YouTube Community Tab: How YouTube Is Changing

Want to keep your YouTube subscribers engaged?

Interested in new YouTube features that help promote your videos?

To explore big changes from YouTube, I interview Tim Schmoyer.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Tim Schmoyer, founder of VideoCreators.TV, a YouTube community of more than 340,000 video creators. He's the leading expert on building a loyal tribe on YouTube.

Tim explains how creators can use reels, GIFs, and more to engage subscribers while producing videos that keep people watching.

You'll discover how the Community tab content appears to subscribers on mobile and desktop.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
YouTube Community Tab: How YouTube Is Changing
The YouTube Changes

When most people think of YouTube, they think of uploading polished video that your subscribers and others can discover and comment on. However, over the past year, YouTube has added new features including Contacts (similar to Friends on other platforms) and the ability to post photos, polls, text updates, and quick little videos in the Stories format.

The new features indicate a focus on community development and ways to stay in front of your audience beyond uploading polished videos because those take time to produce.

A YouTube subscriber is similar to a follower on Twitter or a like on a Facebook page. In all three cases, someone is agreeing to see updates from you. However, a friend on Facebook is a two-way connection because Facebook friends see updates from each other. That's how contacts work on YouTube.

After you have a contact on YouTube, you can send a video in a private conversation.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53SxHLXieXw

The old-school way was to copy the URL and send it via text or Twitter. But if, for example, Tim and I are contacts, Tim could message me within YouTube and say, "Hey Michael, check out this new video from Gary Vee. I think this would be a great topic for you to talk about at Social Media Marketing World."

In other words, the YouTube Contact feature allows you to share videos and have private conversations about those videos with a group of friends, similar to a conversation in Facebook Messenger. So if you're working on a project with several peers, you can create a group on YouTube to easily share videos related to that project. The group can then have an organized, structured conversation about the videos inside the app.

Tim notes most of the new features, including Contacts, are mobile-only (not yet available on desktop). They're being developed on platforms where people seem most likely to be using these types of features.

Reels is YouTube's answer to the Stories format on other social media platforms. A reel is a 30-second clip from your smartphone. After you record video for a few seconds, you can add emojis and stickers or swipe for different filters. When you're done, post the video to your reel and your subscribers can view it.

You can set a reel so that it's only available for 24 hours or make it an ongoing, long-term reel. The 24-hour reels, which people are used to, are good for quick, behind-the-scenes posts.

YouTube subscribers are notified of new reel content via mobile. At the bottom of the YouTube app, tap the Subscriptions icon and a row of channels to which you subscribe appears at the top. A dot indicates that a channel has new videos and a huge square indicates the channel posted to its reel. Tap a channel and then you can see the 30-second clips in its reel.

An ongoing reel, which doesn't expire after 24 hours, is good for an event that lasts longer than a day.