Blueprint: Making Inspiring Lifestyle Broadcasts

How to Create a Lifestyle Video to Inspire Your Audience

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Do you wish to show your brand or product to inspire your audience with the lifestyle that they aspire to have? Are you on the lookout for innovative ways to earn intensely loyal and interactive followers for your business? Creating a lifestyle video that appeals to a niche demographic and helps your audience visualize how your products fit into their way of life is the ideal way to motivate them to take action and become your customer.

Whether you are a lifestyle brand or not, you need to offer content that educates and informs your audience and stands out amongst the best in the industry. Videos are an excellent way to connect with the audience, especially for brands that wish to engage their customers with meaningful content.

Today, businesses of every size tend to favor lifestyle videos that better appeal to the audience and communicate the brand’s values. Creating an attractive lifestyle video can thus be the ticket to reach a wider audience and upgrade the digital presence of every business.

• Part 1: What is Lifestyle Video?
• Part 2: 6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video
• Part 3: How to Create a Lifestyle Video?
• Part 4: How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

What is Lifestyle Video?

Lifestyle content exemplifies the ‘lifestyle’ behind a product or service and appeals to the demographic that you are trying to reach. It is a form of video marketing that pushes products and services to customers by showing the quality of life associated with a particular brand.

The principal objective of lifestyle content is appealing to a specific demographic, culture, or subculture. With these videos, you can focus on your products and services, using stunning visuals and action shots to portray a beautiful picture of what your brand’s potential customers’ lives will be like if they become the consumer of your product and services.

6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video

1. Informing & Educating

One of the most significant benefits of lifestyle content is that it helps customers understand products. With a plethora of choices out there, marketers today are no longer taking the pitching kind of approach. They want to approach their audience with a value-based offer instead of sales. And with lifestyle videos, you can excel at giving customers a close-up look at your products and services.

2. Caters to Your Audience’s Interests

Lifestyle content caters to the target audience. Since these videos define your market and your brand, it carries a specific style that’s based on your aesthetics or looks. What makes video marketing so effective is that they can introduce your story and brand in an interesting way to potential customers.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search engines love high-quality content like videos. Using lifestyle videos in your web pages and other types of content can thus work wonders for search engine optimization. As long as your lifestyle video is well-optimized with the right keywords, a solid title, and a good meta description, your video content can increase your web traffic.

4. Great Promotional Tool

Brands can distribute lifestyle content on different channels for reaching your target audience right away. Once you post the video on your website, you can share it on your social networking platforms or promote it with paid ads. This way, you can get customers excited about what you are offering them.

5. Taps into Emotions

Emotions are a significant component of the purchasing decision of consumers. Studies have found that ad campaigns with only emotional content perform about twice as well compared to those with only rational content. So, creating lifestyle video content that makes your audience feel good can put your business in a positive light.

6. Boosts Conversions

Lifestyle videos are excellent for conversions on websites as they influence visitors by promoting the lifestyle a customer can achieve if they patronize the product or service. What makes such content more compelling is that they excite customers about what you offer them.

How to Create a Lifestyle Video?

The most stunning lifestyle videos are polished, sleek, and visually appealing. Developing a lifestyle video content that exceeds your target audience’s expectations is vital to appeal to your customer’s perfect lifestyle. Creating these videos is easy if you follow the step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Pre-Production

The pre-production stage is when the planning happens for a video. From creative brainstorming to innovative storyboarding, everything happens here. Pre-production begins with experts getting a feel of your product, who it appeals to, and how it works. Next, is the stage of scripting out your video, writing down the visual ideas, and the product features and dialogue that go alongside it. Finally, you need to round up talents like actors, voice-actors, locations, and extras needed to film.

Step 2: Production

Once your lifestyle video is meticulously planned out, your next step is to film it. While shooting an average video takes eight hours, some videos with several locations can require two full shooting days or more. The exact shooting schedule depends on what the script demands.

Since these videos are meant to capture a particular way of life for appealing to a specific kind of person, you should not cut corners in terms of quality. Remember, the better the quality of the footage, the more appealing the end product will be.

Step 3: Post-Production

It is the stage where you need to gather the footage you have shot so far and put them along with voice-over or music depending on your script demands. The main goal in this stage is to put the visuals together in a captivating way to promote your service and product. Here, using a powerful video editing tool seems necessary because you need to make your lifestyle video stand out from the crowd.

