YouTube Tips 15: What's in a Title?

It took us awhile to nail down any sort of system with the title, and it's a good system, but it also shows some vagueness within the system (which is why it is so accurate; YouTube is a chaotic place when it comes to which titles seem important).

So it started in a conversation on this video from GagaManMusic...

Saw this one again and made me think. To slowly increase the views, put "Flinstones Parody:" at the beginning of this title. =^)

Great job!

- TheAnimationEmpire

Then Andrei changed his title to "Flinstone parody" and left this comment to respond:

that's a good idea. Thanks :)

Thanks! Yeah, it worked for your Cow and Chicken (and I do stuff like that, such as our Zelda Parody). So you might want to add the "Barney's..." bit back as a subtitle like "FLINSTONES PARODY: Barney's..." or Flinstones parody - Barney's..." or something like that (I forgot what you had after "Barney's"

- TAE

I see what you mean - it was barney's invention

Ah yes. =^)

Cool. I think the idea is that the title (Flinstone Parody) makes people interested in that aspect. For example, our Zelda Parody. Then the subtitle might mention another name for a good keyword in searches like you have now. Or another example is our Zelda Parody: Link's a Moron. So "Link" is also a keyword in searches, and then "Link's a Moron" is interesting or controversial. Interesting to some, and then offensive to others, so they might click to watch it.

Oh, and then I see you also made the "P" in "parody" uppercase. This is also a good move. I did limited research, but I've seen VERY similar videos, and title casing (where the first letter of the word) seems to get better clicks than sentence casing (no caps on the first letters of the word). I'm still trying to decide with all caps. I think All Caps is good to lead with (or to put focus on a word later in a title) if the lead word or words aren't long.

Continuing title topic and using all caps... For example, "ZELDA PARODY: Link's a Moron" is probably good. Overall, I can't prove that this helps any with views (it might help a little, but not a huge amount), but it certainly does seem to catch the viewers attention more on the capitalized words, especially if not all the words are in caps. If all the words are in caps, then it doesn't seem to help any at all.

So here are our FOUR RULES TO TITLES:

1. Begin with the easiest sell to brand it.
EXAMPLE: Flinstones Parody
EXAMPLE: Kiera and Johnny! (this was a short series from LisaNova)

2. Use title case instead of sentence case.

3. Use caps to grab attention on specific words (either at the front or in the title somewhere).

4. Don't use all caps through the whole title, unless the all caps makes the title interesting, because it also makes the title slightly harder to read.

5. Use all lowercase when you have multiple words that are intriguing somehow.

6. Make sure your title is interesting or controversial. (Or includes a reference to something popular, which then becomes interesting or controversial.)

What is "interesting" or "controversial" is VERY subjective. In other words, you can argue about it all day and not make any progress. However, here are examples to paint the picture.

Emperor's YouTube Tips to Jacksun3

This is Jacksun3:



http://www.youtube.com/user/jacksun3

Apparently swapping out the icon on a video is a partner feature. Lame. Well, I guess that's okay seeing how the best two partner features are shared out now (autoplay and the channels box). I just realized that some of these YT artists can justify making amazing vids cuz they make enough money in ads. Hmm. That might be a worthy challenge.

Jacksun's Tiger Woods commercial parody:



So I think Jacksun's Bloopers of Therapy Session got so many views because the icon is of him shirtless (if that was cleavage instead then boom baby). (Also that Jacksun had it autoplay during lots of visits helps too.) And I think The Gift lucked out and hit a small viral pocket (sort of random how that works, unfortunately). It helped that the icon looks a little more interesting than Therapy Session.

Since Jacksun asked me... here's my advice (take it or take it or leave it or take it; note that I don't give advice like this unless I'm asked):

(1) Change the titles to "Orgasm Man - Bloopers" "Orgasm Man 2 - Theraply Session" and "Orgasm Man 1 - The Gift" - This might eventually lead to a better viral slide. I used a similar method to get my "Godfather" vid to 10K and "Bucket Full of Cheese" to 40K (and others). Jacksun has a perfect character and name; he just needs to brand it.

