If you're looking for a tutorial to walk you through how to create a YouTube
channel, you're in the right place. In this video,
I'm going to share a step by step what you need to create a YouTube channel so you
can have it up and ready to start your fabulous YouTube journey.
Hi, I'm Sara Nguyen,
and on this channel,
I'll help you grow your business using video with ease.
If you're new here
consider subscribing for more YouTube tutorials,
tips and training every week.
I wanted to show you the complete process to set up your YouTube channel,
including all of the settings and technical things you need to do.
There are lots of bits and pieces, so it's easy to miss adding a feature,
so I want to make sure you're using everything available to you.
I'm also here to make it as easy as possible.
Make sure you check out the time stamps
in the description so you can jump forward or back to any section
if you need to.
Let's go over to my computer and let's get started setting up your YouTube channel.
Let us have a look at how to set up your
YouTube channel and customise the branding and layout.
We're going to look at how you get your channel banner up and running, your profile
image, the links on your homepage, the videos laid out on your home page so
that people can see what your channel is all about.
We're also going to look at all of the other features,
such as setting up your playlists, setting up the content in your about
information so that you can have it optimised and utilise this space the best
as possible. To customise your YouTube channel,
we want to get into YouTube Studio.
We're going to make sure that you're
logged into your YouTube or Google account in the top right-hand corner,
click on your profile image and then go down to YouTube Studio.
From here we want to go on the left-hand
side down to customisation, and here's where we will be able
to customise the profile picture, the banner image and the video watermark.
Now let's get started with customising your profile picture.
If you've already uploaded a picture like
I have, you'll see that it's here and you have the option to change it or remove it.
If you haven't uploaded a profile picture,
this is what it will look like and you will see the upload button.
Your profile image needs to be at least 98 by 98 pixels and it needs to be under four
megabytes and it can also be a PNG file or gif, but it cannot be animated.
I recommend that you get a nice high res square image typically 1080p by 1080p
and you upload that and the image or your profile picture should ideally be either
a picture of yourself, or if you are a business, of your logo or your brand.
But I like using face pictures here
because this will appear in the YouTube search results next to your actual video.
It's a good idea to have a face
for your actual profile image. To upload your profile image, Select Upload and then
choose the image from your computer location.
Youtube will allow you to slightly
customise it in terms of drag it around and resize it.
And once you're happy with it,
Select Done and then YouTube will swap out the image. You need to Select Publish
on the top right-hand corner for the changes to actually apply.
And now that I've refreshed the page,
I can see that the profile image is now changed on the channel.
Now let's go ahead and set up the banner image.
This is still in the branding section just
underneath the profile picture, you'll see a banner image.
Once again, if you've already uploaded
one, it will give you the option to change and remove it.
If you have an uploaded one, you'll see what you see here where it says
upload. Size wise, you want your banner image to be at least 2048 by 1152
pixels and it needs to be less than six megabytes.
You'll see that there's a link below this video which explains all the intricacies
of the layout and size of a banner image so that you can watch that one
if you haven't already created your banner image.
Now to upload your banner image,
we're going to Select Upload, and then we can select the image from our
computer that we've already prepared for our channel banner image.
Once we've done that,
you'll be able to see that YouTube gives you a preview of the actual image
and you'll be able to see the sections where it's viewable on all devices.
Viewable on desktop, which is this outer one and viewable on TV.
And if you need to resize the image, then you can cancel and go out of this.
Otherwise, you can select done for it to upload. As usual with everything you
want to select publish for the changes to actually take place.
And you can see in this little preview
here that they've got an image where it shows you what it will look like
on computer, on a television screen and also on a mobile device as well.
Now, let's have a look at your video watermark or your branding watermark.
Basically, the branding watermark allows
you to add a branded image, which can typically be a logo to
all of the videos on your channel, and when someone clicks on it,
the watermark allows people to subscribe to your channel from the video itself.
It's a handy little feature for you to make the most of.
Ideally, you want it to be an image that is 150 by 150 pixels,
and you want to use a format that's either PNG or GIF with no animations,
and it needs to be under one megabyte. Once you've created that,
and ideally, as I said, you want it to be either a logo or an image
of yourself or something telling people to subscribe to your channel.
I'm going to click upload to add my one.
I'm going to select the image that I've already prepared.
It says subscribe here,
and I'm going to then add it. And then I can see this is what it will look like.