How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

A lifestyle video is one of the popular marketing tools for businesses of every size today. These videos are more memorable, more engaging, and much more popular than any other kinds of content among consumers. But, are you curious as to how to promote your lifestyle content to gain maximum exposure? All you need to do is distribute your lifestyle content on the proper channels to grab your audience’s attention and engage with new consumers.

Social Media

Lifestyle videos are aspirational, enlightening in nature, and made to appeal to specific demographics. It makes them great content for sharing on social networking platforms – an active digital marketing channel. Share your lifestyle content across various social media accounts. Ensure you attach a call-to-action for your friends and followers to share.

Your Company’s Website

Hosting your promotional videos on your website, particularly your homepage is an excellent way to immediately introduce incoming web traffic to your products and services, thus increasing your site’s SEO ranking. Besides the homepage, sharing the video content on your blogs is another unique way of re-purposing your content.

Media Outlets

Find out related media outlets that your potential customers read and follow daily. It would help if you also pitched journalists who take an interest in your brand or consider purchasing advertising space on their website. Since there are both correct and incorrect ways to do so, ensure you conduct thorough research on how to pitch media outlets beforehand.

Paid Advertising

You can also pay for featuring your lifestyle video on popular blogs and social networking sites. This way, you can take advantage of hyper-specific tools for reaching your target audience. Advertising on social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is an excellent way to reach the right demographic.

Niche Groups & Forums

When targeting a particular demographic, you will want to reach out to where your audience hangs out online. Do research on the industry chat rooms your target demographic frequently uses. While sharing your video content on these channels, just ensure that they are relevant to your potential customer-base, regularly updated, and also includes active users.

Conclusion

Lifestyle videos allow brands to connect with their consumers better. Whether you are a start-up, an SME, or an established company, lifestyle videos may be just what you need to create a unique brand statement or get people excited about your product or service. So what are you still waiting for? It’s time to create content that resonates with your target market and establish your business as a top choice!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Do you wish to show your brand or product to inspire your audience with the lifestyle that they aspire to have? Are you on the lookout for innovative ways to earn intensely loyal and interactive followers for your business? Creating a lifestyle video that appeals to a niche demographic and helps your audience visualize how your products fit into their way of life is the ideal way to motivate them to take action and become your customer.

Whether you are a lifestyle brand or not, you need to offer content that educates and informs your audience and stands out amongst the best in the industry. Videos are an excellent way to connect with the audience, especially for brands that wish to engage their customers with meaningful content.

Today, businesses of every size tend to favor lifestyle videos that better appeal to the audience and communicate the brand’s values. Creating an attractive lifestyle video can thus be the ticket to reach a wider audience and upgrade the digital presence of every business.

• Part 1: What is Lifestyle Video?
• Part 2: 6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video
• Part 3: How to Create a Lifestyle Video?
• Part 4: How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

What is Lifestyle Video?

Lifestyle content exemplifies the ‘lifestyle’ behind a product or service and appeals to the demographic that you are trying to reach. It is a form of video marketing that pushes products and services to customers by showing the quality of life associated with a particular brand.

The principal objective of lifestyle content is appealing to a specific demographic, culture, or subculture. With these videos, you can focus on your products and services, using stunning visuals and action shots to portray a beautiful picture of what your brand’s potential customers’ lives will be like if they become the consumer of your product and services.

6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video

1. Informing & Educating

One of the most significant benefits of lifestyle content is that it helps customers understand products. With a plethora of choices out there, marketers today are no longer taking the pitching kind of approach. They want to approach their audience with a value-based offer instead of sales. And with lifestyle videos, you can excel at giving customers a close-up look at your products and services.

2. Caters to Your Audience’s Interests

Lifestyle content caters to the target audience. Since these videos define your market and your brand, it carries a specific style that’s based on your aesthetics or looks. What makes video marketing so effective is that they can introduce your story and brand in an interesting way to potential customers.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search engines love high-quality content like videos. Using lifestyle videos in your web pages and other types of content can thus work wonders for search engine optimization. As long as your lifestyle video is well-optimized with the right keywords, a solid title, and a good meta description, your video content can increase your web traffic.