(2) Go sign up on the Partners Channel! He's more than ready! The only requirements are a couple hundred subbers and that your vids get at least 1K views each. He's way beyond that! Turn some of these videos into $20 bills. Hahahahaha. It's kind of a lame rate of making money (unless you're getting millions of views in your vids), but it's still worth it to make that money if you're making videos anyway. Once you're a partner, you can swap out the icons and do a better job promoting your vids.

Hope this helps!

- TAE

YouTube Tip 14 - How to leave lots of comments on channels

It's been awhile for this category (other than the Q&A one we just did), but we thought of another tip (and one we don't mind giving away). =^)


You can leave as many comments on channels as you want, but...

(1) Every 3 posts you got to type in the letters to prove you're not a bot and

(2) It won't post comments that are similar to your previous comments. So you gotsta vary your words.

Go YouTubers go!!!

- TAE

YouTube Tips - Partner Q&A

Here are some partner questions coming from Bizzarrely Funny:



http://www.youtube.com/BizarrelyFunny


Q1 How long did it take you to become a partner?

A little less than a year with about 6 months of doing nothing in between bursts of posting vids. How's that for not answering a question? =^)

So I guess about 6 months of dedicated time in trying to build an audience. And stuff.

Q2 - How many subbers did you have?

I forget. Probably around 1300 subbers. That was in like early 2008.

However, subbers aren't that important. A few hundred are good. Anything over is just a bonus. What they want to see is that most of your vids have at least a thousand views (or lots of vids with over 1,000 views, even if it isn't most). That's really what they're looking for. Plus that you can justify that you have something to offer to a market of viewers. Also how you integrate into the YT social scene. All that would go in your essay when you apply. We applied and got accepted on our first try.

Q3 - Did becoming a partner increase your viewership?

I think. A little. Yeah. Depends on how social you are I guess. I'm pretty social, so that helps. If people don't go to your channel, the autoplay won't help much. [UPDATE: Autoplay now works on all channels, so the biggest reason to be a Partner no longer exists. Getting money from ads is also a big reason, but if you don't get a ton of views, you wouldn't get any money from ads anyway.]

Plus you don't make much money off of it unless you're super popular (100K plus views on most of your vids).

Autoplay is nice. Banners and other little channel things are nice. That's about it. Plus it's cool to say, "I'm a YouTube partner." =^)

It's not huge, but it is nice. On the negative side, it is a little painful to do and it takes a long time to process (like when you turn in your application, you pretty much need to wait 3 months to hear back; when you get accepted, you need to wait like a month or so for it to kick in: yes, it's that slow).

Thanks!

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 13: More tips on how to become a Partner

We keep getting questions on how to become a partner, so here you go...

How to become a YouTube Partner

Qualifications

You need at least a few hundred subscribers and all your vids having "thousands of views." You also need to convince them that you're all about the YouTube community somehow. That was super easy for us, because all our vids are interactive in the comments (or with response videos), we've been featured on YouTube's front page twice, and we've entered (and won) YouTube contests. You also need to show them that you upload vids regularly (at least twice a month).

In addition, you have to own all your vids 100%. This is crucial. After looking at most channels, I don't think most people own all of their videos. So if you want a channel to get partnered, make sure it's all original content like vlogs, your own interviews, your own skits, your own animations, etc.

To sign up, go to http://youtube.com/partners


Copyright material

You may want to have two channels. The Kung Fu video doesn't look like it's yours. If it's yours, you should make that clear in the description by talking about how you filmed it and listed the credits of who was in it.

I'd take the "how to download" video down if this is the channel you want to do well with YouTube. Obiously, they don't want people to download YouTube videos. It makes piracy more painful for them to control.

What to do? Study the successful channels. There are three aspects of YouTube success and getting subscribers: (1) Social. (2) Entertainment. (3) Frequency.

So, be social (do a lot of commenting, friending, subscribing, etc. You need to entertain people (animations, music videos, and sketches of popular movies/people/etc. do well). You can also entertain people with crazy vlogs (just talking to the camera). And, finally, post these often. So all that is a ton of work, and, in some ways, the people on top definitely earned it and put themselves there.



