- Mission accomplished, you've done the hard bit.
You've finished your video.
The easy part comes now when you just upload it to YouTube.
But that part is also really, really important to do right.
And this is your complete guide on how to do just that.
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All right then, to upload a video to YouTube,
once you have your channel set up,
you will see a video icon
in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
If you're in the YouTube creator studio,
it might look a little different,
but it does the same thing.
Also note that depending on your channel size,
you may have extra options, such as live streaming
and creating community posts.
As of time of recording, there is an escape hatch
back to the old YouTube uploader,
but I highly recommend not using this anymore,
as YouTube will turn it off very soon,
and you do need to get used to this new upload workflow.
To upload a video from this screen,
you can either click, drag and drop a file onto the screen,
or you can select multiple video files to bulk upload,
or select an individual video,
which is what we're going to do now,
and enjoy that little upload animation, how cute.
The speed at which your video uploads to YouTube
is obviously going to depend on your internet speed.
But here's my first pro tip.
Once the video has finished uploading,
give yourself at least an hour to prepare the video
through these upload screens,
and YouTube time to process it.
Also, stick around because we'll talk more
about why you might want to give your videos
even more lead time when you're uploading
versus publishing your content.
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While you're doing all of your uploady things,
you'll notice YouTube processing the video.
And it doesn't take that long to do.
Once complete, the video will be then available
to all viewers at its highest quality,
including 4K and beyond.
All right then, upload workflow, page one, details.
Unless you have set an upload default title
from the channel settings in the creator studio,
the current title name will be the file name of your video.
And since we're here, let's debunk a long-standing myth.
File names don't impact search and discoverability.
Doesn't matter if your file name
is the same as the video title.
It's not gonna put you at the top of the search rankings.
Don't argue with me, unless you've got proof.
The video title itself, however, is super important.
You need to catch people's attention,
as if it's a newspaper headline.
You've only got a few seconds
to convince somebody to click on your video,
and you have 100 characters to play with
in your video title.
Next up is your video description.
This is where you can reinforce your title
with more information.
The first two lines here are really critical,
and here's why.
When you are searching or browsing YouTube,
the first two lines, or roughly 120 characters
of the video description, are visible,
so people can read a little bit more about the video.
In this example, we can add information
about how reaching 4,000 hours of watch time
will help you monetize your YouTube channel.
That might just be the little edge you need
over the competition to gain that click.
Next up, we have video chapters.
Include the timestamp of zero minutes and zero seconds,
and this will allow you to segment your video
when people watch it.
Viewers can use the timestamps
to jump to various sections of the video,
and the timeline shows viewers the chapter length and title.
Believe it or not,
chapters can actually give your videos more prominence
on Google searches, but we'll let this video over here
explain exactly how that works.
Below all of the description content
that changes from video to video,
you should include default content, such as answers
to commonly-asked questions about your channel,
links to videos, and your social presence.
This can all be done through the upload default section
of your channel settings.
And then we come to hashtags.
You can include three of these in your video description.
And those hashtags will appear
above the title of your video.
But in the two years that they've been in existence
on YouTube, and with much experimentation,
I haven't found a really good way to use them.
So these ones just kind of sit on all of our videos
and don't really do anything.
Do whatever you want with them.
Thumbnails, on the other hand,
are probably the most important thing
you will add to your video during the upload process.
To upload thumbnails to your YouTube videos,
which is absolutely essential,
you do need to verify your YouTube account.
Don't worry, you don't need any subscribers,
or viewers or videos,
but you do need to do it through a mobile phone.
And for a full tutorial, you can watch this over here.
We have covered the topic of thumbnails extensively
here at vidIQ.
To summarize, yeah, there's a lot to cover.
So you can either check out our playlist on this subject
in the video description, just below the like button,
or check out our full guide at the vidIQ Academy,
where we have extensive courses
on all sorts of YouTube topics,
with new free courses available every single month.
There's a link to that too, in the video description.
Now, let's talk about this extra feature you have,
if you install vidIQ.
It's called thumbnail preview,
and it lets you compare your video against other videos
that already rank for a certain search term.
With this tool, you can see
whether your thumbnail title and description are good enough
to compete with the very best, and improve them
before you even publish the video live to YouTube.
And if you think that's a handy tool,
stick around to the end of this video,
'cause we've got a lot more to show you from vidIQ.
