I had some additional income, which helped me to invest in video equipment and to travel to special locations, making more interesting videos. Many young people use YouTube as a media player for everything, and thanks to the YouTube partner program, I was able to earn money every time someone listened to my songs. This is a concept for the future. By creating better videos, more people paid attention to my music and in January 2011, I started selling my music on itunes. This helped me become even more independent with my music.

Success
How do you define success? How did you become successful on YouTube? What were your goals for your channel, and how did you achieve them? What strategy would you recommend to newbie partners to be successful on YouTube?

I think success is being confident with what you’re doing and getting feedback from people who love what you do. It’s important to have special ideas and the chance to make them a reality - which is often not a question of having money or anything. You should start small to become big - work with what you have and with time you will improve.

Creative Inspiration
Please tell us what inspires you. Do you have a particular creative aesthetic? Are there other YouTube channels you watch or creators you admire?

I’m pretty addicted to YouTube. Because there are lots of people using YouTube, there is unbelievable creative potential to entertain the world. As YouTube is part of my life, it’s also something that inspires me. I like to watch interviews of "Clixoom", funny videos by "DieAussenseiter" and of course music videos of the super talented "nicolascage09" aka Nicki.

Key Takeaways
Anything you want the YouTube audience to know about you, your channel or being a YouTube Partner?

I think I’m a guy who would have never got a chance in the "music industry" because I don’t have the mainstream look and my music is so different in every song. YouTube played a huge role in making me successful, because of its incredible range. You don’t have to convince everybody of your art - YouTube helps you finding the ones who like what you do :)

MaximNoise, YouTube Partner, recently watched “Lego Creeper (5.000 Lego-Bricks)”

Give your channel (... and your hair) a makeover with Stuartphillipssalon, October’s Rising Partner

Monday, October 22, 2012

Since YouTube announced we we were giving more creators the opportunity to become partners, we have seen a flurry of creativity from our new partners. We’ve asked some of you to share your experiences of using our platform, and the resources you use to grow your audience, increase views and take your channel to new heights.

This month, we are looking at Stuart Philips, a celebrity hairdresser from London, UK, who prides himself on having given the world’s most expensive haircut! Stuart’s channel, Stuartphillipssalon, is dedicated to showing his hairdressing as an art form, as well as a profession.

“I enjoy being a YouTube partner as you get many bonuses on how you can show your video, as well as making money and very good customer service.”

Stuart owns a salon in London and he styles the hair for many national and international celebrities, either on film sets, at sponsored events or at his salon. Stuart decided to create a channel to share his salon, passion, knowledge and skills with other people. His videos, especially the ‘makeovers’ demonstrate what he loves so much about this profession - the power to make people feel good about themselves by creating great styles for them.

For this reason, he wanted his channel to be a place where the public can view his work and hopefully gain inspiration for their own hair. He wanted to make his videos fun to watch yet informative for non hairdressers as well as qualified hairdressers! “On my channel I demonstrate how to achieve certain celebrity hairstyles and other exciting haircuts and colour changes”, he says.

Having researched other videos with the same topic as his on YouTube, Stuart realised that most of the videos were either too long or too short. “I decided to make the videos 5-9 minutes long, this way the viewer will hopefully watch the whole video finding it interesting to watch; it includes all the important and interesting parts of designing the new style.”

To achieve maximum impact with his viewers, Stuart ensures he uses the tips and resources available to partners in the Creator Hub. He especially makes sure to include informative descriptions for all his videos, uses Annotations, and engages with his community of viewers in comments and discussions.

Most recently, he was even featured on TV in Estonia's Next Top Model, where he styled hair for all the contestants, and served as a guest judge. When it comes to the future, Stuart would like to grow his channel and audience and gain his first millions of views and subscribers. Sounds difficult? Not for Stuart! “I have a way to go but very doable... I'm being filmed at the moment by Jet Set Films for a UK TV show and for one of the projects I was filmed behind the scenes making one of my YouTube videos. I normally style one model a video but for this project I decided for my team and I to style eight heads of hair.”

