How to Optimize and Upload a YouTube Video (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to my creative bootcamp. Last episode, you got to watch my personal editing workflow, in which I spoke with a shockingly monotone voice. I always forget how bored I sound when I'm editing. So in this episode, we finally have our video fully edited and ready to be posted. But now comes the scariest part, for me at least, optimizing. That's right, we're talking titles, we're talking thumbnails, we're talking descriptions, links, all that fun stuff. But I'm just gonna be honest with you guys, all that stuff really is not my forte. For my videos personally, you know, I try to make titles and thumbnails that'll pique a person's interest. But it's not something I'm thinking that much about. See, when it comes to analytics and optimization, I have much more of a whatever happens, happens sort of attitude about it. Because at the end of the day, the main thing determining whether my video gets views or not is an evil, lifeless algorithm. So yes, you know, it's smart for me to do whatever I can to increase my chances of getting picked up by that algorithm. But it's still just a chance, you know, like there's no guarantee with any of this. So my mentality is a lot more, I'm just gonna keep making videos because I enjoy making videos. And hey, if one of them blows up, good for me. But I understand that not everyone is as laid back about this as I am. So I'm gonna call on one of my bestest, closest friends in the entire whole wide world, Adrian, to help me out here. Because he actually knows what he's doing.

[00:01:25] Speaker 2: Adrian? Hey, thanks, Ramdy. And for the millionth time, I like you, but you are not my best friend, okay? Stop telling people that. Anyway, I do spend a lot of time thinking about YouTube strategy. And I understand that it can seem very intimidating when starting out. But the truth is, optimizing your video really doesn't have to be that complicated. At the most basic level, YouTube is trying to answer two simple questions about your video. One, when people see it, do they click on it? And two, when they click on it, do they keep watching? If people click and they watch, YouTube will continue recommending the video to more people and vice versa. So when we talk about optimizing your video, everything we're doing is really just trying to improve those two signals. And the first piece of that puzzle is your thumbnail. Now, your thumbnail is usually the very first thing someone notices about your video. Before they read the title, before they know what the video is about, they're seeing that image while they scroll. So the job of the thumbnail is very, very simple. It needs to make someone stop scrolling. Not necessarily to click immediately, but to stop long enough to become curious. And the most effective thumbnails have a few things in common. First, they're clear and easy to understand even when they're very, very small. An important thing to remember is that a lot of people are watching on their phones. So if your thumbnail is packed with tiny details or tons of small text, it's going to be hard to read. Second, they have strong contrast. Something in the image stands out and catches the eye quickly. And third, they usually communicate one simple idea. See, the thumbnail is not the place you want to clog up the frame. The more elements you add, the harder it becomes for someone to instantly understand what they're looking at. And all those tiny little microseconds it takes for someone to understand means a higher chance that they'll just scroll away. So make sure that your thumbnail fits these traits. And with YouTube's A.B. testing, you can upload multiple iterations of your thumbnail to see which one ends up performing the best. It's a cool feature. Once the thumbnail gets someone's attention, the title is what gives them more context and therefore a stronger reason to click. And a strong title usually does one of three things. One, it might create curiosity where the viewer wants to find out the answer to something. Two, it might promise a clear outcome, like learning a skill or seeing a result. Or three, it might frame the video around an interesting concept or challenge. Ultimately, what matters most is that the viewer can quickly understand why the video might be worth their time. Titles that are too vague or generic tend to struggle because the viewer doesn't have a clear reason to click. So instead of simply describing the video, a good title focuses specifically on what makes the video interesting. Now let's talk about the video description. This is a lot less SEO-ish, but still SEO. And it's not something that's going to make or break your analytics. Your description mainly is useful for leaving info like social links, websites, stores, and video timestamps. And a good place to start is with a short summary of your video near the top. Just a couple sentences explaining what the video is about. This can be more straightforward and casual, but it can also be comedic or ironic. Whatever matches the vibe of your video the most. Next comes your video timestamps, which visually breaks your video into sections and makes it easier for viewers to navigate, which is especially helpful for longer form videos that are 20 minutes or longer. Instead of your viewer quickly leaving because they can't find what they're looking for, they can just jump straight to it. And once they're there, they might keep watching other parts of the video too. Just make sure with your timestamps that you're following this format exactly. Because if you don't, YouTube won't recognize it and embed it into your video. And finally comes your links, which typically consists of stuff like your social media, related videos, tools you mentioned, things like that. It's a simple and effective way to help people discover more of your content or connect with you outside of YouTube. So while the description isn't the most critical part of optimization, it's an easy way to make your video clearer, easier to navigate, and more connected to the rest of your content. Ultimately, it's important to remember that optimization can only take a video so far. Good optimization can really help a good video, but it can't save a bad one. If people click on a video and immediately leave, YouTube will see that and stop recommending it. So the strongest strategy isn't just trying to optimize each upload, it's focusing on consistently making videos that people genuinely want to watch. Think of optimization less as a scary, complicated system you need to master, and more as a way to give your videos the best possible first impression.

