YouTube Updates: Shorts Features, Creator Tools, Podcasts, and More

Our Take: “Remix” provides an exciting opportunity for brands to leverage popular music without the hefty price tag typically associated with licensing. By tapping into current trends and popular songs, businesses can create engaging content that resonates with their target audience and potentially reaches new viewers.

The four remixing options—Sound, Collab, Green Screen, and Cut—offer a variety of creative possibilities for brands to showcase their products or services in a fresh and entertaining way. Whether using the audio from a viral music video, collaborating with the original content, incorporating the video as a background, or highlighting a specific scene, the ability to capitalize on the buzz surrounding popular music is a game-changer for marketers.

However, it's important to note that while this feature presents a fantastic opportunity, brands should be mindful not to oversaturate their content with the same popular songs. Social Media Marketing Talk Show host and marketing expert Jerry Potter believes that seeing the same few songs used repeatedly in Shorts can become tiresome for viewers. To stand out and maintain audience engagement, brands should strive to be creative and original in their approach to remixing music videos.

Our Take: The introduction of product tagging in YouTube live streams is an exciting development for brands looking to capitalize on the growing trend of live-stream shopping. As Jerry points out, this feature is already exploding on platforms like TikTok, and YouTube's move to incorporate it is smart.

By allowing creators or affiliates to tag products directly in their live streams, YouTube makes it easier for viewers to purchase items without leaving the platform.

From a marketing perspective, this new feature is a game-changer. Jerry emphasizes the importance of removing friction from the buying process, and adding a shopping button directly on the screen during live streams does just that. By reducing the number of clicks required to make a purchase, brands can potentially increase their sales and conversions.

Curious About How to Use AI?

We recently launched a new show that help marketers, creators, and entrepreneurs understand the business applications of AI.

It's hosted by Michael Stelzner and explores this exciting new frontier in easy-to-understand terms.

Pull up your favorite podcast app and search for AI Explored. (Look for the cover art shown to the right.) Or click the button below for more information.

I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT AI

It's also noteworthy that both brands and affiliates can tag products in live streams. This opens up opportunities for collaborations and partnerships, allowing brands to reach new audiences through the influence of popular creators. As live-stream shopping continues to gain traction, brands must adapt and leverage these tools to stay competitive in the digital marketplace.

Our Take: Adding a notification system for tagged products in YouTube Shopping is a valuable improvement that will benefit brands and content creators. The ability to quickly rectify issues with tagged products is essential when considering YouTube content creators' potential reach and influence. With a large and engaged audience, it is essential that creators can confidently promote and tag products without worrying about technical difficulties hindering their viewers' shopping experience.

Our Take: This long-overdue addition provides a valuable tool for managing and moderating live chat interactions, mainly when dealing with potentially problematic or offensive comments. The ability to quickly assess a commenter's background empowers creators to make informed decisions about handling specific situations. 

Overall, introducing this live chat feature is a positive development demonstrating YouTube's commitment to supporting content creators and fostering a safer, more engaging live streaming environment. 

Our Take: YouTube's expansion of its analytics dashboard for monetized channels is a welcome addition that provides creators with valuable insights into their top-performing content. The new features, which include displaying the top-earning videos based on the YouTube Partner Program and the top-earning videos by format, offer a more comprehensive view of a channel's financial performance over the last 28 days.

Understanding which videos generate the most revenue is crucial for creators to make informed decisions about their content strategy. By highlighting the top-earning videos, YouTube is making it easier for creators to identify the types of content that resonate with their audience and drive the most income. This information can help guide future content creation, allowing creators to focus on producing more of the videos that have proven to be successful.

Additionally, the breakdown of top-earning videos by format is a valuable tool for creators who produce various content types, such as shorts, live streams, and traditional VODs. By providing a clear picture of which formats are performing best in revenue, creators can make data-driven decisions about allocating their time and resources.

Our Take: Introducing a viewer clips library is an exciting development for content creators on YouTube. It allows them to showcase user-generated clips alongside their own content. This new feature builds upon the existing ability for viewers to create clips from videos but now provides creators with a dedicated space to curate and display these clips on their channel.

The viewer clips library offers several benefits for creators. Firstly, it allows them to leverage user-generated content to promote their channel and engage with their audience. By featuring the best clips created by their viewers, creators can showcase their content's impact and popularity while encouraging more viewers to create and share clips.

Secondly, the ability to customize the display of the viewer clips library on their channel gives creators more control over how they present their content. Just as creators can organize their own videos into playlists or categories, they can now do the same with viewer-generated clips. This enables creators to highlight specific topics, themes, or moments from their videos that resonate with their audience, making it easier for new viewers to discover and engage with their content.

Moreover, the viewer clips library can serve as a valuable source of inspiration and feedback for creators. By seeing which moments from their videos are most frequently clipped and shared by viewers, creators can gain insights into what content resonates with their audience and use this information to inform their future video creation.

