Day 21: Why You Need Your Own YouTube Channel

Using various blog posts and Darcy Pattison’s advice in her Book Trailer Manual as guides, I deleted my old YouTube channel and created a new one. The downside to doing that is that all the views and my followers are now gone. The upside made that worth it.
Here is what Darcy, the book trailer maven, says about creating your own channel:
“Katie is right, you need your own YouTube channel. Here are ours … her channel is here and mine, here.
“In April, 2010, Anthony Bruno reported that “fans are more engaged with videos posted to individual artists’ Web sites.” Of course, they are talking mostly about music videos, but we can probably generalize this to book videos. They report that “29% of the videos streamed on artist and label sites are watched in their entirety, compared to only 12% from aggregation services.” Warner Music Group, then, doesn’t license content to places like Vevo.com. The company, instead, drives fans to artists’ sites through custom-branded channels on YouTube. A third-quarter study in 2010 confirmed the importance of individual artists’ channels.
Creating your own channel
“If you need another reason that you should create your own YouTube channel, listen to this…. You want your book trailer uploaded on your account, so you can control the settings. If you had help from a book trailer company, ask them to send you the video and let you upload it yourself. Otherwise, you’ve got to return to them for any revisions to the descriptions. For example, if you get a fantastic review that you want to add to the description, you can’t do it if you don’t have control. Upload it to your own channel. “Take the time to customize the look of your channel to match your website or the book cover, your choice. Notice that Katie’s channel is the same color scheme as her site, and my channel has the same color scheme as my site.
“Another advantage of creating your own channel is that it allows you to monitor viewer statistics. YouTube Insight is YouTube’s external facing analytics and reporting product that enables everyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. Just log on, then click Account >My Videos>Insight.
“As of the last quarter of 2010, Facebook and Twitter generate the most engaged viewing audiences for online video. So, once you get your video up–Tweet! Facebook it! (Which, of course, means you need a following on Facebook and Twitter too!)”
Beginner and protrack homework (what, you thought I forgot about homework?!)
Create your own YouTube channel by tomorrow. Why? Because tomorrow we’re going to give you the power-invoking step-by-step process to enhance your videos on YouTube!