[00:06:07] Speaker 1: Okay, okay, it is finally time. The day has finally come to upload our first video, finally. So let's go do that real quick. Here I am in my YouTube studio. I'm just gonna go ahead and click on upload video, and let's drag and drop in our file here. We're gonna grab our guy, boom, upload our guy. This is probably my favorite part of making a video. This is where the accomplishment and like sense of pride for finishing something comes in for me at least, because it's like I have finished a piece of entertainment that someone can watch, and now I'm doing the fun part of uploading it. So for title, I think I'm just gonna stick to the one I thought of when I was thinking of ideas for the channel, which was I tried to become an expert in nihilism in 10 minutes. Now, I don't know if this is the titling format I want to keep using for like future episodes, but at least for the first one, I feel like there's a better hook than just like, trust me, I think episode one, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff, you know. And for our description, I'm just gonna copy and paste what Underlord gave me. I just told it to give me a YouTube description with the format of summary first, then chapters, then links. Now, I don't have any social links or anything like that because I didn't make any social media for this page. So in lieu of that, I think I'm just gonna write something like, please like and subscribe. It won't affect you because nothing matters anyways. Now for thumbnails, I created three thumbnail options because on YouTube, you're allowed to do A-B testing, which allows you to test up to three thumbnails and then whichever one performs the best, that's the one that they use. So that's normally what I would do. But because I just submitted my account for verification, I have to wait 24 hours for them to process it. So I can't do A-B testing, at least for today. But let me show you what my three thumbnails I created were. So this was thumbnail option one, just me and Nietzsche and just amateur versus expert. It's pretty basic. I'm not in love with it, but it does enough to visually get the idea across maybe a little bit. Not a huge fan of it, but it was my first variation. Next variation was this one. I just put kind of years, 1880s philosopher and then 2020s idiot. Also not a huge fan of this one. I don't like the verses in these two iterations because I feel like it makes it seem like I'm challenging Nietzsche when I'm not. But I think it's a step in the right direction. Third one, I think this one is my favorite. I think it's the least clear, but I think along with the title, this one just kind of looks the best and it looks more like a modern YouTube thumbnail would. I feel like the older ones look a little bit outdated maybe, but you never know. You never know. So that's why you do A-B testing, because maybe the other ones will perform well. You just never know. So maybe I'll go back into this tomorrow and do an A-B test, but at least for this video, we'll just stick with the third thumbnail for now, because that's my personal favorite. Playlists now, I'm not going to create any playlists yet because I don't know what that would look like. I think once I have more videos in the... What's the word? Not in the pocket. More videos in the hole. What's that saying? In the bag. In the bag, maybe. I think that is it. Once I have more videos in the bag, I'll be able to see if I want to create a new playlist, depending on what I want to do, but whatever. Is this video made for kids? No. It's very important that if your video is not specifically children's content, you put no, because that just subjects you to a whole bunch of content restrictions and laws you have to follow, which is just not relevant if you're not making kids content. Age restriction. This video does not need to be age restricted, so we're going to stick with no for that. We're not doing any sort of paid promotion here. It's very important that if you are doing that, you make sure that that box is checked. Very important that you make sure that that is disclaimed. No altered content. I didn't collaborate with anyone. Now, I'm going to allow automatic chapters, even though I already have chapters in the description, which are going to override the automatic chapters, so it's kind of redundant, but I usually just leave that on just in case I have a video without chapters.