4. Great Promotional Tool

Brands can distribute lifestyle content on different channels for reaching your target audience right away. Once you post the video on your website, you can share it on your social networking platforms or promote it with paid ads. This way, you can get customers excited about what you are offering them.

5. Taps into Emotions

Emotions are a significant component of the purchasing decision of consumers. Studies have found that ad campaigns with only emotional content perform about twice as well compared to those with only rational content. So, creating lifestyle video content that makes your audience feel good can put your business in a positive light.

6. Boosts Conversions

Lifestyle videos are excellent for conversions on websites as they influence visitors by promoting the lifestyle a customer can achieve if they patronize the product or service. What makes such content more compelling is that they excite customers about what you offer them.

How to Create a Lifestyle Video?

The most stunning lifestyle videos are polished, sleek, and visually appealing. Developing a lifestyle video content that exceeds your target audience’s expectations is vital to appeal to your customer’s perfect lifestyle. Creating these videos is easy if you follow the step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Pre-Production

The pre-production stage is when the planning happens for a video. From creative brainstorming to innovative storyboarding, everything happens here. Pre-production begins with experts getting a feel of your product, who it appeals to, and how it works. Next, is the stage of scripting out your video, writing down the visual ideas, and the product features and dialogue that go alongside it. Finally, you need to round up talents like actors, voice-actors, locations, and extras needed to film.

Step 2: Production

Once your lifestyle video is meticulously planned out, your next step is to film it. While shooting an average video takes eight hours, some videos with several locations can require two full shooting days or more. The exact shooting schedule depends on what the script demands.

Since these videos are meant to capture a particular way of life for appealing to a specific kind of person, you should not cut corners in terms of quality. Remember, the better the quality of the footage, the more appealing the end product will be.

Step 3: Post-Production

It is the stage where you need to gather the footage you have shot so far and put them along with voice-over or music depending on your script demands. The main goal in this stage is to put the visuals together in a captivating way to promote your service and product. Here, using a powerful video editing tool seems necessary because you need to make your lifestyle video stand out from the crowd.

How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

A lifestyle video is one of the popular marketing tools for businesses of every size today. These videos are more memorable, more engaging, and much more popular than any other kinds of content among consumers. But, are you curious as to how to promote your lifestyle content to gain maximum exposure? All you need to do is distribute your lifestyle content on the proper channels to grab your audience’s attention and engage with new consumers.

Social Media

Lifestyle videos are aspirational, enlightening in nature, and made to appeal to specific demographics. It makes them great content for sharing on social networking platforms – an active digital marketing channel. Share your lifestyle content across various social media accounts. Ensure you attach a call-to-action for your friends and followers to share.

Your Company’s Website

Hosting your promotional videos on your website, particularly your homepage is an excellent way to immediately introduce incoming web traffic to your products and services, thus increasing your site’s SEO ranking. Besides the homepage, sharing the video content on your blogs is another unique way of re-purposing your content.

Media Outlets

Find out related media outlets that your potential customers read and follow daily. It would help if you also pitched journalists who take an interest in your brand or consider purchasing advertising space on their website. Since there are both correct and incorrect ways to do so, ensure you conduct thorough research on how to pitch media outlets beforehand.

Paid Advertising

You can also pay for featuring your lifestyle video on popular blogs and social networking sites. This way, you can take advantage of hyper-specific tools for reaching your target audience. Advertising on social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is an excellent way to reach the right demographic.

Niche Groups & Forums

When targeting a particular demographic, you will want to reach out to where your audience hangs out online. Do research on the industry chat rooms your target demographic frequently uses. While sharing your video content on these channels, just ensure that they are relevant to your potential customer-base, regularly updated, and also includes active users.

Conclusion

Lifestyle videos allow brands to connect with their consumers better. Whether you are a start-up, an SME, or an established company, lifestyle videos may be just what you need to create a unique brand statement or get people excited about your product or service. So what are you still waiting for? It’s time to create content that resonates with your target market and establish your business as a top choice!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Do you wish to show your brand or product to inspire your audience with the lifestyle that they aspire to have? Are you on the lookout for innovative ways to earn intensely loyal and interactive followers for your business? Creating a lifestyle video that appeals to a niche demographic and helps your audience visualize how your products fit into their way of life is the ideal way to motivate them to take action and become your customer.