And then I get to choose whether I want it to display at the end of the video
at a custom start time, either the first minute or second minute
or whatever I choose all throughout the entire video.
You choose which works for you.
I might add it for the entire video for the purposes of this demonstration.
And then once again, I'm going to hit that Publish button
on the top right-hand corner to make sure that the changes actually apply.
Now let's have a look at adding all of the information in the Basic Info
section or your about page. From the customisation tab,
we're going to go to Basic Info and select that.
And here's where we're able to add a description.
Here's where you want to tell your viewers what the channel is actually about
and what they'll actually get from sticking around.
You have a thousand characters,
which is a plenty of space for you to talk about who you are, what you do,
and how you help people and what people can expect from your channel.
Once you've added the text there, Select Publish for the changes to apply.
Now let's have a look at adding links.
You can add five links which will appear across the top of your YouTube channel
banner, as well as in the Basic Information section.
We're still in the same space.
We're in Customisation and Basic info,
and we're down at this section that says links.
I want you to click on add link and here is where you can add a link title.
For example, I may want to link to my Facebook page.
I'm going to put the title as Facebook, and then I'm going to copy and paste
the link to my Facebook page, and then I'm going to select add link
to continue adding more links that I want to appear on the actual page.
I'm going to also add my Instagram page,
and as I said, you get five links in total.
And what you can do once you've added them
is that you can drag them to change the order of them around.
I would recommend that you have the most
important links first and then subsequently the other links to follow.
I'm going to go ahead and add all of the links that I want to appear. And now
that I've added all of the links and I've rearranged them to be in the order
from most important, I can then hit Publish for the changes to apply.
And when I go to my channel page,
I can see the links that I've added here across the top of the channel
banner image.
They go over that. As well as underneath in the about page.
I can see these are the links that I've also added as well.
I also have the option to indicate how
many links you want to appear on the banner of your homepage.
Let's say I've got four links here,
but I only want two links to actually appear across the top here.
I can do that.
What I would do is I would select
underneath the link section where it says links on Banner.
I would choose however many link. The first two links, first three links
I would choose that and then Select Publish.
Now let's have a look at contact information.
This is where you can add an email address
to your actual channel to allow people to make business inquiries.
This here simply is an email address that you want to appear,
and I would recommend that you don't put your actual personal email address here.
You create an email address,
whether that's a Gmail account or some other account for it.
Specifically for YouTube inquiries.
Add that to the Contact Information email
section here and then Select Publish. And then you'll see on your actual channel,
in the about section where it says details with business inquiries,
if they click on View email address, that email address will be here.
Let's talk a little bit about playlists.
These are playlist that I have on my channel and you can see here.
I've grouped my playlist into categories of videos that are kind on a similar topic.
I've got ones on YouTube training, on Streamyard tutorials,
I've got ones on Restream,
I've got a whole bunch of them.
And what I've tried to do here is create
categories where I can create lots of different videos within this topic.
And what it does is, I'm going to open
up this design tutorials Canva playlist, is that it has all of the videos that I've
got that I've added to this playlist and these are all Canva related.
And what happens here is that viewers can watch the specific videos and then they
can watch all related videos that are Canva tutorials as well.
It really helps to add to watch time.
It really helps to establish you as
an authority within this category because you've got so many videos within this
topic and it's really important that you add it to your channel.
How do you set up playlists? Within YouTube studio,
you want to go to playlist and from here
it will list all of the playlist if you have them.
And then if you want to add some more, you can do that from here and you would go
to new playlist. You would have to add the title of the playlist.
Let's just say I'm going to add a Canva tutorial playlist.
I want to try in the playlist title to include as many key words as possible.
Design Tutorials, Canva Tutorials
put as many keywords there as possible.
You've got 150 characters.
Try to use them to the best of your ability. In terms of visibility
you definitely want to make public if this is going to be one that you want to appear
on your channel, and then you would Select Create.
Now once this is in this section,
you can edit it, and once we go into this section, this is where we really want
to make use of the space that we have. Underneath this title,
we have a description section here.
We want to click on the pencil to add
the actual description and you've got lots of space here.
We've got 5000 characters, and we want to use this space to tell people what they
will find in the playlist as well as what you actually cover.
You've got so much space to tell people
all of the things that you cover and use keywords here.
The benefit of doing that is that, it will
help not only your playlists surface within YouTube, because that happens as well,
when people search for topics
sometimes the playlist will come up in addition to the video as well.
