in this video i explain exactly what YouTube playlists are why you should use them on your
channel and how to create new playlists that get discovered in search at the end of the video i
also explain how playlists can greatly improve your channel's home pages look and feel which
in turn keeps viewers looking at your videos which can help grow your YouTube channel let's start
at the very beginning what is a youtube playlist well a youtube playlist is a group of videos that
someone has put together because they relate to one another in some sort of way that could be they
follow a sequence like a series where you benefit from watching one video after the other and it
follows a logical pattern in most cases sequences of videos are by the same creator and their aim
is to help viewers logically follow from one video to another to learn a specific skill or understand
a specific topic playlists can also be groups of similar videos for example a collection of videos
that are all about how to build a model car if all the videos are related to the same topic
but each video explains slightly different options or features this will help position your youtube
video correctly in youtube search but also gives you the opportunity to appear
on the suggested feature on youtube let me explain exactly what i mean by that so in the example of
the model car you may choose to construct a playlist that shows how to build a ford focus
and you also have a video already explaining how to construct a ford mondeo you link these
together in a playlist you then find another creator that has a great video about ford mustangs
you could add this video to your playlist too now i know what a lot of you are going to be thinking
as soon as the playlist hits that video you are no longer clocking up the hours on your video
and you are actually promoting somebody else's video so why would you do that well
a playlist makes a link between the videos so if your content is similar to another channel
creating those links is actually a good thing if you imagine a spiderweb and the more links
you make the larger the spiderweb gets and the more likely mr spider is to catch his prey or the
chance you have to hook people in to watch your videos so the more links you create to similar
creators the better youtube can position your videos and know exactly what you specialize in
and ultimately it strengthens the chance of your videos showing up in youtube's suggested features
whilst viewers watch other channels videos if you're appearing suggested more often you'll get
more clicks more views and more watch time this obviously works the other way too if somebody is
watching your video the other channel's video that's in the playlist is likely to appear
in suggested so you still need to keep the viewer engaged and watching your videos but by linking
the other channel's content via your playlist you can really help boost your channel overall
all you need to do is make sure the content you're connecting is relevant for the viewer and if we're
meeting for the very first time then my name is joe cullen and this video is actually part of
a series on how to create your youtube channel from scratch there's a link in the description
below to the full playlist if that interests you so why should you use a youtube playlist well as
we've already discussed there are two main reasons you may want to create a playlist and number one
is to make it easier for your viewers to follow through a series that you have made for them
the easier it is to help your viewers the more people will like and return to your
channel by setting up a playlist that guides them through in the correct sequence you are
really making it as easy as possible for them to consume your content and if you get your
playlist to rank in search then you're not just promoting one video on your channel
you're promoting an entire collection of videos which when this happens you will see
massive spikes in your watch time and your subscriber count and reason number two on why
you should use playlists is to position yourself strategically and link to other channels this
simply increases people's awareness of your channel and that you exist a lot of the time
on youtube the main reason you're not growing is because people simply don't know that you're there
all you need to do is get people aware that you exist and if you can get in front of more people
and you're producing good content as well a portion of them will subscribe and support
your channel one of the most underrated ways to get in front of more people is to link
strategically to other videos via playlists so how does this relate to starting a new channel
now let's not forget most are watching this video to learn how to create their youtube
channel in the very best way from scratch so lots of the information i've just given isn't actually
relevant to you right now especially if you don't have any content on your channel however knowing
the ins and outs of playlists is important so you can build that into your strategy moving forwards
and the main reason i've started talking about them this early on in the series
is because the very next video will explain how to use playlists on your home page and
i'm guessing if you're like me you cannot use playlists very easily if you don't know what
they do what their intentions are or how to create them so i hope you now understand what they are
let's turn our attention on how to create playlists and to do that i'm going to jump
over to the computer and show you right now okay so the first thing we need to do to create
a new playlist is come up to your icon in the top right and then go into youtube studio then over
on the left hand side you see the playlists item click onto that and now as you would expect on a
new channel you've got no playlists here but you can come up to the top right and go new playlist
when you click on that you get two options you need to fill in the title and then the visibility
the title wants to be something that's describing the collection of videos that you want to create