Whether you are a lifestyle brand or not, you need to offer content that educates and informs your audience and stands out amongst the best in the industry. Videos are an excellent way to connect with the audience, especially for brands that wish to engage their customers with meaningful content.

Today, businesses of every size tend to favor lifestyle videos that better appeal to the audience and communicate the brand’s values. Creating an attractive lifestyle video can thus be the ticket to reach a wider audience and upgrade the digital presence of every business.

• Part 1: What is Lifestyle Video?
• Part 2: 6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video
• Part 3: How to Create a Lifestyle Video?
• Part 4: How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

What is Lifestyle Video?

Lifestyle content exemplifies the ‘lifestyle’ behind a product or service and appeals to the demographic that you are trying to reach. It is a form of video marketing that pushes products and services to customers by showing the quality of life associated with a particular brand.

The principal objective of lifestyle content is appealing to a specific demographic, culture, or subculture. With these videos, you can focus on your products and services, using stunning visuals and action shots to portray a beautiful picture of what your brand’s potential customers’ lives will be like if they become the consumer of your product and services.

6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video

1. Informing & Educating

One of the most significant benefits of lifestyle content is that it helps customers understand products. With a plethora of choices out there, marketers today are no longer taking the pitching kind of approach. They want to approach their audience with a value-based offer instead of sales. And with lifestyle videos, you can excel at giving customers a close-up look at your products and services.

2. Caters to Your Audience’s Interests

Lifestyle content caters to the target audience. Since these videos define your market and your brand, it carries a specific style that’s based on your aesthetics or looks. What makes video marketing so effective is that they can introduce your story and brand in an interesting way to potential customers.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search engines love high-quality content like videos. Using lifestyle videos in your web pages and other types of content can thus work wonders for search engine optimization. As long as your lifestyle video is well-optimized with the right keywords, a solid title, and a good meta description, your video content can increase your web traffic.

4. Great Promotional Tool

Brands can distribute lifestyle content on different channels for reaching your target audience right away. Once you post the video on your website, you can share it on your social networking platforms or promote it with paid ads. This way, you can get customers excited about what you are offering them.

5. Taps into Emotions

Emotions are a significant component of the purchasing decision of consumers. Studies have found that ad campaigns with only emotional content perform about twice as well compared to those with only rational content. So, creating lifestyle video content that makes your audience feel good can put your business in a positive light.

6. Boosts Conversions

Lifestyle videos are excellent for conversions on websites as they influence visitors by promoting the lifestyle a customer can achieve if they patronize the product or service. What makes such content more compelling is that they excite customers about what you offer them.

How to Create a Lifestyle Video?

The most stunning lifestyle videos are polished, sleek, and visually appealing. Developing a lifestyle video content that exceeds your target audience’s expectations is vital to appeal to your customer’s perfect lifestyle. Creating these videos is easy if you follow the step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Pre-Production

The pre-production stage is when the planning happens for a video. From creative brainstorming to innovative storyboarding, everything happens here. Pre-production begins with experts getting a feel of your product, who it appeals to, and how it works. Next, is the stage of scripting out your video, writing down the visual ideas, and the product features and dialogue that go alongside it. Finally, you need to round up talents like actors, voice-actors, locations, and extras needed to film.

Step 2: Production

Once your lifestyle video is meticulously planned out, your next step is to film it. While shooting an average video takes eight hours, some videos with several locations can require two full shooting days or more. The exact shooting schedule depends on what the script demands.

Since these videos are meant to capture a particular way of life for appealing to a specific kind of person, you should not cut corners in terms of quality. Remember, the better the quality of the footage, the more appealing the end product will be.

Step 3: Post-Production

It is the stage where you need to gather the footage you have shot so far and put them along with voice-over or music depending on your script demands. The main goal in this stage is to put the visuals together in a captivating way to promote your service and product. Here, using a powerful video editing tool seems necessary because you need to make your lifestyle video stand out from the crowd.

How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

A lifestyle video is one of the popular marketing tools for businesses of every size today. These videos are more memorable, more engaging, and much more popular than any other kinds of content among consumers. But, are you curious as to how to promote your lifestyle content to gain maximum exposure? All you need to do is distribute your lifestyle content on the proper channels to grab your audience’s attention and engage with new consumers.

