- This video is sponsored by Camtasia,
the easy to use video editing and screen recording software.
More about them later in the video.
You may or may not know
that 70% of the total watch time on YouTube
comes from mobile devices.
That means tablets and phones.
So because of that,
it's critical that you are optimizing everything
it is that you're doing with your YouTube channel
around the mobile viewing experience.
If you don't do that,
then you could be creating a less
than satisfactory experience for your viewers which means
that you're gonna end up costing yourself subscribers,
and you're gonna end up costing yourself views as well.
In fact, YouTube prioritizes the viewer experience
over everything else.
It's the most important thing
and if you can't give your viewers a good experience,
you're going to end up stuck.
So, I'm gonna tell you how to optimize everything
that you're doing on YouTube to create a better experience
for the people that are interacting with your content
on mobile devices.
I'm breaking this video down into three different parts.
The first is how you're presenting your content.
That means your titles and thumbnails.
The second part is about making your content more accessible
to people that are watching it on a mobile device
so that when they are seeing your content,
it's really easy for them to understand what's going on.
The second part is about the actual content itself,
and the third part is about your YouTube channel page
and how to set it up to create a better experience
for people that are interacting with it on a mobile device
and we're starting right now.
When you're using YouTube on your phone as a viewer,
you'll notice the autoplay the video if you stop scrolling.
Because of this,
you gotta be able to grab the viewer's attention quickly
because your thumbnail on a mobile device
is going to quickly disappear.
So let's talk about how you can grab a viewer's attention
quickly using your thumbnail.
When you're making your thumbnails,
the very first thing that you wanna do is zoom out.
And the reason that you wanna zoom out
is because you wanna look at your thumbnail at a small size,
because when you're making your thumbnails really big
in all the online software that's out there
and the software that you might have in your computer
and some of the apps that you might be using,
when you're making your thumbnail big,
then you can see all the detail
and you can see like everything
that's going on in your thumbnail.
But when you're building the core pieces of your thumbnail,
the parts that are meant to grab a viewer's attention
quickly and give them some information
about your video quickly,
you wanna make sure that you're doing that at a small size.
If you're using texts in your thumbnails,
you wanna make sure that when you do have it scaled down,
that everything is really easy to read.
That means that you wanna use big bold letters instead
of small, skinny, thin, or fancy letters,
because big and bold is easy to read
when it's at a small size.
You also wanna focus on how easy it is to see the subject
of your thumbnail.
For example,
if you're somebody that makes tech videos,
then the subject of your thumbnail
is most likely going to be the tech, not necessarily you.
Not necessarily any words that you might have
on the thumbnail,
because the star of that video,
the thing that you're going to be focusing all the attention
on is the actual tech itself for the review
and all of that, right?
So because of that,
you wanna make sure that somebody that is interested
in that particular tech can clearly see that it's about
the tech at a very small size.
If you're making food videos, then in that case,
the subject of your thumbnail would be the food.
So when you zoom out from your thumbnail
and you make it a small size,
what you wanna look for is the subject of the thumbnail.
The thing that I'm trying to bring attention to
is that crystal clear
and is my eye not being pulled in a bunch of ways,
focusing on a bunch of texts that's on the thumbnail
or focusing on a bunch of other stuff,
is it clearly focused on the subject of the video?
It's also important to remember that in a lot of cases,
less is more when it comes
to putting your thumbnails together.
And what that means is,
you don't have to add a bunch of stuff to them.
You can just make it a simple image
or an image with maybe one line of text,
with an arrow pointing to the thing
that you're talking about,
but the idea is just to simplify what it is
that you're doing with your thumbnails,
so that you can focus the potential viewer
on the thing that would grab their attention
and pull them into your video.
Now, of course you can add more details to your thumbnail
because it will be displayed a little bit bigger
in the home feed and in some places on desktop computers
and all that, so you can add that detail,
but the idea is to just focus really hard on making sure
that the thing that the viewer cares about is crystal clear
when it comes to them seeing your thumbnail
at a smaller size.
The next thing that we need to talk about
when it comes to optimizing your content
for the mobile viewing experience is titles.