so for ultimate gamer i could do something like action game reviews or rpg game reviews so for
my example i'll use action game reviews and this would be a collection of all the action games that
i've reviewed on my channel it could theoretically also include other people's game reviews if i
wanted to add them in and create those links that i was talking about earlier visibility
there are three different types of visibility the first one is public public means that it's
open to the world and everyone will be able to see your playlist if they come to your channel
private is the exact opposite no one apart from if they've got permission to your channel so
by that i mean if you've given them permission to the back end of your channel so they can work
as an admin behind the scenes they will be able to see your private playlists but apart
from that nobody viewing your channel as a regular viewer will be able to see your private playlists
unlisted playlists is a bit of a grey area in the middle it can lead to a bit of confusion so
just understand that unlisted does actually mean it's available for the world to see there's no
protection and there's no security around an unlisted playlist the only difference between
an unlisted playlist and a public playlist is that public shows on your youtube channel
whereas unlisted by default does not so you have to provide the link to the unlisted playlist for
most people to find your unlisted playlist however there are websites and other tools available
that can surface unlisted playlists so really what you want to do is make sure that if you've got
an unlisted playlist it's actually okay for the world to see it's just not really relevant to them
if that's the case then you can select unlisted playlist but generally speaking i would say
select either public or private you don't really want to have a playlist that's unlisted unless
you've got a very specific reason for that so i'm going to select public and i'm going to click
create just here now that's created an item just down here and i can hover over and click onto the
pencil to get to a few more options now this is the title i can edit it here if i wanted to at all
and now i can also add a description descriptions are the same as videos where you've got 5 000
characters that you can use and i suggest using at least a thousand characters
so it actually makes sense for people that may be interested in watching it now to save time
i've already prepared a quick description for this playlist however it is worth noting that both the
title and the description can play a part in ranking in search so if you wanted this playlist
to be discovered in search which i'm suggesting most people would like that if they've got the
option to then you want to try and optimize both of these areas for youtube search now that's
done in exactly the same way as the title and the description on the normal video which we'll cover
in a much later video so to get up and running i suggest just putting in what you think is best
and then we'll come back to all of this later on when you have more understanding of how to perform
some seo on your title and description there's nothing more to it than that after you've added
in your description just click save and your playlist is now created all you need now is to
add some videos into your playlist so to do that you can do it in two different ways the first way
is to click on these little dots and click add videos you can then search for your video or you
can look in your videos obviously this channel has no videos at the moment or you can add it through
a url you've got lots of different options if i just add a video from one of my other channels
then it's as quick and easy as doing that you can then reorder them as you add more videos
so the first one at the top is the one that will play first and also show as the preview
for the playlist if you come back to the little dots you've also got some extra options here
you can add to all so when you've got videos on your playlist you can add them all to another
area as well you've got the collaborate which means other people can add to your playlist i'd
recommend in most circumstances turning this off but you may want other people to collaborate with
you on making this playlist you've also got your playlist settings so allow embedding basically
means that you can embed this playlist into your website or other areas and other people can too
add new videos to top of playlist which means your first video here will become your last video
if you keep on adding new videos to your playlist in most circumstances if you're playing through
from a to z or in a sequence then you'd want to leave this turned off but if you want the newest
video at the front then you can switch that on and you can also set it as the official series for the
playlist lastly the final option in the list here is to delete the playlist now this will not delete
your videos this will only delete the playlist the grouping of all of the videos put together
so you can't delete your videos from this view all it's going to do is remove this playlist
which will remove the links that you've created between all of the playlist items that you may
have reason to do that and that's how you would do it and now that we've added this video to
the playlist if we go back to our channel and then click over onto playlists we'll now see
our first created playlist in our playlist section on our channel you can obviously create as many as
you'd like and over time i would expect channels to create quite a few playlists not only because
they're creating their own little series or videos that are helpful for their viewers but also to
create those links that we discussed earlier so i do hope that's been helpful please consider
liking and subscribing in the very next video in this series we'll be talking about our home page
and how we can make this look awesome for our viewers so i'll see you in the next video
you