What to do After You Upload a Video to YouTube
Tagging, titles, and thumbnails, oh my! Today, I’m going to teach you what you need to do after you upload a YouTube video, y’all. We all know it’s really just a matter of setting up a YouTube channel and uploading, but it’s also sooo much more.
I’m gonna let you in behind the scenes into my process and go over exactly what I do after I upload a video. I’ve got the tips and tools to get this totally under control, my friends. All right?!
First off, for many of these steps TubeBuddy is my YouTube BFF. It helps me do a lot of my after upload options and generally makes everything in YouTube life easier and that ain’t no joke.
STEP ONE: CREATE YOUR THUMBNAIL
Once you’ve uploaded your YouTube video, you’re ready to create your custom thumbnail. I usually go through my video, take a screen grab of the video itself, and pull it into Photoshop with a template I’ve already made. Voila! You can also do this in Canva or whatever editing software you wanna use.
Here’s a somewhat embarrassing behind the scenes tip. I start almost every video with an awkward 20 seconds of posing and pointing at nothing to set up an awesome thumbnail. Yep, you do what you gotta do to get that thumbnail. Be intentional about it and grab that pic to create a really eye-catching AND on-brand thumbnail.
STEP TWO: OPTIMIZE THE TITLE
You sure as heck better make that title search-worthy for the all powerful YouTube search. Now, I’ve heard that some people think of the title ahead of time so they can say the exact title in the video, but friends, I do not go that far. If I had to plan that much ahead you know how many videos you’d get from me? Zip. So I come up with a topic and a running title to get around this little obstacle.
When I think I’ve found my blog title, I search for it on Google and Google Keywords. Then, I go into YouTube search to see how people might be searching for it there and change it around a bit to optimize for YouTube search. Neat trick, right? It’s 100% OK to have different titles for your blog posts and YouTube videos because it can actually be way better for your SEO.
STEP THREE: TAG IT UP
Tags are essentially what tells YouTube how to find you in YouTube search. This is also important for how YouTube places your video in related videos. If you just have the tag YouTube, it’ll tell them nada! The odds of you coming up are pretty darn slim, friend. YouTube search will have no idea what you’re talking about.
You want to use tags that will get you found in search, match your title, and get you in the related video tab. I can’t tell you how important related videos are. This is where a ton of traffic is going to come from. Tags are how you claim that traffic for yourself!
STEP FOUR: INSERT CARDS AND END SCREENS
A card is anything that you see pop across your screen at the top that recommends something related. It makes people want to stay on YouTube longer and check out another video of yours. This will make you look mega good in YouTube's eyes.
End screens are pretty similar. If your viewers make it to the end of the video, you want to give them more to watch on your channel. This allows your viewers to subscribe or watch your most recent/relevant video. Doesn’t that sound like magic?
STEP FIVE: SCHEDULE PUBLISHING
Ah, TubeBuddy, this is where my friend comes in handy. If you upload to scheduled on your YouTube channel or even upload to private and then scheduled, nobody else can access the video through that link. But guys, I have a team of people that helps me write my blog post to accompany the video and other things that need access to the video.
If you use TubeBuddy, you can schedule from there. I upload as unlisted so my team can access my videos and then I use TubeBuddy to actually publish and schedule the publish.
And now I’m ready for the video to go live! Isn’t it amazing when things just happen auto-magically? That is the life! You are so going to want to do this for yourself so you can get your videos uploaded and optimized for YouTube search without driving yourself crazy.
