- [Tim] At the top of your YouTube channel,
there's a little tab there called, Community.
And there you can post photos, you can post polls,
you can post videos and status updates,
to keep your audience engaged outside
of your normal regular video posting schedule.
Those posts show up right in the home page of both mobile
and on desktop, which is prime real estate for staying
in front of your audience.
But if you have used your Community tab before,
and haven't really seen too many results with it.
Today I wanna fix that for you by showing you
the five things that your audience actually wants
to see there.
And the best practices we found with our own channels was,
the hundreds of clients that we work with,
that gets the best results, and the most success,
and the most engagement using that Community tab,
it's a powerful tool
and today I wanna show you how to use it.
(glasses smashing)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer.
Welcome here to Video Creators,
where we are all about helping you grow
a successful online business around your YouTube audience.
You can reach more people, change their lives, starting
with your own life.
And the Community tab is an amazing way
to reach more people.
But most creators don't use it well.
Tip number one today is, use it to promote older videos.
Now, don't just do what most people do.
Although you can use it, which is just to use
a little Video button icon there
and select one of the videos on your channel.
Post that there, some texts in while you've promoted
one of your videos.
We have found that, that doesn't really get much engagement.
Instead, you should take
one of the most visually engaging sections of that video
and turn it into an animated GIF.
And then post that GIF as a photo.
And then in the description text that you post
with that image include a link to the video.
That tends to get much better attraction because as people
are scrolling through their home feeds,
the animated GIF is already moving and it attracts their eye
it will be a thumb stopping thumbnail.
There'll be scrolling through, they'll stop, they'll walk
out and be like, "What is that?
"I need to learn more."
And they'll be more likely to tap through in that link
in your description and go watch the video.
The second thing to do with your Community tab
is to tease upcoming videos.
And again, this could be just a normal text.
Like, "Hey guys, I'm working on a new video for you, yeah."
But instead consider taking a little bit
of a little snippet from that video, turning it
into an animated GIF and post that animated GIF
to your Community tab.
Teasing what's to come, what you're working on,
and building some hype for that video
for when it finally publishes and people see
that in their feed.
And they're like, "Oh, I remember that video,
"I saw a preview for that two days ago."
They're more excited, they're more likely to click
into that video and actually watch it.
Tip number three is, ask questions.
We have found that if you just make a statement,
it's really easy for people to just to scroll right past.
If you're asking for Ideas, for Feedback, for Opinions,
for Perspectives or whatever on something,
it tends to get a lot more engagement.
We've also found it helps if you take that question
and make it some sort of photo.
Typically like a square that tends to show up best
on the Home Feed.
Something that just takes up a little bit
more screen real estate and catches their attention
as they're scrolling through their Home Feed.
Number four, we have found
that using YouTube's polling option
and your Community tab actually is very effective as well.
I think because again, it takes up a little bit
more screen real estate and it looks different
from everything else.
That's cluttering their Home Feed and they can quickly
and easily engage in only like a second or two.
These read the question, pick the option
that they wanna vote on and boom, they can vote and kind of
be on their way.
So if you're looking for some quick feedback
on a couple of different ideas, or you just wanna learn
more about your audience.
This could be a great way to quickly engage them
and keep your brand in front of your target audience.
Now, if you hear all this and you're like, this just sounds
like a lot of extra work.
It's another platform I have to say on top of.
Let me make it easy for you with tip number five.
And that is simply just take almost anything
you're publishing on your Instagram account that might also
be relevant for your YouTube audience.
Just posts out there too .
Take that photo and republish it straight
from your phone using the YouTube App and just copy
and paste the same texts and everything.
Similarly to how it works in Instagram,
we have found that if the caption of the photo teases
a story, or is extremely like enticing.
People will usually stop, read more and keep going
and reading the rest of that post.
If it's a really good story that your audience can relate
to, that will perform amazingly well on your Community tab.
Basically whenever you know, here's who my audience is,
here's the value they want to consume from me,
and here's how I can deliver that value.
You can do that through videos on your channel,
but the same principle works with the photos,
the polls and everything else that you're posting
on your Community tab for those people as well.
So post good photos, but also tell really good stories
and paying careful attention to the first couple lines
of that story, 'cause that's, what's gonna get them to click
and keep reading the rest and then engage.
One little advanced tip for you
is that, YouTube Community tab does have
a scheduling feature to queue up those posts that publish
at any point in the future.
So if you got like a chunk of time on Monday afternoons,
you can sit down and queue them all up for maybe
the next month or so if you'd like.
That'll just run on autopilot by itself and you don't have
to constantly stay on top of publishing
our Community Feeds the way maybe you feel like you have
to do on other platforms.
These tips will help you be successful by staying in front
of your existing audience.
But if you want to expand the audience.
I could potentially see these posts and grow your channel,
put together a quick short playlist for roots
and click right there.
This is going to go into all the secret strategies
that we've seen behind the channels
that are just growing fast.
The channels that are exploding and just growing
with a crazy amount of momentum.
There're some things that all of them
are doing consistently well.
We'll reveal that and those quick little videos over there.
So click on that playlist and I'll see you over
in that next video.