- You know what would be really helpful?
If there was a screen that turned YouTube Community posts
into something a little more manageable
and a little more analytical.
Yeah, something like that actually.
(bright upbeat music)
We will start as we always do on the YouTube homepage.
Click on your profile image in the top right-hand corner
and go to the YouTube Studio.
Now from here, there is a new menu option
down the left-hand side called Content.
Well, it's not actually new,
they've just renamed the Video section to Content section,
and you're gonna find out why in a second.
On the page here, you'll see some tabs at the top
and the one that you want to click on is Posts
and this will now show you all of your Community posts
that you've ever posted on your channel.
This list is initially sorted by chronological order,
but the great thing is, these columns are sortable.
So if you want to find out which Community tab posts
have the most comments or likes, you can easily do this.
And we can very quickly see from this data that posts
that get the most comments pose a question
but don't always contain an image.
Whereas Community posts with the most likes,
tend to contain an image,
specifically the YouTube Play button.
As for voting polls, we've been shouting from the rooftops
about how engagement you can get from these for years.
For example, our best polls get tens of thousands of votes.
There are various types of content
you can post on the Community tab.
Any post with an image, videos or playlists
will be shown with the appropriate image,
while voting polls will be displayed by these lines.
Plain text are displays as such
and here's your super secret weapon.
You can post animated GIFs to the YouTube Community tab.
Definitely worth playing around with to get extra attention.
Now if you master over each post,
you do get a couple more options.
The first is to edit a post directly
from the YouTube Studio, which is pretty cool.
Just don't forget to save changes.
There's also a link to take you
to the original Community post on YouTube.
You can also manage and respond to comments here
as if you are managing comments for a video
which is also pretty damn cool.
One thing you do have to bear in mind however,
is that you cannot edit voting polls.
I guess that's to stop you, the creator,
being sneaky and changing the answers
after people have started voting.
Although now I thought about it,
I really wish I could do that.
The fun I would have.
The final thing you have on the menu here is the Filter tool
that lets you view only the types of Community posts
you want to see and to filter via Published Post
or Post Scheduled for the Future.
In case you didn't notice,
we here at vidIQ have been strong supporters
of the YouTube Community tab for years.
It is a fantastic way to stay in touch with your audience
when you're not posting content.
You might only be able to post one or two videos a week
but you can keep in touch with your audience
through the Community tab several times a day.
I think the main problem with the Community tab
other than the fact that you need 1000 subscribers
before you can use it, is that creators feel disconnected
from it because it's not fully integrated
into the YouTube Studio.
Up until now, we've had one small panel in the dashboard
but now we have a whole suite of analytics
and management tools.
If you're lucky enough to have access to the Community tab,
but you've been neglecting it, now you have no excuse.
I want you to post something every single day
for the next three to six month.
Experiments with advertising your previous videos
behind the scenes imagery and voting polls,
which could help you determine
what your audience likes most.
Now while I do very much welcome these new tools
from YouTube, as always, I've got some feedback.
I think there is a key analytic missing
from Community posts, and that is Reach or Impressions.
How many people at least see the things we post
via the Community tab?
It will help creators understand
what type of content works best,
as well as an understanding of the engagement rate.
Secondly, and this is a long standing issue,
why bother having a dislike button on Community posts
if you hide that number from creators?
I mean, I understand why you might hide it from the public,
but now I have no idea if this post
has more dislikes than likes.
I'm sure you have your own thoughts about
how YouTube could improve this new tool even further,
so let us know in the comments below.
And I just want to leave with this thought,
YouTube used to be just about videos on demand
but now we have live streams, we have YouTube shots,
and we have the Community tab.
You should be using all of them to reach your audience.