To become a YouTube Partner now, visit: www.youtube.com/partners, and get ready to take your channel to the next step! For more information on optimising, visit: www.youtube.com/creators

The YouTube Team

Monetization settings are changing to help you earn more revenue

Thursday, October 18, 2012

YouTube creators are busy people. That’s why earlier this year we enabled creators to set defaults on new uploads for privacy, licensing, tags, and monetization. We also introduced an easier way to control how ads appear on your content by allowing you to set default ad settings for all newly uploaded videos.

To help you earn more money on YouTube, we’re going to be making some changes based on these default settings.

Updating ad Formats for Your Older Videos
You can already easily set your ad format preferences consistently across all your new uploads. On Nov. 9, 2012, we will automatically enable ad format settings on your older monetized content in line with your current default ad settings. This change will only affect monetized videos uploaded before Apr. 20, 2012.

For example, if you have TrueView in-stream ads enabled as a default for your new uploads, we’ll go back and enable it on older monetized content. Conversely, if you don’t have in-video ads on by default for new uploads we won’t touch that setting on any video.

If you do not want to apply this change to your older videos, you can easily opt out. If you use Video Manager, opt out at http://www.youtube.com/my_videos. If you use the Content Management System for your channels, you’ll see a notification when you login with instructions. If you wish to opt out, please do so by Nov. 9, 2012. After that date, the ad settings on all of your older monetized content will change to reflect your current default settings.

This change will give you more opportunities to make money from your videos, so we encourage you to check your default settings for monetization and ad formats at http://www.youtube.com/account_defaults.

Steve Stukenborg, Senior Product Manager, recently watched “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”

Improve Engagement with YouTube Analytics

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Understanding what your audience likes is key to building a successful YouTube channel, so we've created more tools to help you interpret the performance of your videos. Here are some improvements we’ve made to YouTube Analytics in the last few months.

Audience Engagement

Earlier this year we started focussing on the time users spend watching YouTube when we suggest videos. To give you additional insight into engagement for your videos, we’ve enhanced the “Views” report to have more interactive time watched data.

You can see “Estimated minutes watched” from the “Views” report or choose other data options from the “Compare metric” drop-down menu.

Annotations are one of the most used features to drive audience engagement in YouTube. You can now use the beta version of Annotations report to view data on the performance of your video annotations, with insights on viewer click and close rates.

Making Analytics Easier to Use

Date slider is back and better than ever. Now you can quickly adjust the date range and see how your videos performed across different time periods.

You can average data across time with rolling totals for 7- and 30-day totals. Instead of seeing changes in weekend traffic and other cyclical data, rolling totals will smooth the trends to help you see overall growth without the distracting spikes and dips.

The metadata section for your videos and channels instantly provides you with data such as lifetime views and video duration are easy to find.

The video hovercard helps you see a thumbnail of your video and basic information by simply hovering over your video link.

Compare metrics provides you with more ways to compare trends and patterns across two different metrics.

We understand the importance of having data and insights for your channel and want to continue improving our analytics to help you grow your audience. Please let us know if there are any other features you would like us to build, in the comments below.

Ted Hamilton, YouTube Product Manager, recently watched "Kitty Corliss “Grinding the Crack”".

YouTube Creator Academy - Improve your skills

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

We’re always looking for ways to support YouTube creators, and we’re pleased to share our latest program - the YouTube Creator Academy. The YouTube Creator Academy teaches the core principles of video creation - from idea generation, to camera and lighting, to editing. Basically it's YouTube Film School 101.

And we’re bringing it to our European creators! Interested in seeing what a YouTube Creator Academy looks like? Check out the sessions that we just hosted in the UK, Germany, and Spain. In the last 3 weeks we even welcomed our Russian and Polish partners to the creator space for the September sessions of the YouTube Creator Academy. And of course there will be more production trainings coming out next year.

To be part of things like the YouTube Creator Academy and a wonderful world of opportunities, please visit the YouTube Partner Program homepage and sign up. If you’re already a partner and looking for more information on how to create great content and optimise your videos, visit www.youtube.com/creators

Joe McDermottroe, EMEA YouTube Next Creator Programmes Specialist, recently watched “Mumford & Sons ‘Babel’“ and Hannes Jakobsen, Partner Manager, recently watched “PSY - GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) PARODIE”

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