In the home feed of the YouTube app,
you have about 70 characters to play with
before YouTube cuts off the title.
The character limit on the subscription feed on a computer
is around 50 characters, so because of that,
the most important things for your title needs to be within
that first 50 characters.
If you are only optimizing for mobile, then in that case,
you can be a little bit flexible with the 70,
but I would still recommend that you try to keep
the most important parts within 50,
because they do get cut off in different features
in YouTube and you wanna give yourself that advantage.
But when you're putting your videos together,
you wanna make sure that the thing
that is the most important to the potential viewer
that you're trying to reach
is as close to the front of the title as possible
in the event that your title does get cut off somewhere.
Okay, so now let's talk about
the actual video content itself.
A lot of creators are really messing this up when it comes
to mobile viewership,
but after you watch this section of this video,
you are not gonna be one of those people anymore
if you are making this mistake.
So for this section, the content part,
I'm breaking this down into three parts for you.
The on-camera content,
if you're somebody that speaks to the camera, like I do,
graphics and screen recording.
So if you're somebody that does tutorials,
or you're somebody that records game footage,
then this section is definitely something
that you wanna pay attention to.
When you're putting your content together,
you wanna make sure that everything that the viewer
is intended to see that you deem important
for the viewer to see is clear.
For example, if you're doing any type of screen recordings,
you do not want to record just one big static screen where
the people that are watching on a phone have to zoom in
and get real close and kind of, you know,
just look in there really good and see what it is
that you're talking about.
You wanna make it easy for them, because remember,
we're trying to create the best possible experience
for the people that are interacting with our content.
So you wanna make it really easy for them to see
what it is that you're showing them.
You want to zoom in to the areas that you are focusing on
when you're recording your screen
and actually highlight those areas
and you wanna make sure
that they can clearly see your mouse.
You wanna draw arrows and boxes if you have to,
in order to make sure that the viewer is focused
on the thing that you're trying to show them
when you are showing them your screen.
Camtasia that I mentioned at the beginning of this video
can help you do that.
Camtasia makes it possible to zoom in
and out of your videos if you use it to edit
and to zoom in and out of your screen recordings,
if you use it to record your screen.
They have an easy drag and drop option
to highlight your cursor so you can make sure
that your viewers see exactly what it is
that you're wanting them to see.
They have drag and drop boxes and arrows
so you can bring attention
to the most important things on the screen.
They even have text blocks in their annotation sets so that
you can put those on your screen
to make something that you're saying more clear
or so you can add an obvious correction
that people will see.
Because when we're making these videos,
sometimes we'll mess up.
You know, sometimes we'll say the wrong thing,
even though in our brains, we think we're saying it right,
and then when we go and we're editing the footage,
we'll be like, oh, wait a minute,
it's supposed to be this.
Camtasia gives you that opportunity
to actually highlight that thing that you're trying to say
right there on the screen.
And if you're making any type of tutorial content where
you're showing people how to do things on a computer,
they even have keystroke call-outs.
So they'll show that keystrokes that you're making
on the screen as well.
You know, for keyboard shortcuts and that kind of thing.
And before we move on,
because I can't talk about Camtasia without also adding
this stuff as well,
they also have built-in audio processing.
So they'll help your voice sound better.
They even have graphics for YouTubers,
some of them have been made by me
that you can use in your videos as well
if you're a Camtasia user.
Personally, I've been using Camtasia for seven years.
It's great.
If you wanna try Camtasia for yourself for 30 days,
there's a link down in the description
and if you decide to purchase Camtasia after that,
you'll save 10% by using that link.
Now, let's talk about graphics in your videos.
If you're using graphics in your videos,
you wanna make them big.
If you're showing screenshots in your videos,
you wanna make those big.
If you have text pop up in your videos,
make it big, bold, and easy to read,
just like you do in your thumbnails.
Don't worry about being fancy,
focus on being clear and easy to understand,
that will get you much better results.
If you're making gaming content,
you wanna make sure that if you have any must see moments
in your gameplay,
that you're zooming into those as well if your character
or the thing that you're doing
or whatever is really small.