Only people from certain countries can become partners

They only accept people from countries like USA, Canada, UK, and Japan.

Why?

Legal reasons and money reasons. =^(

Even hough it's not the most desirable Partnership feature to the users, the whole point of the partner channel to YouTube is the revenue sharing aspect. They are offering the partner channels tousers who get a lot of views in order to put ads on them and make more money. Well, the problem there is that there are no legal and legistic issues that need to be sorted out with each country's laws. So they're slowly doing that and sorting it out with the country's laws, starting with the countries that have the most YouTube users and going down the list.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 12 - The title is super important

Check out this video from Flaming Tree. It got over 12,000 views in 4 days. Now, they aren't popular enough for that to normally happen.

This was titled: "monster in my closet"




The icon is of a guy about to beat on a monster. I don't think that you can get that from the icon, nor is it super interesting...



The conclusion is that I think they managed to make this video slightly viral just by the title. =^)

You can often tell when it isn't rated very well (only two stars). That means it's being passed on due to the snowball effect rather than word of mouth. People aren't watching because it's "good" (being rated well or talked about), so that means they are watching just based on the image, title, and the fact that other people are already watching it.

The viral effect is amazing, isn't it?

- TAE

YouTube Tip: Wait for the background to load before inviting a friend

UPDATE: I think YouTube fixed this. I have to verify.
===============================

YouTube Tips 13 - Wait for the background to load before inviting a friend

Now, in YouTube, it's possible to go to someone's channel, click "Add as friend" and then have the screen refresh back to the top with nothing having happened.

Why does it do that? Because it's still loading all the images on the page and it won't respond to the invite request properly until it's done loading. This could be video icons, but it is usually a background image (or animated gif) that is a large file size. So that's a reason to make sure your background isn't a large file size. =^)

Once it's done loading all the images on the page (your browser's status bar on the bottom of the screen should indicate this), you can add the person as a friend.

- TAE

Question: Is there anything I can do to get featured on the front page of YouTube?

Question: Is there anything I can do to get featured on the front page of YouTube?

Nope. Make friends with partners and with people who are cool on YouTube. Try to make something you think will get featured. You really got to think outside the box to get featured, and the more often you think outside the box, the more often you get featured. Creative/entertaining songs and animations tend to do better, but they're much harder to do than a normal v-log.

The only vid we got featured was Fruits VS Bugs:



Check out the sequel if you haven't:



Our channel was also featured, on the day we released Episode 2.


- The Emperor

Question: What is a YouTube Partner and how do subscribers help you become a partner?

Question for the Emperor: What is a YouTube Partner?

A partner is someone selected by YouTube to be given tons of tiny priviledges that add up to coolness. For example, revenue sharing on ads (partners have more ads around their vids), autoplay on their channel, banners, and smaller features.

Question for the Emperor: How do subscribers help you to become a Partner?

Well, they subscribe and they watch your videos. The requirements include regularly making videos where thousands of people watch them. It's pretty vague, but basically you just build a case for having a strong, active audience that already goes to your channel. Plus, you won't get selected if you are just showing copyrighted images, music, clips that aren't yours, or clips of videogames. You've got to generate original content pretty regularly (like at least two videos a month).

Hope this helps! The only vid we got featured was Fruits VS Bugs:



Check out the sequel if you haven't:





- The Emperor

YouTube Marketing Tips 11: Suggest a video to be featured

This is a strange marketing tip, but you can suggest that a video gets featured.

YouTube doesn't feature political videos, they don't feature crass videos, they are not likely to feature videos with a ton of views already, and they don't feature videos that were made for something else but then ported onto YouTube (like an animation distributed elsewhere). So don't submit those, but you should submit others.

How does this help market you? Well, if anyone says, "This should be featured," then say, "Do you think so? Do you want to suggest it?" Don't go around spamming people and asking them, but if they'd suggest your video to YouTube if they knew they could, then there's no reason not to mention it.

