Official YouTube Blog

Tips for partners: Gimme content (and then analyze it!)

12 Ekim 2010 Salı

series of blog posts with advice and actionable suggestionsmetadataFind Your MojoHot Spots

Use Insight Hotspots to see if your video is hot or not. Do you see a full red thermometer in the top red corner of your Hot Spot video report? If so, great! If not and your video hovers on or below the “Average” line on the graph, you are not keeping your viewers’ attention.

Edit your videos to keep your audience engaged. See where viewers are leaving your video, and determine why (and consider using annotations to keep users engaged).

Use Insight to figure out how people are finding your content. Is it through search or related videos? To find out, go to ‘My Videos’ and click on ‘Insight’ for one video. Then click on ‘Discovery’ and under ‘Links Followed to this video,’ you’ll see top referrals. You can click on ‘YouTube Search’ to find tags viewers queried to get to your video, and then add these tags to your video to boost your ranking in the search index.

How to find more tags through the ‘Insight’ tool:

More tags to add:

Review YouTube charts to check out the most viewed videos, and how you stack up.

Use Google Analytics to understand the source of your YouTube traffic. The better you understand your audience and how they find you, the better you will be able to produce new content, promote the discovery of your videos, engage with your audience and build your brand.

Keeping a video upload schedule is important, and we encourage you to upload consistently. When you are starting out, a technique that has worked well for many successful partners is maintaining a schedule that your subscribers will remember.

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “The Unseen Sea.”

YouTube political commentators join National Economic Advisers in Reuters debate

12 Ekim 2010 Salı

The Young TurkHow the World WorksLaura TysonGlenn Hubbardfaced offyoutube.com/newsHealth Care, Economic Policy, and Political Polarization in America

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million

11 Ekim 2010 Pazartesi

Editors note: Today’s guest bloggers are Troy Olson, Digital Advertising Manager, and Jeff Loquist, Search Marketing Manager, for ShoppersChoice.com. ShoppersChoice.com owns and operates a family of web stores with a wide selection of products, from barbecue grills and accessories to patio sets.

We sell everything from home furniture and fireplaces to kitchen cookware, but our true passion is barbecuing and grills. We’re in BBQ country, where people are fanatical about barbecuing and smoking. We’ve found that the best way to connect with customers is to provide them with great videos – grill reviews, how-tos, and recipes – presented on our branded YouTube channel, YouTube.com/BBQGuys.

We started with instructional videos to address customer service. Then our attitude toward video morphed when our CEO was on a business trip 1,000 miles away from home and was recognized as the “Barbecue Guy.” We saw how great YouTube could be for reaching many people at once and conveying our company image. Our important performance indicator is our relationship with viewers. It excites us when we see comments such as, ‘Great recipe! I tried it a few days back, loved it.’

In 2009, we brought on Chef Tony. He knows Cajun food and has a gregarious personality that our viewers love. We get hundreds of thousands of views whether we’re showing how to smoke a brisket

or how to make honey-glazed sweet potatoes

We want our customers to love our grills, and the way we do it is to give them recipes that make them proud and happy with the results they can achieve.

Through Promoted Videos, there have been almost 100,000 views on our YouTube channel and more than 15 million impressions of our brand name – all at the most competitive cost-per-click you will find anywhere online. Our campaign is easily managed in the Google Adwords interface. Every tool we need is there to grow quickly and manage easily our video efforts. So far this year, we’ve had over 2,200 visitors to our BBQGuys.com site from YouTube. We’ve also seen a significant increase in subscribers across all our social media channels since we started using YouTube.

Online video advertising is central to our business. For this past August, our revenue was up 48%. Our videos were viewed 94,000 times during that month alone. Overall traffic to BBQGuys.com is up 20% from last year.

We’ve been so successful on YouTube that we are now planning to extend our YouTube presence to our SportsmanGuys brand and beyond.

For us, video is our secret sauce. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million!