For your video content,
whatever it is that you're focusing on in your video,
you wanna make sure that that's also big
and fills the frame up enough
so that when somebody is watching it on a mobile device,
it's crystal clear to them
what it is that they should be looking at.
And look,
I know that you can get some really cool shots
if you're showing, you know,
a bunch of additional space in the video,
I know that, however,
the thing is is that you really wanna make sure
that you're leaning on clarity and understanding
'cause it's gonna get you a lot further
than a cool shot's going to get you.
Don't sacrifice clarity for that cool shot
that only a very small percentage of your audience
is gonna be able to enjoy.
If you are reviewing something,
make sure that you're showing that something
that you're reviewing up close.
Don't just show your object next to you on screen.
Make sure that you zoom in just for some of the details
so that they can know exactly what it is
that you're talking about.
Now, let's talk about your YouTube channel page
and setting that up properly for mobile viewership as well.
Now, I know there's a really high chance
that you are watching this on your phone right now.
If you are not,
or if you can navigate to your YouTube channel
while you're watching this, that's fine.
But what I want you to do is I want you to,
when you get the chance,
look at your YouTube channel page on your phone.
If you do that,
everything I'm getting ready to tell you
is going to make a ton of sense.
First, make sure that your channel art
is really easy to read on your phone.
If it's not, change it.
Second, put your recent uploads playlist
at the very top of your channel page.
The reason for this is because if you don't,
when somebody goes to your channel page,
they're gonna have to scroll a lot
to find your most recent content.
Now, of course they can go right to your videos page,
but there's a lot of people that will also scroll through
your channel page,
trying to find your most recent content or finding content
that is just important to them.
And remember,
we're trying to make the experience
that people have with our content in our channel
as good as we possibly can
so that they're more likely to find content that they enjoy
and they're more likely to subscribe and come back
and from the creator perspective,
so it can show YouTube
that as people are interacting with your stuff,
that they're having a good experience.
But as you're looking at your channel page on your phone,
another thing that I want you to take note of
is how tiny your thumbnails look on your channel page.
So, because of that,
that's just one thing that I wanna highlight really quick
in terms of the things that we were talking about earlier
about making sure that your thumbnails are crystal clear
to the people that you're trying to reach.
And of course,
focused on all the right stuff that matters to the viewer.
Also, if you're not already,
make sure that you organize your content into playlists
and that you put some of those playlists
based on the things that viewers typically come
to your content for,
you put some of those videos on your home page as sections.
You can do this by using the customization settings
in your YouTube Studio and by doing this,
you are going to make your content
that matters to your viewer,
you're gonna make it easier for them to find.
When you're setting your channel up
for that mobile viewer experience,
you wanna make sure that you're also making sure
to add playlist titles that are actual titles,
instead of just something that's categorical.
While you're doing that,
you'll also wanna make sure that you add descriptions
to your playlist as well.
And the reason for that is because those show up
on computers and they also show up on mobile devices.
Those descriptions are just a small detail
that will help your viewers have more context
as to what your playlist is about.
On mobile phones,
you do not have a description that displays
unless somebody actually clicks into it.
So if you're doing any type of affiliate marketing,
or you're trying to bring attention to your website,
or you're trying to bring attention to a sponsor
that you're working with,
you wanna make sure that those links are within that area
that you see on your phone
when you tap into your description.
That way they're not gonna have to figure anything out.
As soon as they pop your description open,
they're going to see a link to whatever it is
that you mentioned in your video,
trying to get them in your description
to click on that link, for example,
how I mentioned in this video that I have a link to Camtasia
down in the video description as well,
that'll save you 10% off Camtasia.
In addition to that,
your About Me page is also displayed a little bit different
on a mobile device than it is on a desktop.
So because of that,
you just wanna take a look at it
and make sure that everything is there
as you want it to be on a mobile device.
But the important part of this is to make sure
that if you are linking to something like your website,
for example.
You wanna make sure that you have that clickable link
right there at that bottom of your About Me page
so people can click through and go right to your website.
To learn more about making videos for YouTube,
click into this playlist right here
and if you haven't yet,
make sure you subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you next time.