- YouTube has three major updates that are rolling out.
Two of them are happening right now
as you're watching this video,
and one of them is coming in September.
All of them are important
and they matter to you as a content creator,
so I'm gonna tell you everything that you need to know
and we're starting right now.
The first thing is that YouTube is removing the ability
for viewers to click links in YouTube shorts
starting on August 31st.
This is gonna be frustrating for a lot of creators
that do affiliate marketing or brand deals
through YouTube shorts, but YouTube has thought about this
and they've built in another solution
that we're gonna talk about here shortly.
And the whole idea with this is that YouTube
is just getting flooded with spammers
uploading content that is directing people offsite
and it's causing a lot of issues for their viewers
or your viewers.
And because of that, they are removing our ability
to have offsite links in YouTube shorts.
If you do have a lot of links in your descriptions,
TubeBuddy has a bulk update tool that I invite you to use.
I've got a link to that down in the description.
But with that particular tool, you can say,
"Replace this link with the words
'check the link in my bio'."
Which leads me to the next feature,
which is channel profile links.
Channel profile links are links that show
directly in your channel page on computers
and mobile devices.
Unlike the header links which are being removed
as this feature replaces them,
12 different links are going to be available
for you to use.
When your viewer clicks on the option in your profile,
there's a slide up that lists all of your links.
You can actually see this live right now on my channel page.
If you go there on your mobile device
and click on that link, you'll see those links pop up.
But if you work with brands,
or you're using your YouTube channel
to drive awareness of your business or your services
or anything like that, these links
are going to be a great place to put that information
because they're going to be visible to everybody.
And then when you have a short that you publish,
you can drive people to those links
and you can also do it in your long form videos as well.
But the idea is you're going to be able,
through your shorts, to start getting more people heading
over to your YouTube channel page for these links
if that particular feature is important to you.
So let's say that you do a sponsor deal
in your YouTube shorts or over the course of the month,
and you have, let's say, three different sponsors
that you're working with
then you can put links to all of them
in your channel profile, which is a win,
and it makes it easier for people
to find those specific links that you're talking about.
But the downside of this is that if you have a sponsor
that you're working with,
instead of having the one isolated link
that's down in the description,
instead they're gonna be competing
with all those other links
that are there in those 12 links
that you have available to you.
So that part kind of sucks a little bit,
however, it's better
than not being able to link anything at all.
Keep in mind, when you are using this feature,
just like every other thing
that you're linking to on YouTube,
that all of your links still have to comply
with YouTube's external link policy.
I have information about that down in the description below
if you want to inform yourself on all the details of that.
Next, starting in September, YouTube is rolling out
content links to YouTube shorts.
So YouTube is taking away the clickable links from shorts,
but they're giving with the content links in YouTube shorts.
But let me talk about what those actually are.
Reading from my notes here,
content links are direct links
to any content on your YouTube channel.
So you can link to live streams,
you can link to live stream premieres,
you can link to long form videos,
you can even link to other shorts.
At this moment in time, you can not link to playlists.
That's something I hope they roll out in the future
but as of right now, you're not gonna be able to link
to playlists at this moment in time.
It's just the direct content.
What this looks like is when somebody's watching
your YouTube short
they're gonna have a visible link
right there on the screen like you can see in this image
where they can click on that particular link
and it will take them directly into whatever content it is
that you're sending them into.
In my opinion, this is pretty cool
because now we're gonna be able to, strategy-wise,
we're gonna be able to look at YouTube shorts
and we're gonna say, "Okay, what type of content can we make
to where we can intentionally direct people that way
into our long form content?"
This is part of the bridge that YouTube has been building
to where we can take people from YouTube shorts
and have them go over to long form content
so that they can start watching
some of that as well and get more familiar
with everything else that we're doing as a content creator.
For those of you that answer a lot of comments
as YouTube shorts, this is something really cool as well
to where if you're answering the comment as a YouTube short
then you can also use this as a way
to direct people to content that might be relevant to them
when you're answering that question
or when you're just talking to them
about whatever their comment was.
Depending on how you use this, some of the things
that I was thinking about is also if you have
what I call a money video if you're an affiliate
or if you're somebody that is doing brand deals,
then in that particular case you can say,
"Okay well I wanna send a lot more traffic
from other places to this particular video.
So because of that, what type of shorts
could I put together?
Could I come up with three or four shorts
that I can use to direct all of that activity
to this long form video that would drive affiliate sales,
awareness about my business,
awareness about a sponsor and so on?"
Or of course, just to show them some video that you made
that you're super proud of.
So overall, these are some really major features.
So what you should be doing as a content creator right now
is thinking about how can I use these?
So the content links is dropping in September,
so right now you should be thinking about,
"Okay, what can I do for this?"
Of course, I'm gonna be making videos about this.
I'm sure everybody else who makes
this type of content is as well.
But the idea is to start thinking
of how you're gonna be able to use that to drive people
into additional content
to create longer viewing sessions on YouTube,
which is a really important thing
when it comes to growing your YouTube channel.
To learn how to grow your channel,
to stay up to date with everything
that's happening on YouTube, make sure you subscribe
and then click into this playlist right here
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There's some really cool stuff in there
that you should be checking out
'cause this stuff is the future.
You go ahead and click into that now
and I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time.