Creating and preparing a quality video is only half the work of video content promotion. Videos must have the right platform to be accessible to your target audience. Since YouTube is the most popular video platform, knowing how to build a YouTube channel correctly is an essential tool for you to create and distribute videos. It’s not enough to upload a video to YouTube and publish it with a few clicks. You need to understand the actions performed on the YouTube platform to ensure your channel progresses in the best possible way.
YouTube channels are essential for any business looking to boost its marketing efforts with videos through building an organic audience or YouTube advertising. By setting up a YouTube channel you have the perfect place to upload videos and share them with the relevant target audience. In this guide, we will go over the steps to create a high-quality YouTube channel. It doesn’t matter if you are creating a YouTube channel for personal purposes or for a specific brand, the steps in this guide will suit both types of channels.
7 Steps to Creating a Professional YouTube Channel
With these steps, you can create your own YouTube channel. Following the steps carefully and executing them will help you build a professional YouTube channel that represents your business or organization in the best possible way:
1. Create the account
To get started, go to: Youtube.com and sign in to your Google account. To create a YouTube account you need an active Google account. At the beginning of the process, the first question you will be asked is: Is this a business YouTube account or a personal account? The answer to this question will help you understand whether you need to sign up with a personal or business email. Before creating an account, you need to know the purpose of the channel you are creating. Answer the following questions:
- What type of videos do you plan to publish?
- Who do you want the channel’s subscribers to be?
- How do you want the channel to be presented outwardly?
After logging in with your email, you will see that your channel has already been created. Click on the Customize channel button to open your channel dashboard and start arranging your business channel settings. The channel dashboard is essentially its management page, where you upload videos, upload the banner and logo, analyze videos, and more.
2. Update your channel name and description
The next thing you will need to do is update the channel name to a name that reflects the channel’s topic or the type of content that will be uploaded to it. This action will help your target audience find the channel by searching for your business or organization name. To get started, click on Basic info in the top menu – where you can update your channel name, description, and website URL.
For example – this is the basic information that appears on the Fialkov Digital channel:
Make sure you edit the channel name, content, and URL to make your channel unique to your brand. In addition, adding a custom title, description, and custom channel URL is a great way to improve organic SEO on YouTube. Use relevant keywords that your audience might search for on YouTube; this will help your channel appear in search results.
3. Upload your logo and banner
Next, let’s move on to the channel’s visual branding section to best visually represent the company or business. In this part, you have the option to upload 3 branding images: a main picture (logo), a banner image, and a video watermark (an image that floats on the side of your videos when they play). It is recommended to use media that already exists on your website and on the site’s or business’s other social pages to maintain a consistent graphic and textual language.
Channels with high-quality media are more inviting and look professional to visitors coming through search who might not know the brand personally. These visitors may notice the channel through an eye-catching image and follow the channel thanks to the inviting media. To upload the images, click on Branding located in the navigation bar at the top of the page.
4. Upload your videos
You have reached the main goal of setting up a YouTube channel for business – uploading videos. After all, the audience will only follow your channel and videos if you have interesting, innovative, and relevant videos. The steps to upload a video are very simple. Save the video you prepared in an accessible location on your computer so you can easily find it. Then, click the Create button in the corner of the screen. A screen will then appear prompting you to select the file you want to upload.
Click Select files to locate the video you saved on your computer. Once selected, YouTube will upload the video automatically. Uploading the video takes a few minutes, but the steps you need to take after uploading the video are critical for its distribution to your audience.
5. Optimize your videos
Video optimization is a key step that ensures your videos are properly cataloged within the massive library called YouTube, so they appear when someone types a relevant keyword into the search engine. Similar to how SEO specialists work on ranking a website on Google, you must dedicate time to rank high on YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world (after Google), so you will want to make sure you properly use titles, descriptions, tags, hashtags, and keywords that match your brand and the specific video you uploaded.
You should focus on the video title and description, add relevant keywords for the video and brand, and it is also recommended to add a thumbnail to improve the video’s visibility and attract viewers to watch it. Another effective way to optimize the video description is to divide the video into chapters in the video description, an action that segments the video into parts, helps viewers skip to chapters that are relevant to them, and makes the video more friendly for YouTube’s search engine.
Additionally, on the next screen, Video elements, located after the details screen, you can add an end screen to the video or cards that appear during the video to promote additional content or marketing content within the video. If you don’t know which keywords fit a specific video you’re uploading, you can use tools specializing in YouTube SEO, such as TubeBuddy or VidIQ. These tools can help you define your video creation strategy and general work on the YouTube platform.
6. Build a proper layout on your page (Channel Layout)
In the Layout tab, you can organize the order in which videos appear on your channel, which is essentially how visitors navigate from one video to another. It is recommended to emphasize this part because it is crucial to keep viewers on the channel after watching the video they searched for. There are many customization options available on the YouTube layout page. Click on Layout in the top menu on the navigation bar on the Channel customization page.
In this part of building the channel, you can present different content to visitors based on their status – whether they are subscribers or not. For people who are not subscribed to the channel, you can show a trailer that will entice them to click Subscribe, and for visitors who are already subscribed, you can show a featured video from the channel at your discretion.
These options are beneficial for properly structuring the channel because they allow you to present new visitors with an overview video of the channel and business to persuade them to subscribe. Subscribers won’t need to see the trailer since they already know what your channel is about, so subscribers receive another relevant video instead. In addition, you can set featured videos from the channel in the lower section called Featured sections.
7. Create playlists from videos
A playlist is a great way to compile videos on the same topic on your channel and encourage extended viewing by visitors. You can group playlists by a similar topic and display them on the YouTube channel home page. Playlists keep visitors engaged longer and increase their watch time on the channel and content. The more time viewers spend on the channel, the more they will connect to the brand. To create playlists, click on the Playlists tab in the menu and then on New playlist on the top left. Then choose a name for the playlist and set whether it will be publicly available to everyone or if it’s a playlist with restricted access.
Now that you have created the desired playlists, you can add videos from the channel to them. Many people use playlists to find content related to topics that interest them. By building curated playlists for your followers, you will make your channel more appealing to visitors.
Summary
We have covered the steps you need to take to build a YouTube channel for your brand or business in the most effective way. YouTube offers enormous potential for any business to attract audiences who have never heard of you. With videos, you can connect and build a relationship with users in a closer way than text. However, to truly get a real return on investment for your business and the costs of video production and building your YouTube channel, you will need to create consistency and productivity in the channel’s videos. Otherwise, the channel will be a waste of resources or just a hobby.
About the author
Dvir Naaman, 26 years old, an entrepreneur at heart, loves e-commerce websites and specializes in SEO.