Next on the list is adding your video to a playlist.
Every video should go into a playlist,
so it can be grouped with similar content on your channel.
If it doesn't fit into a playlist,
then what's the video doing on your channel
in the first place?
You can add your video to one or many playlists,
along with creating a new playlist if you need to.
This next step is super important,
and you need to answer it truthfully.
If you don't, you could get in trouble
with YouTube and beyond.
You must answer whether or not your video is made for kids.
If it is, you will lose certain features on the video,
such as comments and notifications for subscribers.
However, if you answer this dishonestly,
YouTube could terminate your channel,
and the FTC could fine you.
What content is made for kids is not an easy one to answer,
but here are some broad examples
of when that might be the case.
If you want to learn more about this,
we have a huge playlist on the subject,
which is linked on screen now, and in the video description.
On the other hand, you may want to restrict your content
from a younger audience
because it's not appropriate for their age group.
Again, you should declare this here.
Now, of course, by answering these questions,
it may have a detrimental impact on the video.
You may earn less money, or it's less discoverable
because it's not seen by everybody
'cause it is age-restricted.
So there may be the temptation to be a little dishonest
when it comes to uploading your videos
and answering these questions.
My advice, however, is always be truthful with YouTube.
You don't want to start this relationship
by lying and cheating, because ultimately,
and eventually, YouTube will find you out
as your channel begins to grow
and comes under more scrutiny.
We're not done with the details page yet.
Click on more options, and you can declare
whether or not your content includes paid promotion.
Again, be honest.
And everybody's favorite SEO tool
from 2010, video tags.
Let's be clear about one thing.
Video tags mean a lot less than they used to
when it comes to discoverability of your content.
If you want to devote your time and energy
into something that's going to benefit your video,
then put it all into thumbnails and titles,
with a little bit of description as well.
Video tags should come at the end of a process,
as YouTube show you in this workflow.
Having said all of this,
when YouTube updated their classic video uploader
to the new video uploader,
they had the opportunity to get rid of video tags,
and yet they didn't.
They're still there.
There's a box for you to fill.
And if this gives you a marginal edge
against your competitor,
with more information for YouTube to use,
then you might as well use it.
And we can make this job much easier and quicker.
All you need to do is start typing out keyword phrases
you wish to rank for on YouTube,
and vidIQ will auto-suggest ideas for you to add.
The more keywords you add,
the more refined vidIQ suggestions will become,
allowing you to simply click and add more and more keywords.
This transforms hours of research
into a couple of minutes of mouse clicking.
Now for the final portion of this first page.
Setting the video language may help YouTube provide you
with automatic subtitles, although this doesn't always work.
Caption certificate seems to center around
if your content has been broadcast on US television,
so 99.9% of you don't need to worry about that.
Recording date and video location are self-explanatory.
Adding a location might give you a tiny boost
for very specific searches on YouTube, but I must confess,
I can't remember ever going through the trouble
of setting this myself.
When you set your video to standard YouTube license,
you are protecting the copyrights of your video.
However, if you're happy for anyone to use your content
for free, without copyright,
you can set this to creative commons.
And next up, we have checkboxes that allow your videos
to be embedded on websites external to YouTube,
and to ensure that when this video goes live,
a notification is sent out to your subscribers.
In most cases, you'll want to leave all of this stuff
on the default settings.
Onto the question of video categories.
Are they important, not really.
While YouTube does say adding a video category
will help viewers find you more easily,
you have to appreciate that every creator
has likely set their video category
as accurately as they can.
So by all means, set it to something
that describes your channel topic,
but don't expect huge gains from it.
The final comment and rating options on this page
are very much personal preference, though I do advise you
to hold potentially inappropriate comments.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad actors out there,
who just want to stir up trouble.
Now, if you don't want to completely upload workflow
all in one go, as long as the video has finished uploading,
you can quit the screen,
and the upload will be saved as a draft,
which you can resume, by going to the video manager page
in the YouTube creator studio.
And with that being said, let's move on to phase two.
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Now, I appreciate that not all of you
will have monetized your channel yet.
So this area of the upload workflow may not interest you,
which is where those video chapters come into play.
Check in the description,
and you can jump immediately to phase three.
But now you've ruined my watch time.
The monetization screen starts off innocently enough.
However, the moment you turn on monetization,
a new workflow stage will appear, called ad suitability.
