YouTube is one of the first platforms to give birth to the influencer and content creation business. Many successful influencers in today’s day and age started their journey through YouTube. Even today, most content creators start their journey through the platform and then jump onto other platforms.
The video-streaming platform keeps updating its algorithm to help creators and to provide a better viewing experience to the audience.
It has introduced several new features to benefit content creators. The features will help YouTube influencers or YouTubers expand their reach and maintain a positive community.
Influencer business is at its peak now and has spread over multiple platforms. Other platforms are making several changes in the algorithms to build higher engagement for creators, so it was necessary for the oldest and the most used platform, YouTube to step up the game for all the YouTubers/content creators.
It has made several meaningful changes on the platform to add value in the business of content creators. Some features are already rolling and are full in action while some are yet to be launched. Let’s take a look at each new feature introduced recently:
1) Introducing YouTube Shorts:
Source: Google Images
After the ban of Tik Tok in India, all platforms have adopted the short-video streaming model and have integrated it into their businesses. Months after the launch of the Reels feature on Instagram, YouTube on 14 September 2020 announced that it is all set with a new feature called YouTube Shorts.
It is a 15-second short-video feature wherein creators can record videos using a new set of creator tools, including a multi-segment camera, which will help creators compress multiple videos into one small video. Other features are speed control, a timer, and a countdown feature.
The company will introduce the feature vertically, just like Tik Tok videos so that it’s easy for users to swipe up and see multiple videos on the platforms. Although YouTube will try and test the feature shortly, no further details have been spilled on the feature by the company yet. YouTube Shorts will feature thousands of tracks from partners like T-Series and Believe Digital. It’s also working with music artists, labels, and publishers to make more of their content available in the YouTube Shorts’ catalog.
2) Keep a tap on when’s the audience online:
One of the best features that YouTube is rolling out for the creators is to giving them access to data which lets them know when their subscribers or the ‘target audience’ is online.
The platform will provide data to creators, which will showcase peak hours when the channel’s audience is most active. It’ll help creators to schedule their videos and live streams when the audience is most active on the platform.
Here’s an example of how it will look for the creators:
Image source: Google
Creators should keep in mind that the data does not necessarily mean that the online audience is watching their channel. The data will indicate that a channel’s audience is most active watching any videos on YouTube.
The reason why the data doesn’t represent when a channel’s own content is being watched is that it would be heavily skewed toward the channel’s publishing times.
Though knowing when the audience is active and online on the platform is beneficial for creators, YouTube does not give a guarantee that it will increase the viewership of the channel. Creators can use the data to engage with the community in the form of comments, lives and schedules.
3) Review inappropriate comments:
No matter what YouTubers do, there will be a certain group of audience in the comment section who will leave an inappropriate comment. Most creators ignore the hate or delete the comment but finding negative comments each time among the bunch of thousand other comments could be a tedious task.
YouTube has rolled out a new feature where the setting- held for review is going to be on by default. It is introduced to improve the quality of conversations on the channel. YouTube is continuously working on increasing the accuracy of the feature and has expanded it up to 13 languages.
3) Scheduling community posts:
Community posts are extremely important and helpful for YouTubers as they give access to creators to get more personalized with their audience and also understand what type of content the audience expects from them.
The new YouTube feature allows the creators to schedule their community posts based on when the audience is active. They can add a specific time and scheduling date for the community posts, which will release them from the stress of posting some content continuously on the platform.
4) Introduction of video chapters:
The video chapter feature will help creators in breaking down their videos for the convenience of their audience. Any YouTube video has multiple elements attached to it. Through YouTube video chapters, creators can divide the video into several chapters that the viewers can jump through.
While putting chapters in the video, creators need to:
- start the chapter from the timestamp 0:00 to get a perfect order.
- the video must have at least three chapters, with each chapter being 10 seconds or longer.
5) Month-wise performance report:
Image Source: Google
YouTube is taking a serious data approach and will now provide a series of data to the creators so that they can keep a tap on aspects like subscriber rates, revenue, and video analytics.
The chart will showcase 13 months of data to the creator. It’ll give an overview of the channel and creators performance. It also helps creators identify seasonal trends.
All the features are a great way to enhance the creator and audience experience on YouTube and divert more audience on the platform.
