Way to organize/enhance my channel

[offbeatbryce]

I'm trying to focus my spare time to organizing/enhancing my channel. I hardly have annotations/cards etc.

I have a few questions on how I should go about this.

1. Should I have cards and annotations on all my videos? With each video have my recent video as my first card.

2. Should I repeat what's in my annotations/cards in the description or is that annoying to some viewers?

3. Does custom thumbnails that show part of the original video get more clicks? I've seen some thumbnails that don't have any part of the original video whatsoever.

4. Is it really true that Closed Captioning will really boost my videos in search results?

5. Does have an outro really important? I see some YouTubers who thank everyone for watching their videos telling people to subscribe etc. I did some of this in the begging but didn't see any results.

 

[xingcat]

I add cards to all my videos, and they tend to bring in some views. Not a ton, but definitely some. The subscribe note I put at the beginning of every video now has definitely helped boost my subscriptions.

I think thumbnails that capture the attention and are very clear as to what the video is about are the best. There are some that can be misleading, and I think that really bothers some viewers.

Closed captioning is a really good practice. I'm terrible at remembering to do it, but it does help views.

I don't have an outro on most of my videos. I think it can disrupt the flow of things, but maybe that's just because I'm a little bit lazy when it comes to adding more material to the end of my video.

 

[offbeatbryce]

I add cards to all my videos, and they tend to bring in some views. Not a ton, but definitely some. The subscribe note I put at the beginning of every video now has definitely helped boost my subscriptions.

I think thumbnails that capture the attention and are very clear as to what the video is about are the best. There are some that can be misleading, and I think that really bothers some viewers.

Closed captioning is a really good practice. I'm terrible at remembering to do it, but it does help views.

I don't have an outro on most of my videos. I think it can disrupt the flow of things, but maybe that's just because I'm a little bit lazy when it comes to adding more material to the end of my video.

You put the subscribe note at the beginning? Wouldn't people just click subscribe and not watch the video?

 

[KatyAdelson]

I think no one really knows the true answer to a lot of this kind of stuff, and a lot of these have answers that are mainly opinion-based... so here are my opinions! ^_^

I think cards are the next YouTube thing, so I'd focus on adding those more than annotations. However, updating all of the cards with the most-recent video will get quickly become a lot of work (unless there's a new "update all cards" addition that I don't know about). I'd just add cards that link to similar videos -- like videos about a similar topic or a similar video type (tutorial videos link to other tutorial videos, and vlogs can link to other vlogs, or vlogs can even link to a video about a particular topic, if it came up in the vlog...).

I always repeat links in the description. Personally, I like to sit and watch the whole video without clicking on anything, because I want to see what the entire video is about. Hunting through the video to click on an annotation that lasted 7 seconds is usually too much effort for me to handle.... It's great when the link is also in the description box, and cards are nice because all of the card links pop up when you click the "i."

I think the custom thumbnail image depends on what the video is about, and I think it's something that should be considered on a case-by-case basis. For an example, let's say there is a video with a person sitting in a room talking about his favorite kind of boat. The thumbnail image from that video isn't going to be nearly as descriptive as an image of his favorite kind of boat -- or even an ocean with a "blacked-out" boat so that people have to either guess from the blacked-out shape or click the video to find out. But, on the other hand, pretend there is a video of a person talking about how awesome a demolition derby was. Using a cool image of cars crashing together for the thumbnail could be a bit click-bait-y, particularly if there isn't any demolition derby footage to watch in the video... Also, I get a little annoyed when there's a music cover, say of a song from Pirates of the Caribbean, and the thumbnail shows footage from the actual movie -- but when you click on the video, it's a person sitting in their living room playing the song. In cases like this, I'd much rather they use an image from the actual cover video.

I'm not sure about closed captioning. I'd assume it would boost search results since it's transcribing the video. I think YouTube has an automated process that tries to do this, but I've noticed it's not very helpful. I wish I could put music notes as a caption...that would help a lot of people learn some of the songs.... I'd assume closed captioning helps, but to me, it's too much effort.

As for ending cards, I really do think they help. I've been experimenting on having and not having an ending card. I have noticed more people clicking from video to video when I add an ending card. If people have stayed the entire length of the video, it doesn't hurt to throw a "subscribe" shout out on an ending card, too. I know people can think for themselves and subscribe as they want, but lot of people tend to forget and click on to other things that catch their eye. It's just a little reminder. ^-^