YouTube Excellence: Best Practices For Branding, Bumpers & End Cards

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Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host and better half, Tracy Hazard, and today we're going to talk about YouTube excellence. It's a podcast show. Why are we talking about YouTube excellence? Well, in case you've been sleeping or not realizing it, so many podcasts are distributed as videos and YouTube has doubled down on podcasting in many ways. Now, we're not going to go into all that detail, but we want to talk about best practices for branding bumpers and end cards on YouTube because at least amongst popitized customers, about 75% and the number keeps climbing are also recording and publishing their episodes as video on YouTube.

And it's been climbing year over year over year because we were some of the first to like do a lot of production of video with our client base. And so we saw, the first year we did it, we saw about 30% of the people adopting in and then 50% and then 60% and now we're at 75%. It's huge in terms of like, they're starting in video just like we are here. Live streaming, some of them. Some of them may even be live streaming. Right. I don't think the percentage is that high of the live streamers.

No, much lower.

No, much lower.

Right.

But we're getting the start in the video and then turning it into podcast, blogs, all the other things that we do, and social media posts and clips and all of those great things. But the video is an essential part. So you really have to understand YouTube to understand video, because YouTube and I'm going to say podcasting are not the same thing. They have some significant differences in audience attention span, in, I'm going to say, programmatic traditions they follow. Right. And they're very much a social platform in YouTube combined with an entertainment platform. And so you really have to pay attention to that. It's a little bit different where a lot of the podcasting is edutainment, as Tom and I like to call it all the time. There's education involved. You're learning something, whether it's just learning about people or History or science or the industry, or you're learning about an actual how to do something, how to be better at something, how to better your self improvement. So there's all those things combined. So it's much more edutainment on the podcasting side, where YouTube's broader than that.

So true, Tracy. And look, I know some people approach video differently and they edit their videos very differently than they would their podcast and they think about them very differently. And you can do that. But if you're a busy podcaster and you're recording your episodes on a tool like Zoom or Riverside anyway, that's recording video, you don't have to make it any different. I just want to put it out there. You can put it out there on YouTube and more people are going to watch it because some people prefer video and don't want to listen to audio. Right. And you don't have to do a whole lot of work to make it right and to get more exposure. And really that's what we're talking about is increasing your reach, being heard and seen now in the case of YouTube by more of your ideal listener or viewer profile customer, the people you're trying to serve. So yeah, it's reality Trace. Remember in the beginning 10 years ago, we recorded some of our first podcast episodes and we thought, yeah, we're going to do them all in video too. Holy mackerel. Within five episodes were like, this is way too much work. I'm not doing this anymore. Right?

Well, it was a lot more work back then. YouTube wasn't even as easy to use.

But it was also we were recording on separate cameras, not just with Zoom. We were doing you and me mostly, or we would have a guest.

It was much more casual than it used to be. It was a lot more choreographed and much more done by a professional level. And this was pre live stream. So it was really different.

And for years we did not record videos of our first podcast, the one that was so successful, it sort of started everything for us.

Now we used to have video companions, so we would refer to something like. Cause we did a podcast on 3D printing. So we would say, hey, if you want to see the time lapse machine printing of our angel or our tie, go look at our YouTube channel. And we would send them to YouTube and we'd have like these quick videos that would show them something printing or saw the final product. And so it was this visual companion that went with it. So we were still embedding videos in our blogs alongside our podcast. And it really Did a lot to grow our audience to be in that multimedia realm. And that's why so many of you are adopting video, audio and blog all in one. Because it is the best strategy for growing your audience in podcasting, but for growing your audience of followers in general is to be where they want to consume. And YouTube is a significant part of that. I mean, it's the second largest search.

Engine, although to put that in perspective, I mean Google is the largest search engine and YouTube is like and largest. And it's a single digit percentage of searches on the Internet, but it's larger.

Than other social platforms and you have to keep that in mind. So it's bigger than Facebook, it's bigger than Instagram from a search perspective for somebody looking for something. So it's an important place to make sure that your library of content is showing up.

Yeah, and I apologize for you podcast listeners because I was using my hands and talking about a visual scale of Google versus YouTube. Just, I mean Google is still the dominant search engine with 90 some odd percent of all searches on the Internet, whereas YouTube is a small single digit percentage. And then I think Bing is an even smaller percentage and Yahoo, which used to be bigger, is less and it sort of goes from there. But no, but it's still worthwhile. And YouTube is a force to be reckoned with. And as a podcaster, when you have a podcast playlist, there are advantages to when people view those videos. And we've talked about those in other episodes and we're going to have links in the blog post@podcasters united.com where all our blog posts oh.org she's bad tom. Bad form.