You want to put as many keywords that make sense as possible here,
and you can even go as far ahead as putting descriptions of all of the videos
with the keywords as well, because you've got so many characters here.
Make sure that you fill out the title to have keywords with the main keywords
that you are trying to rank for as well as the description section here,
and you use the space to the best of your ability and then Select Save.
Then how do you actually add videos to the playlist?
There are a couple of ways to do this. From the playlist section itself,
if you click on the three dots here,
you can select add videos, and this will allow you to add videos
from your own channel in addition to other videos within YouTube as well.
If I wanted to search for other Canva
tutorials and this will bring up 4 different videos from different creators
and different channels which I can add to the playlist
if I wanted to as well.
You can add your videos here and you can choose which ones that you've already
uploaded to add to them, or you can add other ones from YouTube.
The other way to add videos to the playlist is from the video itself.
If you select this save section here,
you have the ability to save it directly to your playlist from the front
of the video. And the other way to do it is in the backend
when you're editing your video and setting
up your video. Underneath the thumbnail section, you'll see this playlist section
here, and it has this drop down, which allows you once again to add
the video by selecting the little tick box here
if you want to add it to that specific
playlist. That's how you would go ahead and add videos to your actual playlist.
Now, after you've set up your playlist, you then have the ability to rearrange
the order that they appear on your YouTube home page.
What ideally you want to do is you want to add your playlist and you get a total
of 12 playlist altogether which you can display.
You want to arrange them so that the most important ones are the ones that have
the most views and are the most popular are at the top, and then you can just
rearrange them and stack them according to the other ones
afterwards. To do that, we want to go back into your
YouTube studio and go into customisation, and in the layout tab,
this is where the action happens. In the featured sections,
here is where you get to add the playlist
to your homepage and you get twelve of them that you can add.
You would select add section and you'll have the ability to add your playlist here.
In addition to adding my playlist, I use this section to add my current live
streams as well as upcoming live streams and past live streams.
And I do that by going to add section, and as you can see here,
I can choose Live Now, past live streams and upcoming live streams.
Then underneath that, I've got my single playlist.
I've got my YouTube training playlist
and my tech reviews as well as my Canva tutorials.
What I can do here as well is I can drag
them around so I can move this one to be on top of the YouTube training.
I can move the Canva one to be lower
in the list or higher in the list simply by dragging and dropping it.
And once I'm happy with the changes after adding the sections
and adding the playlist, then I would simply hit publish.
The thing that I can also do is I can remove a playlist.
I would remove a playlist by selecting
on the three dots here and then remove a section.
And if I wanted to it add back or add a new one, I would go to add section.
I would go to single playlist, and then here I can see all of my own playlist
from my channel and I can add whichever one I want to appear.
I'm going to click on this content
strategy one and it's added it here and then I'm going to move it up one as well.
Then hit publish, and this will apply the changes to the actual channel.
Let's talk about adding a featured video. Now on your YouTube channel,
what you can do is on the homepage and you
can choose to select a video for people who haven't subscribed and also
a different video for people who have subscribed and are returning viewers.
It's up to you on whether you want to add
a channel trailer or you want to add a featured video,
but this is the video that appears
on the homepage in the home tab in the first section.
To do that, you would go to your YouTube studio page customisation and layout.
And in video spotlight, this is the place where you can add or change the video.
You don't have to be permanently stuck
with one video for the rest of your YouTube life. And to add the video,
if you haven't added one already, you would simply Select Add and then you
would choose the video that you want to actually appear.
I'm going to select this one and as you
can see, it's appeared here. And the same for the featured video.
You can change it here
if you've already got one,
by selecting these three dots and I can
change the video and then select another video from my actual YouTube channel.
And then once I'm happy with that,
I simply Select Publish and this will change out the videos for people
to see when they haven't subscribed and the video will also be different if
they have subscribed and are a returning subscribers.
I hope you got so much value out of this video.
And if you did,
please hit the like button for me. And let me know in the comments section below,
what other YouTube training would you like to learn about?
I love making these videos for you.
In the meanwhile, why don't you check out
my YouTube playlist for more YouTube tutorials?
Or if you're struggling to come up with what to say in your YouTube videos,
you'll definitely want my five swipeable YouTube scripts.
They'll help you come up with the content for your videos that grabs your viewers'
attention and increases your YouTube watch time.
You can check them out by clicking
on the links on the screen and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye for now.