Branding Your Business YouTube Channel

Chances are you host your videos on YouTube. Why wouldn’t you? YouTube is the internet’s second largest search engine and the largest video search engine in the world. It would be a missed opportunity to upload the videos you worked so hard on to a YouTube channel that leaves much to be desired.

As you begin dressing your YouTube channel to parallel your website’s look and feel, take the following tips into consideration.

Channel Name
Your YouTube channel name reflects the name of the connected Google+ page and will appear across YouTube in searches, suggested channels and on your videos. This is different than your channel URL. Choose something that is short and memorable. This will most likely be business name, but if it is very long consider a shortened version.

Profile Photo
Your YouTube channel icon reflects the profile image of the connected Google+ page. Make sure the image you choose is easy to understand in a thumbnail size and reflects the service or products that your brand offers.

Channel Art
Think of this as your brand’s billboard. Choose an image that represents your channel and your brand. When someone sees your channel art they should have a pretty clear idea of the types of videos they will experience. Be sure to check the YouTube Cover Photo Guidelines for best practices sizing and resolution.

Trailer
If your Channel Art is your billboard, your trailer is your commercial. You will want to create a video to introduce viewers to your brand and your channel. Try to keep it short and place your most important or compelling messaging at the very beginning. Unsubscribed viewers will see your trailer autoplay when they first arrive to your channel so you only have a few seconds to convince them to keep watching.

Channel Description
Search engines crawl your channel description to know what your channel is about to serve it up to the right people. Start with a tagline. Let viewers know about you, your brand and the videos they can see on your channel. This is the spot to give people your elevator pitch. Not too long and to the point.

Custom Links
Quite possibly the most important section of your YouTube channel is the custom links! Here is where people can quickly jump to see more on your website or other social profiles like Facebook and Twitter.

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