This is your YouTube confessional booth,
where you admit to all of the content sins
that might limit the adverts that appear on your videos.
For example, if you declare
that your video contains strong profanity,
the ads that appear on the video will be limited,
which may impact your revenue.
All of these link back to YouTube's community guidelines.
And again, this is where honesty is the best policy.
YouTube doesn't simply accept what you self-certify here.
Its internal automated systems will also check your content,
and it's pretty good at doing so.
The more accurately you self-certify,
the larger the profile YouTube has of your content.
And eventually, when YouTube trusts you enough,
you won't have to self-certify your content.
Back on the monetization screen, this is where you can set
what type of ads you want to display,
as well as placing adverts inside your videos
when they are longer than 10 minutes.
Now, of course, there will be the temptation
to slap as many adverts as possible on your videos
to make as much money as possible.
But before you do that, please consider this.
Every time you place any type of advert on your video,
you are creating a barrier
between the audience and the content.
It's a fine balance, and if you overdo it with the ads,
you'll alienate your audience.
As a quick example, noticed any adverts on this video?
No, there's a reason for that.
We put you first.
Now, if you do want to learn a little bit more
about YouTube self-certification and monetizing your videos,
we've got some lovely tutorials in the video description.
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You may have already noticed during this video
that I've referenced a couple of extra videos
you might want to watch, over here,
along with a little info card appearing at the top.
Those are interactive elements that promotes your audience
to watch more of your content.
And this is phase three of the upload workflow.
As of time of recording,
adding cards actually takes you to an older part of YouTube.
This will likely change very soon,
so keep an eye out for that.
Basically, you select the point in the video timeline
you want the card to appear, choose what type of card it is,
be it a video playlist or channel,
select what you want to promote,
and boom, at that point in the video,
an info card will appear like this.
End screens are a different beast, in that they only appear
during the last 20 seconds of your video.
But you can add up to four elements,
and put these elements on any part of the screen.
In this quick example,
I'm adding a new video element to an end screen,
and I'm choosing to display my most recent video,
whatever that video is when the viewer is watching.
You can also add channel subscribe links, playlists,
and a website, if you link one to YouTube.
Another pro tip is to guide your audience
through the end of your video.
Don't finish with phrases such as, "Thanks for watching.
"Hope you enjoyed this video."
The moment the audience sniffs
that you've finished your video, they'll abandon it,
even if you carry on talking.
So add some more value during the end screen,
and we'll show you what we mean at the end of this video.
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Rule number one of visibility,
never set your videos to go public
the moment they've finished uploading and processing,
because of, well, everything you've just seen in this video.
As for all the other settings, well, let's investigate.
If you set a video to private, no one can see it,
which is fine while you prepare your video,
but you might want to consider the unlisted option instead.
In this stage of visibility,
YouTube can review the content and feed back to you
if there are any monetization or video restriction issues.
If there are, you can remove the video,
fix the issues contained within it,
and then re-upload the video.
Member videos are reserved
for paying members of your channel.
If you have access to this tool,
I'm going to guess you already know what you're doing.
And finally, we have public.
Once you set this and save, the video goes out to YouTube,
along with notifications to your subscribers,
fingers crossed, of course.
As for YouTube premieres, don't bother with them.
Generally speaking, when a viewer clicks on a video,
the last thing they want to do on YouTube
is wait two days to watch it.
And I've yet to find any evidence
of them actually helping your videos.
Don't argue with me, unless you've got proof.
What you certainly do need to consider, however,
is when you publish your video live,
you can use the schedule tool to do this.
And ideally, you want your video to go live an hour or two
before your target audience is most active on YouTube.
As you can see, vidIQ has a handy tool
that tracks the activity of your subscribers,
and suggests a time slot for when your video should go live.
And as a final reminder,
YouTube will ask you to check over your video
to make sure it complies with their community guidelines.
And that is how you upload videos to YouTube the right way,
in, oh, just a shade over 15 minutes.
But I do have one more piece of advice
that I want to give you during the end screens.
Once the video has gone live,
depending on the size of your channel
and how many comments you get, go and look at those comments
in the first hour or the first 24 hours,
and read and respond to every single one of them.
Honestly, the feedback you get from your audience
and the engagement you build
with your community is invaluable.
Enjoy the rest of your video-making day.