Social Media

Lifestyle videos are aspirational, enlightening in nature, and made to appeal to specific demographics. It makes them great content for sharing on social networking platforms – an active digital marketing channel. Share your lifestyle content across various social media accounts. Ensure you attach a call-to-action for your friends and followers to share.

Your Company’s Website

Hosting your promotional videos on your website, particularly your homepage is an excellent way to immediately introduce incoming web traffic to your products and services, thus increasing your site’s SEO ranking. Besides the homepage, sharing the video content on your blogs is another unique way of re-purposing your content.

Media Outlets

Find out related media outlets that your potential customers read and follow daily. It would help if you also pitched journalists who take an interest in your brand or consider purchasing advertising space on their website. Since there are both correct and incorrect ways to do so, ensure you conduct thorough research on how to pitch media outlets beforehand.

Paid Advertising

You can also pay for featuring your lifestyle video on popular blogs and social networking sites. This way, you can take advantage of hyper-specific tools for reaching your target audience. Advertising on social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is an excellent way to reach the right demographic.

Niche Groups & Forums

When targeting a particular demographic, you will want to reach out to where your audience hangs out online. Do research on the industry chat rooms your target demographic frequently uses. While sharing your video content on these channels, just ensure that they are relevant to your potential customer-base, regularly updated, and also includes active users.

Conclusion

Lifestyle videos allow brands to connect with their consumers better. Whether you are a start-up, an SME, or an established company, lifestyle videos may be just what you need to create a unique brand statement or get people excited about your product or service. So what are you still waiting for? It’s time to create content that resonates with your target market and establish your business as a top choice!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Do you wish to show your brand or product to inspire your audience with the lifestyle that they aspire to have? Are you on the lookout for innovative ways to earn intensely loyal and interactive followers for your business? Creating a lifestyle video that appeals to a niche demographic and helps your audience visualize how your products fit into their way of life is the ideal way to motivate them to take action and become your customer.

Whether you are a lifestyle brand or not, you need to offer content that educates and informs your audience and stands out amongst the best in the industry. Videos are an excellent way to connect with the audience, especially for brands that wish to engage their customers with meaningful content.

Today, businesses of every size tend to favor lifestyle videos that better appeal to the audience and communicate the brand’s values. Creating an attractive lifestyle video can thus be the ticket to reach a wider audience and upgrade the digital presence of every business.

• Part 1: What is Lifestyle Video?
• Part 2: 6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video
• Part 3: How to Create a Lifestyle Video?
• Part 4: How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

What is Lifestyle Video?

Lifestyle content exemplifies the ‘lifestyle’ behind a product or service and appeals to the demographic that you are trying to reach. It is a form of video marketing that pushes products and services to customers by showing the quality of life associated with a particular brand.

The principal objective of lifestyle content is appealing to a specific demographic, culture, or subculture. With these videos, you can focus on your products and services, using stunning visuals and action shots to portray a beautiful picture of what your brand’s potential customers’ lives will be like if they become the consumer of your product and services.

6 Key Benefits of Creating a Lifestyle Video

1. Informing & Educating

One of the most significant benefits of lifestyle content is that it helps customers understand products. With a plethora of choices out there, marketers today are no longer taking the pitching kind of approach. They want to approach their audience with a value-based offer instead of sales. And with lifestyle videos, you can excel at giving customers a close-up look at your products and services.

2. Caters to Your Audience’s Interests

Lifestyle content caters to the target audience. Since these videos define your market and your brand, it carries a specific style that’s based on your aesthetics or looks. What makes video marketing so effective is that they can introduce your story and brand in an interesting way to potential customers.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search engines love high-quality content like videos. Using lifestyle videos in your web pages and other types of content can thus work wonders for search engine optimization. As long as your lifestyle video is well-optimized with the right keywords, a solid title, and a good meta description, your video content can increase your web traffic.

4. Great Promotional Tool

Brands can distribute lifestyle content on different channels for reaching your target audience right away. Once you post the video on your website, you can share it on your social networking platforms or promote it with paid ads. This way, you can get customers excited about what you are offering them.

5. Taps into Emotions

Emotions are a significant component of the purchasing decision of consumers. Studies have found that ad campaigns with only emotional content perform about twice as well compared to those with only rational content. So, creating lifestyle video content that makes your audience feel good can put your business in a positive light.

