HOW SHOULD YOU USE YOUTUBE ANNOTATIONS?
IMPORTANT TO NOTICE: YouTube launched a technology this year similar to Annotations called
“Cards.” We chat about Cards in the next page
You’ve probably seen YouTube annotations: pop-ups; text bubbles; links; all in
different colors and fonts, and all part of the YouTube system.
YouTube is
working diligently, spending millions of dollars to integrate this across all of the
platforms, including television and mobile.
What do you do with that? How do you use them? How do you make them partI of your business?
Fact number one
annotations bring integration, they bring interactivity, and they
bring some very cool things into the online video process. You definitely want to leverage that.
Fact number two
YouTube is adding more and more features all the time, and
they are working diligently in making it work across all of their platforms.
YouTube is focused on letting you do more cool things with them on more platforms than ever before.
Some people won’t be able to see or interact with annotations, however, so you
need to keep that in consideration. Realize that right now, at least at the time of
writing, you can even add an annotation that says, Click here to get a million
dollars but if that person is watching on an iPhone, they won’t see the
annotation and they won’t click for the cash.
People on mobile devices just
aren’t able to use annotations, so take that in consideration during the production of your videos.
So what can you do with annotations? You can obviously incorporate humor, as
well as commentary and supplemental things that aren’t 100% necessary.
You can ask somebody to subscribe or make a joke by telling them when the next
video is coming out. Annotations that work best are ones have no negative
impact if they are not seen like when they’re viewed on a mobile oranother screen.
One thing you can do is you can link – and that’s a powerful facet of
annotations. At the time of writing, you are able to link to other YouTube
videos. Imagine that somebody has just found your Channel and they’re
watching a video that they like; when they reach the end of the video and they
want more, you should certainly tell them, “I have more, here’s a video about.
The great thing about annotations is that when viewers click on one, it takes them directly to that video
I’ve seen people who have added annotations to their videos and doubled their
viewing figures just over the course of one week.
You can also link to a playlist, simply by saying, “If you like this video, I’ve got
ten more videos on this topic,” and provide a link to that list.
You should realize
as well that the playlist can come up in YouTube results, so you have effectively double power there.
You can also link viewers back to your channel page. By providing a channel
link, you link people back to who it is you are and what it is you do. It’s very
powerful and very easy, and I definitely recommend that you do that.
You can also add an annotation to a Google+ profile page. In fact, Google Talk,
Google, YouTube, Google Docs – all of the Google empire – tightly integrate
with the Google+ social platform. So if you build the link outside of YouTube to
your Google+ profile page, it is incredibly powerful.
It will bring people to
additional content and additional sites and from there, you can link to a
subscription button.
Getting people to subscribe to your YouTube Channel is incredibly beneficial
and something that you want to consider; because the more people subscribed,
the more people will come back when you put up the next video. It begins to be
a snowball rolling down the side of the mountain; it gets bigger and bigger with
the power of gravity that comes along with it.
You can also link to a fund-raising project for non-profits or to a Kickstartera account
And finally, there is an option to include annotation links to merchandise
providers. YouTube has a list of ones that you can use, so do check the list.
At
the time of publication, the only e-commerce option available is Shopify
worth looking at.
So, it is possible to link to many cool things external to YouTube; just be aware
of the people who are not able to view them.
What are the action items? What can you do with all these choices?
Make use of annotations when they make sense. For example, including a
subscribe annotation in every single one of your videos makes complete and
total sense. Let people know that you’ve got more for them to see by linking to
playlists and linking to other videos; all of these ideas are very strategic and very
easily implemented.
They don’t know you; they don’t know that you have this
other video; so linking to those things can be incredibly powerful.
When I write about “making sense” in annotations, I am talking about the simple
fact that not all systems are going to support such annotations.
Nothing is sillier
than watching a video on a television set that says “click on the balloon” that
isn’t there or listening to video tell you that something is there, when, in fact, it
isn’t.
The first options “make sense” because they work regardless of whether the user
can see them or not.
An annotation that tells someone to subscribe is gold for
someone who can see it, and it means nothing to someone who cannot.
All is not lost if all of your audience can’t view your annotations.
If you’re
linked to something external, address the fact that it might not work on their
particular screen and give them an alternative. For example, you might have the
video say “To learn more, go ahead and click on the link that says learn more
and we’ll take you right to an account over at Kickstarter.
Or if you’re viewing
on a phone or a television set or other device which doesn’t have external links,
you can visit us at Kickstarter.com,” then put that link right inside of the video
file. Linking to something external and speaking about it is fine; you just need to
address the fact that they might not be able to do that as well.
Finally, annotations asking people to give you a thumbs up are always doable.
Of course, if you make it social, you get automatic sharing across all of the
different networks. That is your best use of YouTube annotations.
I want to point out again that in the next chapter I examine what I consider to be
the future of Annotations.
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