According to YouTube’s Channel Re-Design Beta Blog, TODAY, September 30th, is the day it will officially begin switching all YouTube user channels over to channel design 2.0. So with the new official design switch on the horizon, I went out and found a fantastic designer to customize some new channel background images. If you have not customized your YouTube channel, you definitely want to reconsider. It is wise to keep your branding consistent across all of your online properties. By making good use of a custom background image, you can modify your channel to look like an extension of your existing site(s) and/or profiles. FIRST, check out these absolutely STELLAR YouTube channel designs by Kurt Austin of Catalyst Digital.
Yesterday, American entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks’ owner and HDNet CEO, Mark Cuban, referred to YouTube as “a disaster waiting to happen.” More specifically, Cuban was referring to the fact that the company lacked a monetization strategy from the get-go, and the fact that it still struggles to be profitable.
In that respect, Paul and I agree with Cuban. Paul and I always recommend starting out with a plan. In fact, one of the first places we start in YouTube Secret Weapon is by having you determine exactly what you’re in it for. Which of the many online marketing benefits do YOU–the business owner–plan to achieve from your YouTube efforts?
As has been rumored on sites such as ClickZ, Mashable, and even Reuters the last two weeks, YouTube’s redesign changes took effect today, April 16th. One of the first things that became apparent were the experimental design changes appearing on select YouTube Partner Channels, such as this one belonging to sxephil:
There are several rumors making the rounds that YouTube has more changes on tap. According to Zachary Rodgers at Clickz, YouTube will be rolling out a new site layout this Thursday, April 16. The big difference will be that user-generated content (UGC) will now be clearly segregated from the premium content that those creators have paid to have promoted.
Since the scheduled day for this change in site design is Thursday, April 16th, all YouTube Secret Weapon owners have been invited to a 2-hour webinar with Julie Perry and Paul Colligan at 3PM EDT / 12 Noon PDT that day to go over how this might affect current marketing efforts on the site and how to take advantage of these changes. Visit http://www.youtubesecretweapon to learn more.
YouTube has made changes in the terminology department by renaming some of the modules that appear on the homepage, in the search results, and on video watch pages. The updates were made at the end of March, and I’ve since received quite a bit of questions from YouTube Secret Weapon owners wondering how and if these changes affect them. First, the three new categories born out of the change: 1. Spotlight Videos 2. Promoted Videos 3. Featured Videos
There was a provocative post yesterday on the Business Insider blog which contends that YouTube as it’s now structured is doomed. Benjamin Wayne writes that despite huge ad revenue which is certainly making a contribution to Google’s bottom line, the expenses far surpass the income—with little hope that ads alone can make YouTube profitable. …I just can’t see Google letting YouTube die. …As a marketer, I’d be happy to pay an annual fee for a Pro account.
YouTube has a deep linking feature—something they’ve offered for months now—but it’s a trick I see very few people taking advantage of. Here is how it works: You simply add on the end of your regular YT URL some code for the exact time point in the video where you want to send your viewers.
YouTube recently added a script that allows you to add a small widget featuring your YouTube Channel video collection to any website, blog, social network page, or pretty much anywhere else online. The widget allows visitors to scroll through all a Channel owner’s YouTube videos, and watch them right there on the blog, website, or other online venue.
If you are not currently leveraging YouTube as part of your online video marketing strategy, you might want to give it another look. Because when it comes to list building, lead generation, and search engine optimization (SEO), YouTube is the definitive place for getting your videos published. In fact, according to yesterday’s press release from comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, in December 2008 — just in that one month alone — U.S. Internet users viewed more than 14.3 billion online videos during the month. More importantly (in our YouTube Secret Weapon opinion, anyway), comScore points out that YouTube led this growth by accounting for 49 percent of the incremental gain in videos viewed versus November.
It is no longer necessary to hack the YouTube embed code to offer the high-quality (HQ) version of YouTube videos on web pages and blogs . YouTube now does it for you by offering the option to watch a video in high quality IN the embedded player itself. An “HQ” button now pops up inside the embedded video player whenever a high quality video is played. Hovering over the button will allow you to see that clicking it will offer the video in higher quality.
