YouTube is constantly evolving when it comes to giving its viewers and creators relevant content and additional benefits. While some of the updates encourage YouTubers to create more valuable content with new monetization opportunities, others are viewer-centric, which helps enhance the audience’s visual experience. The best course of action for creators is to stay abreast of all these updates and adjust their content strategy accordingly to create high-ranking and engaging content for their YouTube target audience.
Why Do These Changes Matter?
Every YouTube update matters today. All of these updates impact your channel and can catapult your YouTube career to success, making you the YouTube rockstar you were born to be! They can even prevent you from hitting a plateau in the subscriber count or viewership.
Moreover, these YouTube features will benefit you revenue-wise, equipping you with additional monetization opportunities absent from the platform before. Let’s dive into it!
Stay Up-To-Date With These 8 YouTube Updates For Creators
1. YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Shorts Fund
Similar to TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts are 60-second long videos presented in a horizontal format. You can create Shorts directly in the YouTube app on your smartphone — click the “+” icon at the bottom of the app and select “Create a Short.” The app also offers filters, overlays, and background music you can use to make your videos appealing and engaging.
YouTube introduced a $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund to lure more creators into uploading Shorts for their viewers. YouTube hands out this bonus to a few thousand selected YouTubers every month to acknowledge their constant efforts and dedication. This encourages more creators to hop on the Shorts bandwagon.
Creators are selected based on their Shorts performance for the previous month. The best part is that Shorts are reviewed every month, not just the month they were uploaded in. Therefore, even if you did not qualify for it this month, you may be selected in the next. Plus, the level of performance required changes month to month based on a wide range of factors, such as location and overall growth. The amount creators receive ranges from $100 to $1000.
2. YouTube Super Thanks
Like the YouTube Shorts Fund, YouTube Super Thanks is another monetization avenue for content creators. YouTube Super Thanks is a feature that allows your subscribers to tip you directly, even outside the Super Chats from live streams.
The YouTube Super Thanks forum was created in response to the criticism of the volatility of ad revenue that YouTubers had to deal with. YouTube usually pays a cut of the ad revenue to its creators, and the advertisements that play before the videos start to generate this revenue. However, this proved to be an unstable and unreliable source of income for YouTubers and has even shrunk dramatically at times. This specifically affected content creators who did not have alternate streams of income.
But, “thanks” to Super Thanks, viewers can now directly donate to their favorite content creators. They can make the donation using the buttons available below the videos. After offering the tip, they will see a balloon animation on their screens. And their donation appears in the comment section, where you can respond. However, note that you have to be a part of the YouTube Partner Program to use this feature.
Also, note that Super Thanks is not available for the following types of videos:
- Made for kids
- Age-restricted
- Private
- Unlisted
- Videos with YouTube Giving fundraisers
- Live streams or premieres — viewers can donate to archived video-on-demand once the live stream ends.
- Videos with content ID claims
3. Auto-chapters
Video chapters are one of the newest additions to YouTube. These chapters break up long videos into smaller sections, each with an individual preview. They add context to each portion of the video so that viewers can watch parts they are interested in and skip sections like intros and outros.
Besides helping viewers, chapters also benefit content creators by ranking them higher for the targeted keywords. By incorporating keywords in the chapter titles, you become more discoverable. These chapters can also appear on the Google search engine result pages, helping you boost your visibility.
Initially, creators had to manually add chapters for each new section of their video, which was taxing. But this feature has massively helped YouTubers cut down this hard work and save time. Now, YouTube automatically detects new chapters in your video, owing to artificial intelligence and machine learning. This feature was launched permanently after its beta-testing received positive feedback.
It is noteworthy, though, that creators have the liberty to turn the chapter’s auto-generation off and manually add new chapters wherever they deem fit. You can opt-out from this auto-segmentation via your upload defaults in YouTube Studio.