Serena Satyasai, Marketing, recently watched “Homemade Pizza Dough”

Dunk your favorite YouTube star on Prank House

10 Ekim 2010 Pazar

Editor's Note: Today’s guest blogger is Brigham White who, together with Taran Chadha, created the new video reality game Prank House. The app is a live streaming reality show similar to Europe’s Big Brother, with one major twist: viewers can participate in pranks live via the Internet through robotically controlled devices like paintball guns and shockers.

Taran and I both wanted – as in really wanted – to take the internet’s virtual world and make it real, and we were just silly enough to try it. The result is Prank House. Blend Survivor and Halo, and you’re halfway there. On Prank House, you can shoot real people (including some of your favorite YouTube stars) with paintball guns, release angry goats, shock people, play foosball, drop water bombs, and drive remote control cars around a 200 square foot track.

It’s pretty simple: you download a free desktop app from our site, prankhouse.com, and choose a team to support. You then buy tokens to drive different types of pranks, controlled through robotic devices within the “prank house.” It’s your job to help your team through competition in scheduled events.

We officially started Season 1 on October 4 with an impressive lineup of YouTube celebrities. ShayCarl, Charles Trippy and Cory Williams are just a few of the YouTube stars actually living and competing for the title of Top Prankster in a reality show setting in a 10,000 square foot house in California. (Ask yourself – would you have the nerve?) So far, more than 65,000 viewers have tuned in.

We have 10 different rooms in the house that can be viewed 24/7 on 35 live cameras. You as the viewer can interact with – and influence – the outcome of the daily competitions. For example: one morning you might find Charles Trippy and ShayCarl suspended with ropes from the ceiling, swinging back and forth trying to grab the other’s flag. Using the Prank House desktop app, you can shoot the opposing team’s celebrity with a live paintball gun to help your team win. Basically, it’s all a matter of teamwork, and the people in the house are working with their fans and supporters on the Internet to prank the other team and win. It hurts (but only a little), and it’s hellaciously fun. See the trailer below.

Serena Satyasai, Marketing, recently watched “Swing time in the Prank House.”

Join the birthday salute to John Lennon

9 Ekim 2010 Cumartesi

Today we join Yoko Ono in asking fans around the world to upload video tributes to John Lennon on what would have been his 70th birthday.

If you have memories to share of this legendary member of the Beatles and his music, upload a video to www.youtube.com/johnlennon and you’ll join a global chorus that includes Aerosmith, Jeff Bridges, Jonas Brothers, Ringo Starr, and YouTube Community members like Goh Nakamura and DJ Mike Relm.

As part of today’s celebration, you may have noticed a special YouTube logo that’s being featured in 24 different countries highlighting the artist’s famous self-portrait. This unique artwork is also part of a birthday video that you can find at www.google.com. It’s the very first time that a YouTube video has been embedded into a one-of-a-kind Google Doodle — read a message from artist who created it here.
“Spread Peace. Imagine Peace.” is how Yoko suggests you celebrate the day, along with sharing your video tribute with the world.
Michele Flannery, Music Manager, recently watched Plastic Ono Band - “Give Peace A Chance”

“Fred: The Movie” comes to YouTube

8 Ekim 2010 Cuma

FredFred: The Movie1) Some people say the movie’s Fred character is different than Fred in YouTube videos. Do you agree? 2) Describe your on-set trailer. What was in it?3) Tell us a fact about the movie that no one else knows.4) What was your inspiration behind creating Fred in the first place? 5) What advice would you give others in your place?Charu Magon, Partnerships, recently rented “Fred: The Movie.”

Fill bowl with cereal, add milk, turn on camera

7 Ekim 2010 Perşembe

Heather Menicucci, Director, Howcast Filmmakers Program, is writing weekly guest posts for the YouTube blog on filmmaking in the digital age. This is her second post. Her first was “Embracing exploration: being a filmmaker today.”HowcastCraig StaggsDimitri LaBargeMichael SanchezLuke NeumannMorgan CrossleyAndrew QuinnOriana SyedBarry MichaelWilliam ReedMark and Lisa Morrison.Heather Menicucci, Director, Howcast Filmmakers Program, recently watched “ChatRoulette.”

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