They don't feature every video. As a friend of mine who helped us get Fruits VS Bugs 1 featured said, "Wow. They actually listened to me and finally featured one of my suggestions." So it's not common, but it is there main source of finding videos to feature.

To suggest someone's video (or channel) gets featured, write to editor@youtube.com.


From:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55751&query=editor&topic=&type

How do videos get featured?

"YouTube's members rate videos they like, and we review highly-rated and recent videos for consideration in the "Featured Videos" section of the home page and the featured videos on the "Categories" page. In addition, our programming team takes suggestions from members at editor@youtube.com and scans the site for videos of interest."


So you also may want to suggest that the video gets featured on the categories page if you don't think they'll put it on the home page.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 10: Make sure people know it's for YouTube

When you're filling out the description, make sure people know it's for YouTube. This may be obvious in most vlogs or live-action videos, but if you have a great animation, people may just assume that this was originally made for cell phone or video distribution.

By letting people know that your video was made for YouTube, it makes them much more likely to recommend that your video gets featured to the YouTube editors, and that the editors do feature it.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 9: Ask people to subscribe in the descriptions of your videos

Tammpon asks people to subscribe in his descriptions of his videos (as well as in the videos; see Tip #8). He has over 5,000 subscribers.

Check out his description in his hit video, Say No to Porno:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYwNdgfpfU

We also do this in all our videos. Fruits VS Bugs 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfbGzAuOTlM


We also link to the subscription page in our descriptions (and on our website). It's not a home run, but it certainly helps.

http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=TheAnimationEmpire

Just switch out your user name with ours to do this.


- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 8: Ask People to Subscribe, Favorite, and Watch your videos in your videos

Sometimes, asking people will lead to results, especially if they liked the video they just watched.

So ask people to Subscribe, Favorite, and Watch your videos in your videos.

Take a lesson from JamesAtWar, who boasts over 5,000 subscribers. Check out his Rainbow Remix video:



Tammpon asks you to subscribe near the beginning of his hit music video. He has over 5,000 subscribers as well. Check out his Say No to Porno music video:



And again in his Star Wars song:



So some good comes when you just ask people to subscribe.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 7: Title + Image = Gold

You'll never realize how important your title and image can be.

Let's look at a small example.

Cabbage Man (http://youtube.com/user/Cabbageman614) posted two videos.

The more recent video (2 days ago), Stupid Short 101, has at least 80 views.

Stupid Short 101:


Another video from 1 week ago, Shocky Shocky Man, had at least 30 views.

The second video took a lot more work. It seems like it could be interesting, maybe a story about that character (which is exactly what it is).

However, Stupid Short sounds fun, it is fun, and it shows what looks like a guy puking.

This is an example of how the name/title and the image sell the video.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 6: Controversy Is Viral

We're going to talk about the video again that we covered in YouTube Marketing Tips 5... a video called "Rainbow" that has 300,000 views:



Do you know why it has so many views? Does it seem like it doesn't make sense why this video has 300,000 views?


Here's my thought:

I think it makes sense in another way other than the fact that he posted three of them. Go to his channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/scareykatt) and you see that people have been upset by his icon.

Next, I'd imagine that the gay community saw it as a statement and started spreading it, possibly just as a moment to reflect their pride.

So you now have people who hate it and people who love it watching. It became a controversy.

I know that this works, because he did the same thing one month later with Disgusting Teeth (75,000 views):



You'll notice that this video just disappears. It's 0 seconds long. Yet people still click on it based only on the image. It's controversial. You know it's probably just a still (especially if it's only 0 seconds long), but you still click it. You'll also notice that it's rated 1 star. People didn't like the fact that it's just a short image.

YouTube Marketing Tips 5: Two is Better Than One

There is a video called "Rainbow" that has over 320,000 views:



Do you know why? Does it seem like it doesn't make sense why this video has 300,000 views?


Here's my thought:

I think it makes sense. Go to his channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/scareykatt) and you see that people have been upset by his icon. He posted three of the rainbow videos, so that they all show each other more (they all show up when you watch one or when you watch a similar video).

So if you watch any related video, you see three videos of the rainbow. This makes people curious, so they watch the one with the most views.