4. Preview mode
Available both on mobile and desktop, Preview mode auto-plays videos on the YouTube home feed on mute with only the captions on — yes, you can watch without clicking. This mode allows viewers to choose if they should watch the entire video. It even enables them to enjoy YouTube on the move, making videos more digestible for mobile users.
What does Preview mode have in store for content creators? Inflated view counts is one benefit! If Google considers your video attractive enough for the YouTube feed, you are highly likely to get a boost in the view count. At the same time, YouTube is aware that creators spend a considerable amount of time creating attention-grabbing thumbnails. Therefore, the auto-play previews will only start after a slight pause, ensuring creators get to flaunt their video’s thumbnails. For YouTube itself, this feature translates to higher engagement metrics.
5. Evergreen insights
Social media insights are a lifesaver. They give insight into your audience and their interests and preferences. This can help you tweak your content strategy as per your audience’s taste. Considering the importance of analytics, YouTube is now giving insights into evergreen videos — videos that have been popular for an extended period.
Evergreen video insights were initially introduced as an experiment to improve creators’ performance analysis. Their positive reception led them to become a permanent feature. YouTuber Conor Kavanagh states that insights are “additional drivers” that help creators understand how their channel’s performance changes over time.
This is crucial for content creators, giving them a bird’s-eye view and exposing their channel’s growth — or decline. Besides, the insights help them understand how their previous videos, which are a critical source of sustainable revenue, are being discovered. This further assists them in content planning.
6. Trending hashtags
The concept of hashtags is not new to content creators or social media users. Following the trend, YouTube also launched a feature called “trending hashtags”. These hashtags appear in the Explore section and allow viewers to watch the currently popular videos. For creators, hashtags play a crucial role, helping them identify the kind of content that does well on the platform.
YouTube identifies and displays the hashtags popular among the viewers and subsequently places them under the categories like Movies and Sports. The primary advantage of this feature for content creators is that it boosts the video’s views if they appear under the trending hashtags section. This also makes your videos rank higher and more searchable when you include the trending hashtags in the metadata of your videos.
In addition, trending hashtags have another lesser-known benefit for content creators. You can use this feature as a source of inspiration if you are out of content ideas — amazing, right?
7. YouTube polls
Another popular feature is YouTube polls, which help get quantitative and qualitative data from creators and users alike. The polls ask questions like, “How is YouTube today?” or “Did you enjoy this video?” from viewers. Therefore, creators can no longer get away with making mediocre content. They must create engaging, entertaining, and informative videos to get a good review, which will further help them rank higher on YouTube.
Creators can also create YouTube polls to learn about their audience. Both creators and audiences can see the results in real-time. But you can only use the free YouTube polls feature if you have over 1000 subscribers. The ability to use this feature can take up to a week if you have recently reached 1000 subscribers. Lastly, this feature is not for kids videos.
8. Additional mobile features
Understanding the ease of creating and editing content directly from the cellphone, YouTube has also launched specific mobile-centric updates. These additions to YouTube Studio Mobile include metadata, dark mode, real-time analytics, and the ability to filter comments.
- Metadata: Metadata is simply a fancy word for your video’s information, like title and channel name. There is more sophisticated data you can add to your videos, such as geographic coordinates, camera specifications, and frame rate. You can now edit or add these pieces of information through your smartphone.
- Dark mode: This feature enables you to change the default look of your YouTube app to a deep black. This change offers a better visual experience, as the colors pop out more on the black background.
- Real-time analytics: This is the summary of your channel’s performance. This update will allow you to analyze your views, watch time, subscribers, and estimated revenue if you are a part of the YouTube Partner Program. You can monitor your performance over the last 40 hours or 60 minutes.
- Filter comments: Creators can now filter their remarks according to response status, queries, subscriber count, subscriber status, and member status.
These YouTube features will help you stand out from other influencers and create engaging content that gets more views. While you hone your content creation, allow us to help you land desirable brand partnerships.
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