YouTube Channel Setup
That’s the look and feel of the channel set up, but before we look at the back-end settings, there are a few more technical things to take care of on the front-end.
Adding Custom Links
As I mentioned in the previous part of this section it’s important to have custom web and social links in your channel description and once entered they also appear in a number of important places including an overlay on your Channel Banner.
By adding these links you give your channel a look of professionalism and authority and it also tells people you’re human (or ‘legit’ if you’re a business).
They also allow you to get that browser to a property you own and can capture their data or simply help turn them into a fan or follower.
Clickhere for my top 5 tips for optimizing your custom links (plus 3 bonus tips) and then watch the video below to see how to implement them.
Add Featured Channels
This is one of the last steps to get the front-end of your channel set up.
It is also one of the most under-rated and under-used facets of a YouTube Channel, which surprises me as it’s one of the most simple to implement.
The basic idea is that you feature your competition.
SAY WHAT!?
Yes your competition.
By featuring similar channels in your space, especially popular ones, the viewer will make a psychological link between the two. This gives them not only a frame of reference for what your channel offers but also the other channels’ authority and quality will “rub off” on you.
Follow my video below to see how to implement this:
Enable Related Channels
By enabling this feature a widget will appear on your channel underneath your Featured Channels widget.
It looks identical to the widget above it although this time it’s populated by recommendations from YouTube.
As you start out this will seem to be quite a random selection of popular YouTube channels but as your channel matures the recommendations will become more accurate and closely linked to your channel.
This offers the same reputational benefit of the Recommended Channels you‘ve selected.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t have this widget enabled you won’t be included as a suggestion in other peoples “Recommended” widget. This almost certainly won’t affect your statistics in the early days but as you grow this can become a juicy source of traffic and subscribers.For me any benefit outweighs the negative – people abandoning your channel for a recommended channel – so I’d go ahead and implement this.
You enable this on your channel page by scrolling under the Featured Channel widget and hitting Enable on the Popular/Related Channels widget as shown in the picture below:
