YouTube Cards Can Increase Engagement

YouTube rolled out “Cards” recently to give marketers a nicer method of generating click-throughs and interactions with the content. The look is more appealing and should encourage activity with viewers.

Mobile Compatible

If you’ve ever used the annotations features in YouTube you know there are some limitations that fall short of really being able to market videos appropriately. Most people use the annotations to provide a hyperlink (or links) that sit on top of the video while it is playing.

Annotations are not mobile compatible which is a problem, since 50% of YouTube views come from a mobile device.

Card Example

Since cards will work on mobile devices many marketers are anxious to try them. Here is an example.

Notice the secondary image, the site URL, a call to action and the link to the site. The entire area where the card is displayed is your hyperlink. You can see how this layout will undoubtedly increase interaction with viewers.

You may also want to consider how your videos will look with this layout before you shoot them, if you are going to introduce cards into the video.

Link to a Website

You can choose a variety of options for your cards. A Link to a website will be the most popular choice for brands and service related companies. Your website must be associated with your YouTube channel to use this card feature. If you have already been using website link annotations you are good to go and can ignore this section.

There are a few steps to accomplish associating your website but it is well worth the effort.

Step one is that your account must be verified. To check if your account is verified follow these steps:

Log in to Google then go to your YouTube channel

• In the top right hand corner click on the small image associate with your Profile picture
• Click on the button that says “Creator Studio” (extremely intuitive)
• In the column on the left click on “Channel”
• Make sure “Status and features” is highlighted in the left hand column
• If your account is not verified you’ll see a button that says “Verify”
• Click on this button and follow the directions.

Now you must add your website in the Webmaster Tools. This is not difficult and you can follow the steps by clicking here.

Link to a Fundraising or Crowd Sourcing Site

Do you have a new Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign running? You can add a link, image and call to action for your campaign. When you set up the ad, you can see a list of all of the approved destinations which is too long to include here. You must configure fan funding (of course you do) in your settings. Click here for more.

Link to Your Ecommerce Platform

Do you have a Shopify store? You can link to it with a card. Shopify, Eventbrite, Bandpage and Ticketmaster are supported along with many other platforms.

Link to Another Video or a YouTube Playlist

You can also link to another video or playlist. Since increased views drives up the search power of your videos in Google Search, this is a good way to increase the number of views for other videos. You could create a purchase funnel of several short videos and link them together too.

More Details

You can add up to five cards per video but you might want to consider fewer cards to start so you don’t overwhelm your audience.

Like annotations, you can choose how long the cards display during the video playback. You can’t choose the location of the card — it’s always displayed on the right hand side (at least for now).

Remember to use compelling images in your cards and a great call to action message as well. Annoy people and you are defeating the purpose of using cards in the first place.

Grab a cup of coffee the size of a water tower and go through the steps to associate your website with YouTube. You may have to switch to a martini during the process but it is worth it. Google accounts should actually come with martinis and I mean really big ones.

Originally published at blog.michaelnewmanconsulting.com on June 3, 2015.