Podcasters united.org we're a nonprofit organization, so forgot about that.

Yeah, so we're going to have the, all the links in that blog post. So for your podcast listeners, go there and check them out about if you're interested in a deeper dive on some of those other topics.

And so the reason kind of we're pointing out this sort of perspective on YouTube and what's going on there is because we want you to understand things have changed and YouTube is different today. And if you want to be successful, if you want YouTube excellence so that you get more viewers, you've got to comply with how it works today, not your perception of YouTube yesterday. And if we went with yesterday, we'd be spending hours and hours editing our video and putting in professional camera angles and doing all these things. And it's honestly not what's working. So here is what we've learned from doing this for 75% of our customers. That means hundreds of channels that we manage. The best practices are less branding and getting to the point fastest. As fast as you can get to your content and draw them in, the better off you are.

I think your second point is actually the more important point, Although if it's overly branded, people might see that and just go next onto the next one and not even listen to that for. But hopefully whatever you're saying in those first few split seconds is going to draw them in. You don't have long to grab their attention.

No. And look, Mr. Beast is one of the largest YouTube channels out there. He's got the most followers, and he says if you don't catch him in the first 15 to 30 seconds, you're done.

Who is that, Tracy?

Mr. Beast.

Beast. Okay, I didn't hear that. Mr. Beast. Well, maybe everyone else heard it. I didn't hear it. I thought it was worth asking again.

Mr. Beast, he's got one of the inarguably largest channels and most followers, and he is a Guru at YouTube and has been doing the longest. And he says 30 seconds is your maximum to draw them in. If you are wasting your entire 30 seconds on your branded bumper, that all it does is play your music, play a sales pitch, because so many of your intros are big old sales pitches. You are wasting your space.

Tracy. I just Learned he has 295 million subscribers on YouTube. Holy mackerel. I think this guy knows what he's talking about.

Absolutely right. So if he is saying that this is what you have to capture their attention to get them to continue for the next minute and the next minute and the next minute, and every minute that goes by on your video, they're deciding to stay with you. That's the attention span of video versus audio. When I sit down to listen to a podcast and I select it from someone I've already subscribed to, I'm in it for the whole thing. We know that because we see 70% plus listen through rate on average across all of our clients. And so when you hear that kind of listen through rate, they have a different perspective when they're sitting down to choose something. But on YouTube, you have to convince them every 30 seconds to one minute. That's a lot of difference to how you're consuming content and how you're providing content. So that means that we have to do some branding and bumper things very differently on YouTube than we've been doing in the past. In the past, we had encouraged all of our clients to brand them like a podcast. But that was before YouTube had a podcast playlist. You needed them to know, amongst all the other videos that they were consuming a podcast episode. Now they're subscribing to a playlist that is all your podcast episodes and it's labeled that way. So having all those bumpers, having all those extra things, it's different if you're providing your audio file and it's using the feed than it is if you're providing a separate video file. And so what we're encouraging everyone to do is forget your bumpers, forget your branding. Now, I can't get you, most of you, to agree to do that.

It's been a hard sell. I agree.

It's a total hard sell. And I'm saying front bumper, I shouldn't say that. Back bumper, there's reason for it.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, yeah. The end bumper, we want to have it, but we want it to be majority of it to be the end card, which is something we talked about with Frano Sauro a couple of weeks ago. So we've already done that episode. So go check that one out. Next, where we talk about end cards and info cards and all the different tools. This is a promotion opportunity to get them to go to the next video, to go to your stuff, to consume what's next. It's the suggestion to them. So you don't want to skip your end bumper, but 20 seconds is the maximum end card you can create. So we're saying no more than 30 seconds for your end bumper right now. That's our best practice recommendation. And that way it you transition and immediately get to the suggestion. So you got a 10 second transition of like, hey, thanks for watching. And then your branding, put your branding there and then send them straight to the end card from there of what you want them to consume next. That's it. A simple bumper end card and you can load them in. So you add them right into the video. You don't have to make them a part of your video to begin with. You just can click a button and add it.

Yeah, no, YouTube has all that functionality built right in.