The introduction of the viewer clips library and the ability to remix music videos discussed earlier demonstrate YouTube's commitment to empowering creators and fostering a more collaborative and engaging platform. By providing tools that allow creators and viewers to interact with content in new and creative ways, YouTube is strengthening the sense of community and encouraging the creation of more diverse and compelling content.

Our Take: The ability to better control notifications in Studio Mobile is a significant improvement for marketers, content managers, and social media managers who often find themselves overwhelmed by excessive notifications. This is particularly true when managing a new page or account, as the default notification settings can quickly become unmanageable.

YouTube acknowledges the need for a more streamlined and efficient workflow by allowing users to filter notifications and prioritize the most important ones on mobile. This feature empowers users to customize their notification preferences, ensuring they only receive alerts for the most critical updates and events.

Our Take: YouTube's announcement last year regarding its commitment to podcasts generated excitement, but the subsequent lack of significant updates left many wondering about the platform's progress in this area. However, the recent introduction of new sorting options for podcasts on YouTube, while not groundbreaking, is a step in the right direction and warrants attention from marketers and content creators.

For podcasters who add their audio content to YouTube using the RSS feed feature, the ability to sort episodes from newest to oldest or oldest to newest provides a simple but helpful way to organize their content. This feature is particularly valuable for listeners who prefer to consume podcasts in a specific order, whether they want to start with the most recent episode or dive into the archives.

Furthermore, podcasts native to YouTube benefit from additional search options, including “most popular” and “default.” While the specifics of the default sorting algorithm remain unclear, it likely considers each user's search history to deliver personalized recommendations. This presents an opportunity for marketers to optimize their podcast content to rank higher in these search results.

Marketers can leverage these sorting options to their advantage for newer or less popular podcasts that may struggle to gain visibility in search results. By actively encouraging their audience to utilize the various filters, such as newest to oldest, oldest to newest, most popular, or default, podcasters can potentially improve their chances of being discovered by new listeners.

However, it is important to note that while these sorting options enhance visibility, they are not a substitute for creating high-quality, engaging content that resonates with the target audience. Marketers should develop a strong content strategy, optimize their podcast titles, descriptions, and tags, and promote their content through various channels to drive traffic and improve their search rankings.

Our Take: The introduction of community posts on YouTube has been a game-changer for content creators, providing a platform to engage with their audience like other social media networks. It’s an essential tool for brands and marketers looking to connect with their target audience on YouTube. Community posts' versatility, allowing users to share videos, images, polls, and other engaging content, has made them an increasingly popular feature on the platform.

The recent introduction of the “view all posts” button allows users to access a dedicated feed of community posts, providing a convenient way to browse and engage with this content without the need to watch lengthy videos or use audio. This is particularly useful for users who may not have the time or ability to watch a full video but still want to stay connected with their favorite creators and brands.

While the “view all posts” feature is still in the testing phase and may not be available to all users yet, its introduction strongly signals that YouTube is committed to enhancing the community post experience. As a marketer, this development should be taken as a cue to invest more time and effort into creating engaging community posts that resonate with your target audience.

Our Take: This update, which hasn't seen significant changes in years, aims to enhance user engagement on the platform. As a marketer, you must be aware of these potential changes, which could impact how users interact with your content. However, it's important to note that these changes are not permanent and are currently being tested. If you find the new layout unsatisfactory, remember that YouTube is still gathering feedback and refining the user experience.

Moreover, it's crucial to understand that if you are seeing these changes, it's likely that only a small percentage of users are experiencing the same. This means that most of your audience may still be viewing your content with the familiar layout, so it's essential not to make drastic changes to your content strategy based on this test alone.

Our Take: YouTube's ongoing experiment to help users find all their subscribed content in one place strongly indicates that subscribers still hold significant value on the platform. Despite the rise of algorithmic recommendations and the ability of Shorts to reach a wider audience, this test suggests that YouTube recognizes the importance of catering to users' subscribed content preferences.

The debate surrounding the relevance of subscribers has been prevalent in recent years, with some arguing that the algorithm's ability to show people the content they want, regardless of subscription status, has diminished the importance of this metric. Additionally, the introduction of Shorts has allowed channels to reach viewers who may not have actively searched for their content or subscribed to their channel. 

However, YouTube's decision to test a new filter in the Subscription tab, allowing users to easily access content from channels they've subscribed to, have memberships with or are Primetime channels, sends a clear message that subscribers remain a vital aspect of the platform's ecosystem. This experimental feature aims to enhance the user experience by making it more convenient for viewers to engage with the content they've explicitly shown interest in by subscribing.

As marketers, this development reminds us that while exploring new avenues for reach and engagement is essential, cultivating a loyal subscriber base should remain a key focus. Subscribers not only provide consistent viewership but also act as a form of social proof, indicating the value and quality of a channel's content to potential new viewers.

Although the current test may not be visible to most users, it is a significant signal that YouTube continues to prioritize the subscriber experience and recognizes the importance of this relationship between creators and their audience.