6. Boosts Conversions

Lifestyle videos are excellent for conversions on websites as they influence visitors by promoting the lifestyle a customer can achieve if they patronize the product or service. What makes such content more compelling is that they excite customers about what you offer them.

How to Create a Lifestyle Video?

The most stunning lifestyle videos are polished, sleek, and visually appealing. Developing a lifestyle video content that exceeds your target audience’s expectations is vital to appeal to your customer’s perfect lifestyle. Creating these videos is easy if you follow the step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Pre-Production

The pre-production stage is when the planning happens for a video. From creative brainstorming to innovative storyboarding, everything happens here. Pre-production begins with experts getting a feel of your product, who it appeals to, and how it works. Next, is the stage of scripting out your video, writing down the visual ideas, and the product features and dialogue that go alongside it. Finally, you need to round up talents like actors, voice-actors, locations, and extras needed to film.

Step 2: Production

Once your lifestyle video is meticulously planned out, your next step is to film it. While shooting an average video takes eight hours, some videos with several locations can require two full shooting days or more. The exact shooting schedule depends on what the script demands.

Since these videos are meant to capture a particular way of life for appealing to a specific kind of person, you should not cut corners in terms of quality. Remember, the better the quality of the footage, the more appealing the end product will be.

Step 3: Post-Production

It is the stage where you need to gather the footage you have shot so far and put them along with voice-over or music depending on your script demands. The main goal in this stage is to put the visuals together in a captivating way to promote your service and product. Here, using a powerful video editing tool seems necessary because you need to make your lifestyle video stand out from the crowd.

How to Promote Your Lifestyle Video?

A lifestyle video is one of the popular marketing tools for businesses of every size today. These videos are more memorable, more engaging, and much more popular than any other kinds of content among consumers. But, are you curious as to how to promote your lifestyle content to gain maximum exposure? All you need to do is distribute your lifestyle content on the proper channels to grab your audience’s attention and engage with new consumers.

Social Media

Lifestyle videos are aspirational, enlightening in nature, and made to appeal to specific demographics. It makes them great content for sharing on social networking platforms – an active digital marketing channel. Share your lifestyle content across various social media accounts. Ensure you attach a call-to-action for your friends and followers to share.

Your Company’s Website

Hosting your promotional videos on your website, particularly your homepage is an excellent way to immediately introduce incoming web traffic to your products and services, thus increasing your site’s SEO ranking. Besides the homepage, sharing the video content on your blogs is another unique way of re-purposing your content.

Media Outlets

Find out related media outlets that your potential customers read and follow daily. It would help if you also pitched journalists who take an interest in your brand or consider purchasing advertising space on their website. Since there are both correct and incorrect ways to do so, ensure you conduct thorough research on how to pitch media outlets beforehand.

Paid Advertising

You can also pay for featuring your lifestyle video on popular blogs and social networking sites. This way, you can take advantage of hyper-specific tools for reaching your target audience. Advertising on social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is an excellent way to reach the right demographic.

Niche Groups & Forums

When targeting a particular demographic, you will want to reach out to where your audience hangs out online. Do research on the industry chat rooms your target demographic frequently uses. While sharing your video content on these channels, just ensure that they are relevant to your potential customer-base, regularly updated, and also includes active users.

Conclusion

Lifestyle videos allow brands to connect with their consumers better. Whether you are a start-up, an SME, or an established company, lifestyle videos may be just what you need to create a unique brand statement or get people excited about your product or service. So what are you still waiting for? It’s time to create content that resonates with your target market and establish your business as a top choice!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Clearing Up Confusion: Understanding Digital Rights Management (DRM)

The Ultimate Guide to YouTube Copyright

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

One of the trickiest terrains for new YouTubers to navigate is the land of copyright rules.

We get it, it’s confusing and stressful, especially when what you want to focus on is making videos, but instead, you are worried about getting your account terminated or being sued.

Can you or can’t you use that song or that clip from the movie? That’s all you want to know.

In this article, we are going to address the key areas that YouTubers need to understand when it comes to YouTube copyright. What is okay and what isn’t? What may be considered risky or what would be worth taking a chance?

Remember that everything discussed in this article is only best practices and shouldn’t be taken as definitive legal advice.

Now that we are set, let’s dive in:

Part 1: What is Fair Use?

