- Ah, the eternal pursuit of happiness.
Sorry, in this case, subscribers.
We all work damn hard to produce amazing content
to convince our viewers to become subscribers
and join the community,
much like you can do right now here at vidIQ.
However, what if I told you
there was a built in YouTube tool,
that if you use correctly,
can increase your subscriber count from that source
by 500 percent and it only takes 20 seconds.
It's on screen right now
and I'm gonna show you how to do it.
Let's do this.
You know, one of these days,
I'm probably gonna damage this lens irreparably,
but until then, it's gonna get the old rough treatment.
Hello folks, welcome to vidIQ.
My name is Rob.
If this is your first time
in these glorious YouTube surroundings,
we are, indeed, the YouTube tool and channel
that aims to get you more views in less time
by educating you on your YouTube journey.
Now, of course, the vidIQ chrome extension
is free to download.
A link is in the description
and it's crammed full of awesome tools,
including our legendary video score card, keyword research
and the recently upgraded channel audit tool,
which if you press on it, is gonna make your jaw drop.
Wow.
However, what we want to talk to you today about
is a very simple tool from YouTube
that's been around for a considerable amount of time,
but when used in the right fashion,
can give you so many more subscribers per video.
It sits on every video and allows any user
on any device to use it.
I'm just gonna check my viewfinder now,
gonna point to it around about there.
It is your YouTube watermark branding.
It allows a user to mouse over it
or to tap on it on a mobile device
and subscribe directly to your channel
without leaving the page or having
to navigate off the video itself.
Now, a lot of video creators simply use their logo
or a channel avatar that doesn't strictly ask the viewer
to subscribe to their channel.
And since this is a call to action
to subscribe to your channel,
it should do that in it's very essence.
So I'm gonna show you what we use on our channel,
how to set it up and what impact it can have.
Let's jump on a computer and take a look.
On any screen via your YouTube layout,
you should see your channel icon
in the top right hand corner.
If you click on that, you'll have the options
to go to your Creator Studio.
Bare in mind, at this time of recording,
you need to go to the classic version
of your Creator Studio.
Once you're in the Creator Studio,
down the left side navigation panel,
there's plenty of options.
What you want to choose today is channel
and then once it's refreshed a page,
there should be some new subheadings.
One of them is branding.
Click on that and it will take you
to your YouTube branding watermark.
If you haven't added a watermark before,
the screen's going to look like this,
so obviously you want to click on add a watermark
and it will give you some general guidelines.
When you finish reading them, click on choose file
and this is where you can select your branded watermark
that's going to appear on your YouTube videos.
So the next big question is, what watermark should you use
and we suggest something like this,
a red play button with the word subscribe on it.
There are a few reasons for this.
First of all, the watermark brand is a square shape
and you want to fit as much of that shape as possible
with a box that looks like this.
Secondly, it fits for design style of YouTube
and anything that looks like it should be naturally placed
on a YouTube page is more likely to be clicked.
And finally, it needs to be clear, simple and explicit
and it does exactly what it says on the tin, essentially.
And because we're such generous people,
we're going to provide you
with this exact branding watermark.
There is a link in the description.
Download it right now.
Once you've decided on your watermark,
it will show you a preview of what it's gonna look like
and when you click save,
that's gonna apply your watermark
to every single video on your YouTube channel.
Now, there's one more thing you'll want
to do before leaving this screen
and that's to change the display time of the watermark.
Change it from custom start time to entire video to ensure
that whenever somebody's watching one of your videos,
they see that watermark branding.
The argument being
that every single viewer's watching habits are different
and it could be two minutes into the video,
eight minutes into the video,
or at the very start of the video
that they decide to subscribe to your channel
and you want to give them every opportunity to do that
and the watermark branding is one of the best ways
to grab that subscriber.
And there you are folks, a ready-made,
fresh out of the oven branded YouTube watermark.
But, we know you're a fickle bunch out there.
What if you don't like this?
What if you would prefer something that's more suited
to the color scheme of your channel?
Well the answer to that is to create your own.