But the beginning bumper, I'm honestly recommending. Look, if we look at our live stream, which goes without any bumpers at all, right? Our live stream versus our bump podcast videos where we actually put bumpers onto them. And we've been testing this. So I have not shifted our show yet. It's coming. I wanted to wait till we had really had our own information and statistics for me to prove out that this was correct. We are getting more views on our live streams than we are on our produced videos.

Is that right?

Yep.

So we're getting more people because we're doing live streams watching our videos than are actually watching videos that were not live.

The recorded saved livestream is getting more plays than the video itself. And I have to think that that's happening because of YouTube, because the algorithm isn't pushing it out, because it has bumpers, because it has branding. It has more of that stuff that they know doesn't attract interest and get them to click. So they're sharing. The algorithm is sharing our livestream more. Now that I have no actual hard data that says that, with the exception of the results. Why would a live stream get more plays when the video exists if the algorithm wasn't helping you with that?

Usually the video exists twice because the.

Live stream exists in its raw format. With our chit chat before, right. That chit chat will get cut off and then the bumper will happen and the rest of. And just what we said when we said, hey, welcome to feed your brand. Right. Like that's the polished video. So it's slightly different in size. I mean, YouTube doesn't know they're exactly the same. We title them different. We do some other things.

So you're saying the live versions of the same video are getting more play than the one that's been edited?

Because it's not branded and polished is my belief. And the YouTube algorithm is helping us.

That I think has an awful lot to do with it.

Yeah. So this is what we're seeing though, across the board. Our clients with no bumpers, with no branding. That doesn't mean you don't have a thumbnail. We talked about thumbnails as well last week. So thumbnails, we want to definitely deal with those. But it doesn't mean that we don't have that. But we don't have that introduction that we do on our podcast.

Podcast. So on the pre recorded intro with the music and the voiceover artists and all that, we're literally just going, we have a thumbnail. So it's got a information there about what it's about and when you play it, it's getting ready right into welcome.

To feed your brand goes right into the topic. Dive straight in. Now, if you really, really are brand centric and you want everything to be stylized and have all the stuff that you want on it, no more than do not waste more than 10 seconds. Do not waste that audience attention. If you've only got 30 seconds, like Mr. B said, to get their attention and you waste more than a third of it on that branding that. This is why you're not getting followers, this is why you're not getting viewers, this is why you're not getting subscribers. It's why your channel's not growing. Now you can deviate from that when you have 295 million followers and he doesn't. You get to make your own rules when you're that big. And yet he doesn't. What does that say?

It says he knows what's working and what's making him money. Because I'm sure with 295 million subscribers, you better believe that. Channels monetized. It's probably his full time gig at this point.

It is. I mean, it's been his full time gig since the beginning practically. He's been so good at it. This is an excellence model. So if you want to follow the best model, we're saying get your brand off your YouTube videos, put it at the end and get your bumpers as short as possible if you're going to insist on using them. But we're recommending not using your front bumper. That's it. It's simple. Doesn't make your life easier. You could just straight record, flip the end card on and you're done. Like it's nothing. Like, how easy is that?

It does make it easier. It does, yeah.

I mean you don't have to do any editing.

No. But you still do need to pay attention to the end cards because those are important.

You can clip, trim. You can do all that. Right. In YouTube.

And the thumbnail.

And the thumbnails added separate. Right. Spend a little time on your thumbnail. Do a really great thumbnail in Canva and drop it in. Right.

You need to spend time on that. I think that's important because it's an.

Attractor when people are just picking amongst videos, but once they hit play, the thumbnail's gone. They don't see it.

Right. But before that, I think it does attract them to click on one video versus another. Otherwise if everyone looks the same, like another zoom video up on YouTube, the people are going to be like, I've seen that before, I'm not interested. So you've got to have the thumbnail to distinguish the good reason why people want to listen to one video. And I would say not rather than another, but then. And another and another and another. Right?

Yeah.

And then here's the last thing I want to leave you with from a I'm going to call it a viewer's perspective because that's how we started this. Discussing about, like what that perspective is from the viewer experience is really why YouTube is different than other platforms, right? They've gotten an ad before your content played. 9 times out of 10 they got an ad because most of them are not paying for the ad. Free version of YouTube.

Can you do that?

