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Getting Started with YouTube

YouTube is the world's most popular online video site, and it should be the first site you go to for sharing videos.

 

  1. Go to YouTube.com and click on "sign up." If you are a nonprofit organization (you must be a registered 501c3) you can apply for your own nonprofit channel. Note: the application review process takes about a month. Important! If you are applying for a nonprofit channel, your user name should be the name of your organization.
  2. If you already have some videos, upload them! (If they are not in digital format, click here to learn about converting them).
  3. Brand your channel! Any user can customize their channel. If you have a nonprofit channel, you can extensively brand it and make it your own. You can create the following:
    1. Video Page Banner (360px by 55px)
    2. Video Page Icon (55px by 55px)
    3. Channel Banner (875px by 150px)
  4. Add links! After videos, links are the most important thing you can put on the channel. Make sure viewers can easily navigate to your site.
  5. Invite subscribers - use your existing contact lists and get people onto your channel. Also, get your staff to subscribe and share the link with their own networks. (its best to have some videos on there first - don't invite them to a channel that has nothing on it)
  6. Add videos to your "favorites." This is where you can share other videos that are important to you/your cause/your network. Don't be afraid to use this, and don't be afraid to ask other like-minded organizations to add your video to their favorites, too.
  7. Ask people to rate and comment on your videos.
  8. Rate and comment on other videos (that are related to your work)
  9. YouTube will soon make new metrics available that will greatly help your advocacy. Soon you will be able to see where (geographically) your viewers are, how your video compares to others in the market, what the life cycle of the video is, how long it takes for the video to become popular, and what happens when it does... YouTube Insights will be rolled out in the second and third quarters of this year.