YouTube is undoubtedly one of the most successful websites in the world. It is one of the social media giants, the primary source of video entertainment, and one of the largest search engines. That is not a feat that’s easy to accomplish.
Opening YouTube is like opening a bottomless treasure chest filled with videos. There are gazillions of videos on the websites – encompassing all sorts of genres., One could spend his entire lifetime watching videos on YouTube and still not be able to finish half of them. There’s simply so much, and every minute more gets published. Needless to say, no matter your mood, you can always find something to watch on YouTube. That makes it a great platform.
But, YouTube will not be able to achieve this on its own. The people working in the company will not be enough to publish this much content. It was the users-turned creators that brought YouTube to where it is at right now. They are the ones that spend their time taking, editing, and uploading the videos we see on the platform. YouTube acknowledges that.
The company has not been short of showing support and empowering its creators. In fact, its monetization program is one of the most well-known. It was the one that influenced other social media platforms to launch their own program. But aside from that, – the YouTube Partner Program – YouTube has introduced different features that enabled the creators to be more creative with their videos. Furthermore, some features the company offered allowed the creators to shape their channels to how they envisioned them to be. Now, in 2021, YouTube is launching more. Access to these features will allow creators to provide a better experience for their viewers.
Below are the four features creators will be getting this year.
Video Chapters – Real YouTube Views for New Audiences
Video Chapters are great for navigating videos which is a nice quality of life improvement for the viewers. The evidence shows a massive real growth of YouTube views already. No longer would they need to drag the indicator on the progress bar to look for a specific part of the video. Likewise, they would not need to check for timestamps on the video description or on the comments section. Video Chapters will provide them clickable tabs -complete with a title – on the progress bar to arrive at a certain point of the video.
Why would viewers need this? Think about the times when you need to stop watching a video because it’s bedtime, or you need to do something more important. When you come back, you may have already forgotten wherein the video did you stop. In another case, maybe you are watching a video tutorial. A chapter for each step will help you follow more closely.
This feature has been available to some creators for a time now. Finally, YouTube is releasing access to Chapters to all content creators on the platform.
To add Chapters, all a creator needs to do is add timestamps on the video description. Note that the first timestamp should be at 00:00, or else YouTube will not convert them to Chapters.
Scheduling Community Posts
Community Posts allow creators to connect to their audiences outside of their videos. They can be images, GIFs, polls, or texts.
Sometimes, creators have to say things to their viewers. But, making a video about that simple thing could be impractical. Before this feature’s existence, creators took it to Twitter to do this. There, they announce things to their fans or initiate conversations. YouTube has deleted the need for that by allowing creators to make community posts inside its ecosystem.
Now, YouTube is copying more from Twitter – mostly because creators have requested it. YouTube is allowing creators to schedule community posts. They can draft one ahead of time and then set a publishing date. This ensures that the post will be published even if they become busy during that day. Furthermore, it promotes better content planning and time management.
“Hold Inappropriate Comments for Review” As The New Default Setting
Admittedly, this is not a new feature but an adjustment in the settings. Before the update, this is an optional setting. Now, after studying its internal data, YouTube is encouraging everyone to try this feature, and hence, they are setting it as the default.
The data showed that channels with the setting enabled experienced a 75% drop in flagged comments when it launched. From that, it is safe to say that it helps creators maintain or improve the quality of conversations on their channels.
So how exactly does this setting work? YouTube identifies potentially hurtful comments – derogatory comments, for example. They will not show in the comments section unless the creator reviews and approves them. YouTube admits that while it can find these potentially hurtful comments in 100 languages, its system is not always correct. So, they are leaving it to the creator’s discretion.
YouTube is only setting it as the default setting. It is not locking it up. Content creators that are more comfortable without this enabled can turn it off.
Information On When Is Your Audience Online
Perhaps this is the most exciting out of the four. It is the one that could directly affect how well a video will perform on YouTube. By having access to information on when one’s audience is most active, creators can schedule publishing their videos on these hours. That will ensure that their viewers will notice it immediately after it gets uploaded.
Without this capability, content creators upload blindly. It is a hit or miss. Sometimes, their viewers could miss their upload because they were not on YouTube when it got published. That results in loss of potential views, which would hurt the channel.
On the other hand, with this feature in hand, creators can make more informed decisions. They would know what time is the sweet spot to make an upload. It will theoretically increase engagements.
But as YouTube has said, keep in mind that there is no conclusive evidence that it is a good tactic. After all, this is a brand new, untested feature. Still, in one way or another, access to this information could help content creators grow their channels.