Last month, we decided to renovate our bathroom. Great idea, right? -Update the sink and the floor, but we were in for a surprise. Little did we know that there was quite a bit of mold lurking in that bathroom. Surprise! A small job quickly turned into a very large job. But that wasn’t the only surprise. Our oldest two kids, surprised us by doing most of the work themselves! Hannah (12) & Ezekiel (11) laid the sub flooring, installed new flooring, put in new drywall, plumbing, electric, and more. They did a great job! The best part was seeing their confidence and excitement grow throughout the project. So this bad surprise quickly turned into a good surprise after all.

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YouTube has a way of surprising us as well. – In good ways and in bad ways. They have been rolling out some new updates lately and some have been fantastic, while others….. not so much. But either way, the updates help us understand the direction YouTube is taking as a platform and what their goals are. This is so helpful because then we can make better videos that align with their goals and see better performance than they otherwise would.

On this week’s podcast, four of our YouTube strategists sat down and reacted to many of the updates YouTube has announced while we also discussed what it means for us as creators who are growing our audiences here.

1.

A user can watch a show in the corner of their screen, while using another program. This is helpful if you are wanting to watch or listen to something while checking emails/playing a game/etc. We don’t think this is going to make a difference for strategy but it will help users that have podcasts and longer form content on YouTube.

2.

Google has released a combined text and image search. This means you can take a picture and combine it with text in order to find a similar product. How will this affect video? Suddenly instead of just finding a product, you will be able to see a video reviewing it or a video explaining how to use or fix it, etc. Plus, this is even more confirmation that keywords do not matter. It’s all about the images in your videos.

3.

Google has decided that any videos that are creating content without a real person speaking, example A.I. reading a news story, is classified as spam. YouTube wants humans to provide value and to be accountable to the content they are putting out. We are generally happy about this because we want people creating content and not being replaced by A.I.

We now have the option to allow other people to use 1-5 seconds of your video to be remixed for shorts content. We only see this as a good thing, because exposure is always good!

More permissions are available for your YouTube Channel. So as you scale, you can allow other people on your team to change things/update things for you.

There is a new research tab that is going to be available. – You will be able to do a keyword search ON YOUR AUDIENCE. To see this go to Analytics – Research. This is an interesting tool because it will help you plan content and give insights on “content gaps.” This is what your viewers are looking for that there are not many videos on. BUT, do not let this run your channel! You have to be true to yourself and not fall into the trap of letting YouTube tell you what to create. Don’t be a slave to analysis! It’s a valuable tool for getting ideas, but you can’t let these things dictate what you create.

You can set rules to how you expect people to behave on your channel. So before someone can comment, they have to “accept” these rules. It’s basically a heads up that if you’re going to spew hate, your comment will be deleted. To find this go to Studio – Settings – Community – Community Guidelines.

Maybe this only affects us as strategists as we analyze channels to understand where the creator started and where they have gone. But even as a viewer, it’s fun to see the old raw, original videos from someone who has been on the platform for a long time.

But what they are adding is the ability to filter shorts, livestreams and normal videos on the same channel, which we are excited about. Hopefully podcasts will be one that they will add soon.

The idea is that if people are all commenting on an earlier thing happening in a video and then later in a video, those comments will be sorted together. But, they have also added emoji reactions to this. (laughing, thumbs up, shocked, etc.) You can react and see crowd reactions by tapping into the reactions panel. This allows people to be more interactive during videos. We think this is also a way for YouTube to track the emotional satisfaction of your videos. Also, it can be a helpful as a creator to see how people like certain parts of your video. But we will see how it plays out.

POWER TIP: Use keyboard shortcuts! I use these these all the time on YouTube to quickly navigate videos. The > symbol can be used to speed up the content and the J & K keys can navigate backwards and forwards in the content as well! Here’s the .

Have a question these updates or anything else? We would love to hear from you and might even use it in an upcoming podcast. Until then…

Keep Changing Lives!

Tim Schmoyer