When we talk about YouTube copyright, we have to talk about fair use.

Without fair use, there wouldn’t be any flexibility for creators. There wouldn’t be mashups, parodies, or lip dubs. Without fair use, any video with copyright content such as music in the background or a reference to a scene from a famous movie will require approval from the content owner and can be removed. Because of fair use, you can publish a video with copyrighted material in it and not have to ask anyone.

Think of fair use as exceptions to copyright rules.

Part 2: What YouTube Considers Fair Use

There are a few aspects YouTube looks at when it comes to determining whether creators are using copyrighted content that meets the fair use exceptions.

1. Is the copyrighted content being creatively or purposefully used?
2. Are there more original content used than copyrighted content in the video?
3. Will your video benefit the original copyrighted content?

Part 3: Types of Content That Meet Fair Use

Some acceptable styles of videos that allow you to exercise fair use are:

Critiques and Reviews: You can use clips of a movie that you review or play a chorus from a song that you are analyzing in a video and it will be okay to use because it’s serving a purpose of educating the viewer.

Tutorials and Commentary: A YouTube gamer streaming the video games and making comments throughout, that is within fair use, because it can be said that it is giving the video game exposure. Additionally, anything that can be classified as tutorials can also fall under fair use. If you have a video teaching people how to play a famous song, like The Beatles’ Let It Be , on piano, that’s fine!

Mashups: Mashups tend to be built entirely out of copyrighted material, but when done well this style of videos are very creative and often serve to promote the original work as opposed to replacing it.

There couldn’t be two more different movies than Toy Story and Fight Club, but somehow thanks the the creativity of a YouTube creator, there is a now a mashup of it. Some might call it an abomination, but this type of recycled art takes skills and planning, and it wouldn’t exist without fair use.

Parody: Imitation for comedic or dramatic effect is an artistic pursuit as long as it is done in a transformative manner. What does transformative mean? It means in some way, the original is being examined.

In this example from The Hillywood Show, we see a parody of both BBC’s Sherlock Holmes and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s Thrift Shop. The nuisance of the show and song recreated are there, but nobody who enjoys the originals will sit down and appreciate it in the same way. A parody is in no way trying to replace the original, but rather using the subject, structure, and style of the original as a vessel to another creative work.

Part 4: What To Do When You Get a YouTube Copyright Strike

If you are reading this, you may have already gotten a YouTube copyright strike.

This may have surprised you. Don’t be too concerned. If it was a mistake, the copyright strike merely acts as a warning, letting you know that the content in your video is copyrighted material.

However, if you were to get 3 copyright strikes in 90 days, you may be penalized by:

- Having all your accounts and videos removed

- Not being able to create a new channel

So what should you do? Here are the steps to take after you receive a copyright strike:

1. Review the copyright strike by going into Creator Studio > Video Manager > Copyright notice

1. Click on the “Copyright Strike” link beside the flagged video to see details
2. Decide how to respond to the strike:
   1. Allow the strike to expire after 90 days and complete the YouTube’s copyright school
   2. Contact the person who reported your video and get the claim retracted
   3. Dispute the claim with a counter notification

Part 5: 5 Ways to Avoid Copyright Strike

It’s not always clear what YouTube deems fair use, but there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of meeting the qualification.

1. Use non-fictional copyright content instead of creative and fictional copyrighted content. You’ll have a better chance of meeting fair use if you use footages from a news broadcast than you would from a movie or television show.

The intent is clear when using non-fictional copyright content, such as in Bad Lip Reading. They aren’t trying to rebroadcast the Mark Zuckerberg integration, they are parodying it. The easier it is for the public to recognize that the content is from a source, and understand that the creator isn’t trying to take credit for it, the more likely it’ll pass the fair use qualification.

However, if Bad Lip Reading posted the content without lip dubbing, then one can argue that they are taking views away from the original news sources and that wouldn’t be fair use.

2. Make sure your video with copyrighted content isn’t replacing the original one. Only use enough of the source material to get your point across and ensure you are not negatively affecting the original through views and sales.

In this example from Screen Prism, we see scenes from Wes Anderson movies all through the video, however, it is not replacing any of the original films. In fact, you can say that because of this video, people will be motivated to go and watch a Wes Anderson movie, those benefiting the original creator.