Yeah, you can. That means an ad got served to them. They had to hit click. They're ready for the content. They don't want your ad, which is what a bumper feels like and it's not even an effective one. So if you're gonna run an ad, give it a few minutes before you run something. So I'm a big fan of like when I do my binge factor episodes, I do not run ads at all in my videos. I just don't because I know YouTube is going to interrupt them with a bunch of ads and I don't monetize like that. But if I was going to run an ad in my audio, I run it after the introduction of my guests, before we get to the guests. So I excitedly introduced how great this guest is, what truth bombs and what the amazing things are going to drop and why you should hang around and then run the ad. So if you pace it like that and think about it the same way, these ads are going to be running by YouTube whether you like it or not. And if you have not given them enough content when that ad runs, it's an opportunity for them to move on.

It is really a different world, isn't it? YouTube versus podcasts. I believe they do have separate consumers. Some really do prefer video, some prefer the audio. And then you can certainly repurpose the same content we're all about that use the same core recording for both. But if you just treat it the same way and let's say phone it into YouTube, it's podcast first and you're gonna put it up on YouTube in the exact same way or just not pay attention really to the nuances of and what we're talking about today, the best practices for YouTube, you're not going to do as well there.

You're just not. And so this is a big difference to YouTube. Full length videos. That's all we're talking about here. Totally different. Shorts are their own animal. They're more like TikTok. They're their own thing. This is only about the full length video and how you get more views, more followers, more subscribers to your channel. And that's our goal. With this. So the reality is, and it's kind of a great thing, Tom, you get to do less work and you get more effective results. Isn't that great?

It is great. And you know what? I think the majority of podcasts are certainly that I talk to every day are very happy to do what's going to work on the different platform. They just want to know what to do, right?

And I think too often we follow a channel, like, we think, oh, look, so. And so does this, and look how great it is. But look how beautiful their site looks, right? Or their channel looks. Look how great their Instagram feed looks. Like this is how it is. And then you find out how much work that is and it gets no results. Like, that's what I really want you to hear is that sometimes those things that we are attracted to and like are not the things that are attracting our listeners to us, our viewers to us.

Such a good point, Tracy, because, yes, I often have new podcasters say, oh, well, I like this YouTube channel here and I want to mimic it. I want my stuff to be just the same. And that YouTube channel is following a best practice that was five years ago, not what's working today. That becomes a very difficult conversation with somebody. Because, you know, and I guess the lesson is just because you like it, that doesn't mean it's what's going to really work and what the majority of the YouTube viewing market is going to like.

And I really do. Next time that comes up, I want you all to check out the actual listens on views of the views of it, because it's YouTube views of the videos, not the ones they pin to the front of their home channel page. The ones on average across all the ones that are recently released, because they will always have a random few that they paid for views on, because it's very typical. That used to happen that way. And so you've got like five or six videos that all have 10,000 views on them, and then everything else gets 10, 20, 30 views, right? What they're getting views is telling you what's not working anymore. So go to their current ones and look at the view numbers. Now, that's not going to happen to a Mr. Beast. Never going to happen to him, because his channel's already heavily powered by the algorithm. But if you've got somebody who's relatively new to bumping up a channel or within the last five years, and they're the same industry, not a huge following, Maybe they have 10,000 followers or less total on their channel and you go and look at the video views, you're going to be following something that isn't a best practice, that isn't working. So really dive in and check the numbers. So do less work. Do less work. More effective results.

Do less work is true. Sometimes it will be less work. But you've gotta pay attention to YouTube. You've gotta do some specific things. You can't just edit the audio and the video together on a tool like Descript where you can do both the same. Exactly. And then just throw the video up on YouTube. That's not really gonna work for you either. You've gotta pay attention and be mindful of what works. The distribution channel that you're posting on. Right. But what we're saying is don't overdo it, which we see happen all too often.

Right, exactly. Less over branding. Get right into it. Spend more time creating really great, powerful pull in content. Right. That attracts people. Think more about how you're going to jump into your episode and less about these beautifully over branded bumpers. There you go. That's it.

All right. I love it.

I look forward to bringing you back another episode here on Feature Brand. Remember, you can always join us live if you're a part of the Potitize community by coming into our zoom and chatting with us after this episode's recorded. So for those of you on the live stream and those of you listening to Feature Brand, unless you're a part of the Potatoes community, you can't do that part and get the real, actual active coaching. But we want these episodes to serve you. So if you have a topic you'd like to suggest, make sure to go to podcastersunited.org and reach out to us. Send us a message. Let us know what you'd like us to cover in one of these coaching calls.

Let's leave it there, okay? And we'll let our end bumper do the rest. All right, so, hey everyone on livestream, thank you. We're signing off and we'll see you next week.

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