Tip: Don't Panic!

YouTube is changing. Apparently the homepage will be overhauled to encourage strategic partnership with content producers like Disney. There is a feeling among many YouTube users that the ‘golden age’ is over and that YouTube itself is turning its back on them in an attempt to make money and/or break even. My tip? Don’t panic.

I was discussing the impending changes with a fellow YouTuber earlier. This is basically what I told him – and what I’d like to tell you, too:

I think people are getting a tad too hysterical about the site changes to be honest. The global feature gets a person a lot of exposure in a short period of time, but those are as rare as hen’s teeth. Audiences grow more organically. Yes that requires time and word of mouth and lots of promotion. But there will always be amateur video makers and there will always be people wanting to watch that sort of thing.

There may come a time when its no longer worth being on YouTube, but I doubt that will happen this month. But if you keep that in mind and start building a bond with people and encourage them to go to your site or your blog or have some off-site interaction with you… when/if that happens you can take at least some of them with you.

If you are meeting the changes with trepidation, here are a few ideas that might help.

• Tell your subscribers and friends how else they might interact with you: Make a video explaining that changes are imminent, that you want to make sure everyone can stay in touch with you easily and then provide people with all the relevant usernames and links. Status update services like Twitter are particularly useful for disseminating information to a lot of people on an opt-in basis.
• Give people options: Make your content available over a number of video sharing websites through tools like Tubemogul. Start your own blog or website where people can find your videos and news easily. Introduce your community to the wonders of RSS. Show them that they can subscribe to your blog or your YouTube videos themselves in a feed reader like Google Reader.

You can subscribe to a user’s YouTube uploads in a RSS feed reader by using the following URL format
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/[insert username here]/uploads

• Ask People to Subscribe: For all the speculation about the coming changes, it seems unlikely that something as integral as the subscription facilities will change much.
• Reassure people within your community that you haven’t abadoned them: Continue to watch your subscriptions, continue to rate, comment and favourite. If people whose content you really enjoy seem to fall off the radar, send them a private message. This will be an adjustment for everyone; lend a hand when you can!
• Become responsible for your own promotion: Even now sitting around, waiting, hoping that YouTube editoral staff will somehow stumble across your content and place it in a predominant place for all to enjoy is a bit of a pipedream. You need to get into the practice of sharing your content across your various social networks – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter. You need to be actively viewing other people’s videos and leaving comments. Participate in video collaborations and gatherings when opportunities present themselves. You need to be repositioning old videos as they become topical again. Consider using older content as video responses where applicable. Don’t upload your video and just hope for the best!

Understand the difference between a Facebook profile and a Facebook page. Facebook profiles are exclusively for real people using their real names. Facebook pages are for people, products, services, businesses and other entities. I, for example, could have a Facebook profile for John Lacey, but if I wanted to set up something for ‘JohnOfJordan’ it would have to be a Facebook page. Setting up a ‘JohnOfJordan’ profile is against Facebook Terms of Service and will result in the profile being deleted.

• Consider the different ways people find videos and video creators: There’s a good chance one of three things happens: They search for something and find you, they watch something you’ve commented on or made a response to, or they hear about you from a friend. Make sure you title and tag your videos with appropriate information. Interact with other users a lot – leave a digital footprint others can follow. And do things that are worth talking about and make it easy for other people to talk about you. If you tweet about your video, it is easy for those with a Twitter client to retweet that information if they enjoyed it.

But most of all… don’t panic!

I’ve said it about the so-called ‘Global Financial Crisis’ and I’ll say it about the impending YouTube site changes… as far as I’m concerned it isn’t really a “crisis” until we start eating each other. Have fun with it!

Tagged as: Change, Connection, Interaction, Promotion, YouTube