Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Today I want to show you how you can change your YouTube channel name and your profile picture.
It's now easier than ever.
I'll show you how you can do it on desktop first and then we'll look at how we can change it on
mobile. At the very end, I'll also share three strategies for choosing a good channel name.
All right, let's jump onto the desktop first. To change your channel name on desktop,
head to the youtube.com homepage, and up in the right-hand corner, click on your profile picture.
Right now, I have the name KevStrat Test Channel, and that's not a very good channel name.
To change this, let's click into YouTube Studio. Within YouTube Studio,
over on the left-hand side, let's click on customization.
Within customization, click over into basic info. Within basic info, at the very top,
here I see the channel name Kevstrat Test Channel.
I can click on this edit icon, and I can now type in a new name for my channel.
I'll change it to the Kevin Cookie Company.
Once you change your name, up in the top right-hand corner, you can click on publish.
Now that we've updated the channel name, you might also want to update your profile picture,
and that's also very easy to update. Over here, right to the left of basic info,
click on branding and here we see the photo. Over here, let's click on change.
This opens up a file picker. Navigate to where you have your profile picture,
select it, and then click on open.
This allows me to customize my picture.
I could adjust the crop and once you're all set, click on done. Once again, once you're
done uploading your picture, let's go back to the top right-hand corner and click on publish.
And just like that, I've now updated my channel name and my profile picture on desktop.
Next, let's jump onto mobile. To change your channel name and your profile picture on your
phone, open up the YouTube app and in the top right-hand corner click on your profile picture.
This opens up account details. Next, let's click on your channel.
This’ll open up your channel and right here, let's click on the text that says edit channel.
This opens up all of your channel details and at the very top if you click on the camera icon,
you can update your profile picture. Here you can take a photo using your phone or you can choose an
existing photo. Here if we go back, right at the top you can see your channel name,
and to the right of that you have an edit icon.
When you click on this, this allows you to edit your channel name
and that's how easy it is to do directly on your phone.
Now that you know how to change your channel name, a few things worth calling out.
When you change your name, it might take a little bit of time for that change to show up everywhere.
Also, if you have a verified account. That's one of those little checkmarks next to your name.
If you change your channel name, you'll have to re-verify your account.
Also, when you change your YouTube channel name, this won't at all affect your Google account.
All right with that out of the way, let's now jump
into the three strategies for choosing a good channel name.
Tip number for choosing a good YouTube channel name. You want a name that's short, memorable,
and ideally, it's also easy to pronounce and also easy to write.
I meet a lot of people and I tell them I work on YouTube and then they say, well,
what's your channel name? So, I say my channel name.
If you give them some very long name, chances are no one is ever going to find their way.
Back also one thing I found with my channel, especially with my more recent videos.
The main way people find those videos is by searching for my name
and once again if it's a long name or if it's difficult to remember, no one is going to find
their way back through search. So once again, a short memorable name, those tend to work the best.
Strategy number two and this one is a little bit of a hack,
and it also assumes you already have some subscribers.
I'm not personally using this one myself, but it is pretty tempting.
You can start your channel name with a number or an early letter in the alphabet.
When you go to the YouTube homepage and you see your subscriptions over on the left-hand side,
they're sorted alphabetically, so you have numbers first, followed by A all the way through Z.
So, if you start your channel name with a number, you're going to show up at the very top of that
list, and then when someone visits the YouTube homepage, well, your channel name will always be
just one click away. I really feel bad for all the people at the bottom of the alphabet.
Zach King, Zebra Zone, it's going to take a while for me to get to the bottom of that list.
Maybe soon you'll see the Channel 1 Kevin Stratvert
come out and all appear at the top of all of your subscription lists.
And this brings us to the last strategy.
Should you go with your own personal name, or should you just go with a more generic or
unique name for your channel. With my YouTube channel, I'm the face of every video and I
appear in every single one, so using my own personal name was a very appropriate choice,
but let's say that you're going to have multiple presenters or multiple
people contributing to the channel, or maybe you're running a business,
in which case using the business name or some other name makes more sense for your channel.
So, I think of channels like ThinkMedia or vidIQ, where you have multiple people presenting,
that type of name makes a lot more sense. Now despite that,
let's say you want to go with your own name, strategy number one still applies.
You want it to be short and also memorable. So unfortunately, if you have a name like
Rajanikanth, it's a great name, but it's a little bit less memorable and harder to spell, in which
case you also might also want to fall back to just a unique channel name that you come up with.
Also, if your name is extremely common, I mean that's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing.
Let's say your name is James Smith.
That's the most common first name and one of the most common last names.
If you go with that channel name, you're just going to have a lot of competition for that name,
so in that case too, it might make sense to go with something that's a little bit more unique.
All right, well those were my three strategies. Hopefully now you know how to change your channel
name and you also know some tips for choosing a good channel name. And the great thing now is
it's so easy to change your channel name, you can go back at any time, and you can
modify it to something else. So, if it's not working, don't worry, experimentation is cheap.
If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing and I hope to see you next time, bye.