You can do it for free, takes around five minutes
and you can do it online, right now.
We'll show you how.
All you need to do is point your browser
to the following, uber powerful, online graphic design tool
which is www.canva.com.
It is free to use.
You just need to create an account.
As you can see, I've already created a masterpiece
of a watermark down here,
but we're gonna go through the process step-by-step
so you can get one set up for your channel too.
In the top right of the screen
there should be a use custom dimensions button.
Click that and set the dimensions to 400 by 400.
That should give you a plain, white box
that looks something like this.
And the first thing you want to add
to this box is a background.
There are tools on the left hand side.
Choose background and choose your color scheme.
Obviously for vidIQ, we want blue.
A simple triangle is going to represent the play button here
on the watermark.
To get that, go to elements.
Then click on shapes and find the triangle.
When you click on that,
it will automatically add the shape to your square box,
but it's likely going to be the wrong color
and wrong orientation.
To fix this, you'll see a black colored box
in the top left of the main canvas.
This is the color of your shape.
Simply click on it and switch it to white.
And then, on the shape itself,
you'll see a rotation icon at the bottom of a shape.
Click and drag that to get it face the right way.
Now, as per usual, this is where you
can get to Ikea levels of positioning,
where you're constantly resizing the shape
and putting it in the right place.
But once you've done that,
the next thing you'll want to do is add some text.
You'll find that tool, again, on the left hand side.
Click there then add a heading.
Now, this text, again, will be
in the wrong color and the wrong font.
There are all sorts of fonts you can choose.
In this particular example, we chose Aileron Heavy
but you can scroll through all of the fonts
and see which one suits your design.
And the font size will need adjusting as well
so it fits nicely under your play button.
And don't forget to change your font color,
unless black suits your color scheme.
Once your masterpiece is complete,
there is a download button in the top right hand corner.
Click that, followed by the green download button
and that will allow you to save the watermark directly
to your computer.
To replace an existing watermark,
you first have to remove it and start from scratch,
as you saw earlier on in this video.
And the end result is something that looks like this.
To be honest,
we prefer our original YouTube watermark branding button,
so we're going to switch back to that.
So you should all now have the branding watermarks
of your choice and as you can see,
it's a relatively simple thing to do.
But I wanted to go through it step by step
just to make sure you get exactly what you need.
Now, for the good stuff.
You've set up this watermark.
People are clicking on it, subscribing to your content.
How do you find out how successful that watermark is?
That's why we need to jump into the analytics.
Take a look at this.
In the YouTube Creator Studio,
you want to go to the analytics section
and scroll all the way down until you find annotations.
Now in this section,
you want to click on annotation type,
a box just below the graph
and then choose branding watermark.
And this will show you all the click throughs
for your branded watermark on all of your videos
for your channel.
This is where we finally get to see the payoff
of this relatively simple piece of work.
When we change our analytics to 2018,
you're gonna notice a significant shift in our data,
exactly when we added this branded watermark
for the entire duration of all our videos.
Now you should know by now that I love digging
into the analytics and when we look
at our previous watermark,
which was a thin, red subscribe strip
that started 45 seconds into a video,
we get three, two, maybe even just one click a day.
When we changed it to this box
for the whole duration of the video,
we're talking 15, 16, 17 clicks
and it's now increased to above 20 every single day.
And if you need further evidence,
we tried exactly the same thing on a second channel.
And although the results weren't quite as pronounced,
as you can see, there was an increase in click-through rates
on the subscribe branding watermark.
So, if you haven't been using a YouTube branded watermark,
shame on you.
Now you have absolutely no excuse.
You can see the benefits of it.
Go set one up.
Follow this guide.
If you have been using a branded watermark
and you don't feel as if you've been getting
any results from it, try ours for at least 28 days
and then come back to us and let us know how you get on.
Now, if you enjoyed this video,
we've got plenty more on YouTube tools.
Over here there's one on YouTube hashtags in 2018
and if you want to know
how much YouTube you're watching every single day,
we've got a detailed guide down here.
We'll see you on either of those videos right now.
Enjoy the rest of your video-making day.