[00:10:33] Speaker 2: You know, sometimes having automatic chapters helps a little bit.

[00:10:36] Speaker 1: Feature places and automatic concepts. I'll leave that stuff on. I don't even really know what it is, but whatever. Now for tags, can I be completely honest with you? I do not do tags. I kind of feel like they're a little pointless and YouTube themselves says that tags are basically pointless unless like, you know, something in your video is commonly misspelled or anything like that. I feel like a lot of SEO like YouTube platforms, they put a lot of emphasis on tags and they make it like one of their big features, like automating tags for you.

[00:11:07] Speaker 2: I have personally used those platforms.

[00:11:10] Speaker 1: I do not see any difference in performance from when I have like a million thousand tags versus when I have none. So I'm just going to trust YouTube when they say that it plays a minimal role. Video language, we'll go ahead and select our language, which is English. And I know that there's an English and then an English United States. I don't know what the difference is, but we'll go with the United States because that's where I am, I guess. Category, we're just going to go ahead and go into entertainment. Comments and ratings, we'll have comments on. We will have basic moderation. I feel like you don't want to have none just because that can open you up to like bots or just hateful comments. So we'll leave it on basic for now. All right, video elements. We're going to go ahead and add our subtitles. So because in Descript you can export your subtitles, we're going to go ahead and upload our SRT file with timing. Make sure that that's selected. And we're just going to click on our SRT file like so. And now everything is nice and timed up. My name is Ramdi. I'm not an expert on any. Perfect. That whole thing, I don't even have to worry about it. Click on done. And that is it. Our video has official subtitles now. Easy. Now, end screens. I think end screens are important to have because they bridge the gap from someone finishing your video to looking for another one of your videos because they can just click on the one that's right in front of the screen right there or subscribe to you. But I don't really have a proper outro for this. It kind of cuts out a little prematurely.

[00:12:39] Speaker 2: Okay, can you guys get out of my room?

[00:12:40] Speaker 1: Because I just thought that was funny. So I won't leave an end screen for this video also because I just, I don't have any other videos. So in this case, I will leave no end screen for now. And same for cards. Cards are just like the little circle with an eye in it that pop up every once in a while. You can add cards if you want to any part of your video. I don't think I have any need for that for this one. So I'll just leave that blank. All right, and then checks. This is just where YouTube checks if you have any copywritten materials like music or if you have any like extended, unedited pieces of TV or movies or stuff. That's where they check for that here. And if they see it, they copyright claim your video. All right, and then this is the final place. This is where we publish our video. Private is just where only you and specific people that you choose can see your video. Unlisted is where anyone with the video link can watch your video. So it won't show up on your channel. It won't show up at any search results. But if someone has the link, they can see it. And then they'll see the video.

[00:13:43] Speaker 2: And public is obviously just everyone sees the video as YouTube so nicely wants to remind you here.

[00:13:50] Speaker 1: But you can also schedule your video. So if I wanted to schedule my video for a certain time and date, that's where I would do that here. And then if you set it as premiere, YouTube will do like a live countdown to when the video officially gets released, which can be cool, but I don't really use that. I just like to schedule it for a certain date. Let's go with a Friday upload time. Typically you wanna do earlier in the day. I feel like 1130 to 12 is what a lot of channels usually stick to posting at.

[00:14:20] Speaker 2: So we're gonna do 1130 and then we are just going to schedule. Boom, perfect.

[00:14:26] Speaker 1: So that's it, that's it. We have officially uploaded our video and now is the best part. I feel like I've been saying this is the best part at like every part of making a video. It's because they're all kind of the best part, you know? But now it truly is the best part because you just sit back and relax and like your work is done. Look back at your creation and feel good, feel good about it. So your homework for this week is to officially and finally upload and post your video. And in our next video, we're gonna get over creating a content schedule so that you can consistently and efficiently do this entire process all over again for your next video. See you in the next one, bye.