I'm going to show you how to get more views for your YouTube videos by posting an animated gif
to your YouTube Community Tab and we're going to create that animated gif using Apple keynote
the free presentation software that comes with every Mac now before we jump in if you're not
familiar with the YouTube Community tab it's like a social media feed for your YouTube channel where
you can post different types of content for your subscribers but here's what makes the community
tab such a powerful tool for growing your YouTube channel you see the content that you post to your
community tab is not only shown to your current subscribers it's also shown to new non-subscribers
on YouTube which means with the community tab you have the potential to reach and attract a
brand new audience get more views and subscribers growing your YouTube channel now you can create
different types of posts on your community tab text posts image posts polls you can even post
clickable thumbnails for your YouTube videos one of the most versatile and engaging forms
of content you can post to your community tab is an animated gif I know just what the world
needs more animated gifs but in the context of the YouTube Community tab an animated gif is
the next best thing to posting an actual video to your community tab which you cannot do right now
at least not at the time of this recording but why would I want to actually post an animated
gif to my YouTube Community tab anyway well one of the most effective uses is as a preview or
teaser for one of your YouTube videos now you can already promote a YouTube video by posting
a clickable thumbnail known as a video link post but according to several big YouTubers and YouTube
channel managers video link posts get the least amount of Engagement an animated gif on the other
hand has one big advantage over other types of community posts it moves so it's more likely to
catch a user's attention it's also customizable along with grabbing a few frames from a video
depending on the software that you use you can also add text and other graphic elements to an
animated gif now you can create an animated gif from a video using a number of different apps and
services but what I'm going to show you right now is a quick and easy way to create an animated gif
from a video using Apple keynote let's jump in so here we are in keynote now right off the bat
you need keynote version 9.2 or above to be able to create animated gifs all right I have a blank
project here now the first thing I'm going to do is change the aspect ratio of my document from
the 16x9 to one by one which is square the square aspect ratio works better in the YouTube Community
tab feed especially on mobile so I'll change the document aspect by selecting the document button
then down under slide size selecting custom slide size then in the dialogue entering in
1080 by 1080. and that gives me a square slide next I'm going to drag in one of my YouTube
videos and place it on the slide I'm going to take a section of this video and turn it into
an animated gif which I'll post to my community tab to promote the full video now important thing
to keep in mind the YouTube Community tab has a file size limit for images including gifs which
is 16 megabytes so with that in mind I'm going to keep my animated gif short around 8 Seconds
so I'm going to select an 8 second clip from my YouTube video using keynote's trim function
so I'll select the video on the slide then I'll go up and select the format button then select
movie then go down and under edit movie trim I'll click and drag on these trim handles to
select an in and out point for the Eight Second clip I want to extract from this video together
foreign I'll play back my selected clip by hitting the play button
next I'm going to add a caption to my animated gif by going up to keynote's
top toolbar and selecting the text tool then fill in and position the text for the caption
now you could animate this text on screen but I'm just going to leave it static alright now
I'm ready to export this slide as an animated gif and to do that I'll go up to keynote's top
menu and select file export to animated gif I'll leave slides set to one to one because I only have
one slide these next two settings are important remember there is a file size limit for images
posted to the YouTube Community tab including animated gifs and that limit is 16 megabytes
these two settings resolution and frame rate will help us keep our animated gif within that
16 megabyte limit keep an eye on the resolution output down here right now it's set to 1080 by
1080. now I know from experimenting that 1080 by 1080 resolution is going to be too big the
file size is going to be too large so I'm going to change the resolution setting from extra large
to large which reduces the resolution to 720 by 720 pixels as you can see down here now you
could reduce the file size more by selecting medium which reduces the resolution to 480 by
480 pixels I'll keep mine set to large at 720 by 720 but I will reduce the frame rate from
24 frames per second to 15 frames per second to reduce the number of frames in my animated gif
which will reduce the file size now unfortunately keynote doesn't have precise resolution or quality
the controls for making animated gifs so if you're making animated gifs for the YouTube Community tab
you'll have to experiment a little bit by exporting your animated gif then checking
the file size in the Mac OS finder all right back over in keynote I'll make sure auto advance is set
to zero seconds so that there's no delay when the animated gif starts looping I'll make sure
export with transparent backgrounds is unchecked my animated gif doesn't have any transparent areas
I'll hit next then find a place to save my animated gif then hit export
then I'll go find my animated gif in the finder and select it and you can see in the info section
that the animated gif I created is under the 16 megabyte limit for the YouTube Community tab nice
alright over on the community tab for my YouTube channel I'm going to create a new image post
I'll enter some text I'll create a link to the full YouTube video then I'm just going to drag
and drop the animated gif I exported out of keynote onto this upload area
and there's a preview of my animated gif and the fact that I'm seeing the preview
tells me that the file size is under the 16 megabyte limit and everything is good
I'll hit post to post the animated gif to my YouTube Community tab
and there's my post an eye-catching little preview of the full YouTube video a great way to track
new users to your channel and get more views for your videos and if you're looking for more ways
to use Apple keynote to create engaging YouTube content have a look at this playlist on my channel