HOW CAN YOU OPTIMIZE YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND VIDEOS? WHAT ABOUT MOBILE?
A considerable amount of YouTube video is being viewed on mobile devices;
mostly over phones, although in many cases on tablets as well.
Mobile is the
fastest growing market for YouTube, as well as the fastest growing online
market for pretty much everybody.
Every batch of statistics point to the same fact:
mobile is growing and you need to be part of it.
Last year YouTube introduced the “OneChannel” program
(http://www.YouTube.com/OneChannel ). The idea is simple. Because we’re
connecting to YouTube in so many different ways - phone, tablet, television,
etc., we need a single channel format that supports all of these options. This was
a smart strategy for YouTube - and it is a smart strategy for you.
Don’t worry - part of the beauty of YouTube is that you don’t have to do a
anything (other than upload high-quality video) to get your content ready for the
phone, the tablet or the television set.
Not only does YouTube optimize the
video for whatever screen the customer might be viewing, they also make sure
they serve the best content for whatever bandwidth your customer is connecting
with. This is why you can stream a video on your phone on the bus on the way
to work and finish that video on a 52-inch television set at home.
You do have to take a couple of things into consideration when you think about
video over so many platforms. Clicks, annotations and ads don’t always work as
well on mobile devices as they do on desktop computers or television sets.
You need to optimize your Channel and videos with this reality in mind
Many people think of YouTube only in the terms of the traditional YouTube
page on the Web. Many use annotations, ads and descriptions under the videos
because they are so powerful when viewed in the traditional desktop browser.
If you’ve watched any amount of YouTube video, you’ve probably seen people
say “click on the link below” or mention an annotation for something like
subscribing to a Channel. If you’re watching on a phone, you won’t see links below.
If you say something like “Click on this annotation,” the mobile device
interface may or may not show it. This can be very confusing for your (now
extended) audience, which is not the experience they were looking for.
Since clicks, annotations and ads don’t always work as well across all platforms,
your task is to not say or do anything that will make you look bad.
Don’t call the
annotations and links out as a matter of fact, because a lot of people, possibly the
largest percentage of your audience, won’t be able to view them or interact with
them.
Telling someone to “click on the links below” can actually have the
opposite of the desired effect; instead of links being clicked, your audience may
think that your video is simply broken.
OneChannel Strategies
Number one: realize that your videos might be viewed by someone with a two-
inch screen or a 52-inch television (neither of which support any kind of clicks).
For example, you may have done a screencast of a high-definition computer
screen that you broadcast on YouTube (screencasting is a tremendously
profitable element of YouTube, and it’s growing in leaps and bounds.)
If you
have someone who is consuming your screencast on a two-inch screen, it may
lose all of its effectiveness. If your video has small lettering and titles, or large
sweeping vistas and really dramatic video shots, these won’t come across on a
two-inch screen either.
At the same time, a video which looks good on
television might lose everything when viewed on a phone.
Furthermore, you must realize that someone watching your content on a two-
inch screen won’t have the ability to interact with your video. What you want to
do is to consider opt-in choices that don’t require this level of interactivity.
For instance, instead of saying “Click to visit my website,” you can say out loud,
within your video, Instead of saying “Send
me your name and email address to get a report or to get a coupon,” you might
ask your viewer to text you his or her name and email address. There are
platforms that make this both very possible and very profitable and I examine
them in more detail in the “Mecri's favorite Tech” for this blogger.
In short, whenever you add any call-to-action mechanisms to your video, just ask
yourself:
“Will this work for people in front of a computer? Will this work for
people in front of a TV set? Will this work for people using a phone?”
Half Your Audience Is Mobile
At the time of writing, half of the YouTube audience is mobile.
This number is
only going to go up as more and more people find mobile connections to be
faster and cheaper than ever before.
For every minute you examine your YouTube handiwork on the desktop,
consider viewing your videos on your phone and you channel on both a mobile
browser and the YouTube App on whatever mobile devices you have access to.
It’s a different world - but it’s more than half your audience - so you need to
understand how they view your channel as well and, more importantly and make
channels if/when needed.
Live is Mobile Too
I examine the elements of broadcasting live to YouTube elsewhere in this blogger.
It isn’t always obvious that everything YouTube broadcasts (including live) is
optimized for all screens; so when you are planning out your live events,
remember your growing audience on the smartphone and television.
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