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content from other YouTube channels for your playlists. Playlists also come up in YouTube search results, so always use descriptive thumbnails for your videos, as well as compelling playlist titles and descriptions. A playlist is a great way to extend your viewers’ session time on your channel. (Session time directly supports your channel ranking and discoverability on a YouTube search.)Though we recommend making and sharing playlists, you may hide them from others by clicking the channel settings, denoted by the Gear icon on the right side of your channel, and turning privacy on. You can do the same with the visibility of the channels you’re subscribed to.

       Store: The Store tab is a part of YouTube’s Merchandise Shelf feature, where users can sell featured merchandise on their videos and channels. This feature is not available for everyone. Users are eligible to apply for this feature if their channel is monetized, if they have over 10,000 subscribers, if they’re in a country where the feature is allowed, and if children are not the target audience.

       Channels: If you have partnerships, this tab is the place to add all those channels you associate with. If your brand owns many channels, you’ll want to make sure all your channels are listed here, for easy discoverability and reference for the viewers. This is a quick way to get interested viewers to consume more related content.

       Discussion: Viewers are sure to comment on your channel and videos if you’re creating engaging content. You can follow along with all the channel comments on this tab. When logged in, you can remove inappropriate comments or report spam comments directly.If you want to disable comments on your channel, click the channel settings and toggle the Show Discussion tab to Off. You can also allow comments to display automatically or — if you want to monitor what’s posted — you can change the setting so that they don’t display until approved by you.

       Community: This feature, available only to channels with over 1,000 subscribers, replaces the Discussion tab. If it’s unlocked, you’re able to use this tab to post images, videos, and polls to drastically increase and enhance how you interact with your audience.

       About: This tab acts as your opportunity to tell your viewers all about yourself and/or your business. It is important that you maximize this space (up to 1,000 characters) to improve your channel’s discoverability. You can talk about your brand, the videos people should expect, and include an email address for viewers to contact you outside of YouTube. You can also include any relevant social network sites that you might be active on. Your viewers can come here to see some quick stats on your channel, such as your total view count, number of subscribers, and the date you created your YouTube channel.

      

YouTube’s global reach means that many people who don’t speak the same language as you may see your channel. To improve your channel’s accessibility, click the Translating Channel Info link at the bottom of the Channel Settings list (accessed via the gear icon to the right) to create and save various translations of your channel’s name and description.

Customizing and Branding Your Channel

      If you’re on your My Channel page (see the previous section for more info about that page), clicking the blue Customize Channel button in the top right of your channel puts it in Edit mode, which is where you do the bulk of the customization of your channel. This is an important series of decisions you're about to make, so pay attention to what you're doing. Lots of viewers make decisions about the quality of a channel based on a glance at the My Channel page. If there's one stereotype that pretty much holds true for YouTube viewers, it's that they're highly distractible. A professional-looking front page that holds a viewer’s interest indicates to potential viewers that you've put a lot of thought, time, and effort into creating your channel. So get to it!

      Creating channel art

      The channel art section is in the large gray box at the top of the My Channel page when viewed on a computer. (It will look differently on other devices, like mobile phones and TVs, but a computer is the only device you can use to change your channel art, so start there.) By default, it has a few items in it, and you'll change pretty much all those items. Before getting into the steps of creating your channel art, though, you should keep some important guidelines in mind. YouTube is available on a lot of different devices. Your audience may be watching on a TV, a computer, or a mobile device. Given that fact, YouTube has gone to a lot of effort to create a system that allows your channel to look good across all kinds of delivery platforms. It has come up with some guidelines for artwork that you would be wise to follow. If you pay attention to the size of the graphics needed, you should have no trouble with your channel looking good, no matter how your audience is looking at it.

      

Channel art is most effective when it is representative of the channel’s content. For example, if your channel is about the hottest new shoes, your channel art should include images of shoes.

      

Before you get around to adding the channel art, you need to create your channel art. This process requires some kind of image creation software. We recommend software like Adobe Photoshop to create custom channel art, but it’s an expensive option. If you're investing in the Adobe ecosystem for editing, Photoshop is probably a good option for you. If you're more interested in free tools, something like GIMP, an open source photo editor (available for download at www.gimp.org) might be more up your alley.

YouTube has created a template (see Figure 3-2) that makes the creation of channel art that works across platforms much simpler. The template calls for a 2560 x 1440-pixel image that is no larger than 6MB and provides you with guidance on how to place text and logos to allow the image to work pretty much everywhere.

      FIGURE 3-2: The YouTube Channel Art template.

      

When creating art destined for use in the YouTube channel art template, it’s important to adhere to the advice it provides. You need to ensure that your text lands in the sections of the template that will not be covered up by your Channel icon or channel links after you upload this image. If you edge too close to the top left corner, you’ll have a hard time maintaining the continuity of the image across devices and operating systems. Your text and logos might be cut off or unreadable on some devices, and that will contribute to viewers dismissing your channel and moving on to something else. Channel art is an opportunity to make a first impression, and the cold truth is that bad channel art can drive away viewers. Be sure to check how your channel art looks on several different devices.

If you find all this talk of pixels and formats confusing, it might be a good idea to consult with someone who has some graphic design experience. Even tracking down a graphic design student to help you tailor an image to the YouTube specifications can be helpful. If you don't feel comfortable doing the art yourself, and finding help isn't possible, YouTube does provide some stock options, which aren't great, but are a far better choice than the placeholder pattern of gray diamonds. If you do ask someone for help with your channel art, remember that creative professionals like to be paid for their work. Just because your friend is a graphic designer or your nephew is an art student doesn't mean that they want to work for you for free. Even if you don't pay them the market rate, paying them something is the decent thing to do.

      Managing channel art

      After you've created the art for your channel (or received

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