Other people caught on, and one video parodied this to the tune of 36,000 views:





We achieved a similar effect on Extra Fruity, where we have two of the exact same video; one has 110K views, and one has 50K views.

Extra Fruity (original with 50K views):



Extra Fruity Improved (newer version with 110K views):



We didn't intentionally post more than one version of a video. However, we benefited from it, just like ScareyKatt did. We realized our first post was too low quality, but it already had 3K views, so we left it up. Likewise, don't be afraid to post multiple versions that are slightly different in case you have a different ending you want to try out or something else. Let your videos compete against each other, and see what happens.

However, we don't recommend posting five versions of the exact same video. At least, don't do it more than once. It could get annoying very fast and alienate your viewers if you go nuts with it.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 4: Ask People to Watch Your Videos

We started off by posting comments in the most popular videos asking people to click our name and watch a specific video. You can also do that on channel comments.

If you ask people to watch your videos on channel and video comments, you should make sure you are also writing a comment that is specific to the video/channel you're on in addition to your advertisement. Otherwise you'll get a lot of negative feedback (you'll still get some though).

It makes more sense if you're advertising a video that is similar to the one you're on. Plus, make sure you are telling them what video to watch, probably the one featured on your channel. People might be willing to watch one video if they like the name of it and your short description. But they won't just go to your channel without a good reason.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 3: Boring Videos don't do well

You may have a video that is very well done with a lot of great effects. It might have a wonderful story. But, guess what. If it's boring, nobody will watch it.

Do you have a walking scene? Does your character walk along a street? Yeah, that's boring. Take that out. Is there a lot of dialogue that doesn't involve jokes or shouting. Yeah, that's boring.

Cabbageman614 just posted a video of him and his friends hitting each other with sticks, and it did better than many of his other videos with better stories and effects. Why? Because it was slightly amusing. Stuff was happening, and fun music was used. You're probably going to keep watching it, and you'll probably smile. And, guess what? Very little effort went into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX2PzOoCenw

We'll be the first to admit that we've filmed our fair share of boring videos. =^)

A good way to think about it is to see if you can keep someone's attention for every two-second section of your video. This isn't a movie. Your audience isn't captive. You've got to keep reminding them to keep watching every two seconds or so.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips Part 2 - Video Responses

Most of the popular YouTubers have gotten popular by responding to really popular videos with their own amusing antics.

Also, you can regularly go through the featured, most viewed of the day, and highly viewed videos to see which ones automatically accept video responses, and then attach any one of your videos as a response there.

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips Part 1

There are a lot of YouTube marketing tips. Not everybody can learn marketing.

Great videos are painful to make (and their greatness is highly debatable).

I'm going to list out a lot of things here without giving details. You're going to roll your eyes as you read these, because they seem obvious (they are obvious). However, most people don't understand what you can accomplish with these tools. Compare how you use these tools to how we use these tools. Go to http://www.youtube.com/theanimationempire

You may see a huge difference. If you have any questions, leave a comment on this blog or our channel. I'll lead you through those hoops, but I'm not going to do the discovery work for you.

Here are the marketing tools at your disposal:

- Video Annotations

- Video Comments (your videos)

- Video Comments (other videos)

- Video Responses

- Sharing Videos

- Channel Comments (other channels)

- Your Channel Description (keywords, personal, and synergy)

- Messages

- Friend Requests

- Subscribing Others

- Your Video Descriptions

- Your Video Title

- Your Video Image

- How many similar videos you post (including videos that are almost the same)

- Your Channel Background (we don't use this well)

- Videos (be more personal and/or go bigger)

- Relationships with YouTube stars (We're not stars, but this blog you're reading could be an example of this value)

- Synergy with your other websites and blogs


All these things lead to getting YouTube stars to subscribe to you, to get your stuff featured (we've had a video featured and our channel featured), and to slowly accumulate more views (it becomes a snowball effect).

So, if you don't understand any of this, then leave a comment. I can give you some specific examples to study.

As I get questions, I'll post more tips.

- TAE