YouTube wants you to get viewers to watch more of your content. The longer you keep your viewers on YouTube, the more ad money they will make and the more they will love you. Today I am going to show you a strategic way to use cards to drive viewers to more of your content. Watch the video below or scroll down for the text version.
So why do you want YouTube to love you? The longer you keep viewers watching your videos, the higher YouTube will place your videos in search results and the more they will recommend your videos in the sidebar. A great way to direct viewers to more of your content is by using cards to lead your viewers from your highest viewed videos to your lowest.
But what is a card? When you’re watching a video on YouTube have you ever noticed a little i icon appear in the top right hand corner? That’s a card. They can be used to promote a video or playlist, promote another YouTube channel, start a poll or link to a webpage. Today we are just going to talk about video linking.
How To Create Cards
Let’s set up a card and work out the best time to display that card to your viewers.
We start by going to your YouTube Studio and clicking on the Videos tab. It’s best to start by adding cards to your videos with the highest views. You can quickly order your videos by the amount of views by clicking ‘Views’ on the top bar.
Click on the video you are going to add a card too. Before we add the card we are going to work out the best time to show the card. You can work out the best time by clicking analytics on the left hand side.
Now you want to look at ‘Audience retention’ on the left hand side. Don’t worry about the percentage watched (anything above 60% is actually pretty good) you want to focus on the average time people watch for. So for this video, on average people start clicking away at 1:25.
So at 1:15, just when your viewers are thinking they have seen enough and they are looking for something new to watch, BAM your suggested video appears on a card.
Now to add the card, click on ‘Details’ on the left hand side. Then on the right hand side click ‘Cards’ which will open in a new tab.
Now pause the video and scroll along to when you want to add your card. Click ‘Add card’ and then click ‘Create’ next to ‘Video or Playlist’.
Find a video that is relevant to the video the viewer is watching or pick a video that has fewer views. This video is about a certain brand of boiler so a good video choice would be the video about when to replace your boiler.
Don’t worry about changing the text boxes. YouTube will automatically use the title from your video and if you have set this up correctly it should be enticing enough.
Click ‘Create card’ and you are done. You can now close the tab as YouTube saves cards automatically.
There are other times you can add cards, if you are referencing a previous video, why not add a card to the video at that time point. Talking about a product? You could link to the manufactures video.
That’s A Wrap
To wrap up, YouTube rewards channels that keep viewers on their site and watching videos. A good way to drive people from your popular content to less popular content is by adding a card 10 seconds before people stop watching your video.
Do you have your own way of using cards? Let me know in the comments below. Want to stay up to date with our weekly content? Then make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.