3. The copyrighted material is essential to your video. Whether the copyrighted content is needed in order to illustrate a point or if that one moment from a well-recognized movie helps tie together the message, as long as the copyrighted material is serving the video in some significant way, then it will be consider fair use.

4. Give the original creator credit. Just because you give the original creator credit doesn’t mean you can rightfully use their content, however, it does give you a better chance at avoiding copyright strike. Most often, the original creators simply want credit for their work. If they see that you have noted that the content was made by them, it will only give them more exposure.

5. Keep it short. There is no precise number of seconds or ratio of copyrighted to original footage you should have in your video to qualify as fair use. But generally, if the copyrighted clip is short and/or broken up, then it stands a better chance at being approved by YouTube.

Part 6: What to Do When Other YouTubers Are Copying Your Content

As a new YouTuber, it’s a little freaky to think that someone is taking your content and republishing it or using your creations in their video without your permission.

If you ever notice that your content is being copied without your approval — if they have duplicated your video completely or is using your video without giving credit — and it is not benefiting your channel in any way, don’t worry, YouTube is designed to protect you.

Steps to Report Copyright Infringements on YouTube

1. View the video that contains your copyrighted material.
2. Click on “Report”

1. Select “Infringes my rights” in the pop up window and click “infringes my copyright” in the dropdown options.

1. Supply additional information to the report form, including the URL of the video infringing your copyrighted content and the URL of your own video.
2. Submit report and wait for an email confirmation that the infringing content has been removed.

Part 7: YouTube Copyright Match

In 2018, YouTube launched a new feature called Copyright Match Tool, which automatically finds videos that are very similar or the same as the ones you’ve created. This gives you the power to determine what to do once you know the video exist.

- You can choose to do nothing.

- You can contact the publisher.

- You can report the video to YouTube for removal.

Key Takeaways

I hope this article has clarified what you can and cannot do with copyrighted content. Here is a quick summary of what we touched on in this post:

- Avoid having 3 copyright strikes on your channel at all costs.

- When using copyrighted material, ensure it is essential to the video and you are not overdoing it.

- Make sure that the copyrighted content does not take views and sales away from the original source.

- Strive to use the copyrighted content in a transformative way, as a parody or a commentary, to educate or inform.

- Give the original creator credit or have it benefit the original by giving more publicity.

- Report any creator that is infringing on your content.

Got any questions on YouTube copyright? Leave a comment below and we’ll help you answer it.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

One of the trickiest terrains for new YouTubers to navigate is the land of copyright rules.

We get it, it’s confusing and stressful, especially when what you want to focus on is making videos, but instead, you are worried about getting your account terminated or being sued.

Can you or can’t you use that song or that clip from the movie? That’s all you want to know.

In this article, we are going to address the key areas that YouTubers need to understand when it comes to YouTube copyright. What is okay and what isn’t? What may be considered risky or what would be worth taking a chance?

Remember that everything discussed in this article is only best practices and shouldn’t be taken as definitive legal advice.

Now that we are set, let’s dive in:

Part 1: What is Fair Use?

When we talk about YouTube copyright, we have to talk about fair use.

Without fair use, there wouldn’t be any flexibility for creators. There wouldn’t be mashups, parodies, or lip dubs. Without fair use, any video with copyright content such as music in the background or a reference to a scene from a famous movie will require approval from the content owner and can be removed. Because of fair use, you can publish a video with copyrighted material in it and not have to ask anyone.

Think of fair use as exceptions to copyright rules.

Part 2: What YouTube Considers Fair Use

There are a few aspects YouTube looks at when it comes to determining whether creators are using copyrighted content that meets the fair use exceptions.

1. Is the copyrighted content being creatively or purposefully used?
2. Are there more original content used than copyrighted content in the video?
3. Will your video benefit the original copyrighted content?

Part 3: Types of Content That Meet Fair Use

Some acceptable styles of videos that allow you to exercise fair use are:

Critiques and Reviews: You can use clips of a movie that you review or play a chorus from a song that you are analyzing in a video and it will be okay to use because it’s serving a purpose of educating the viewer.

Tutorials and Commentary: A YouTube gamer streaming the video games and making comments throughout, that is within fair use, because it can be said that it is giving the video game exposure. Additionally, anything that can be classified as tutorials can also fall under fair use. If you have a video teaching people how to play a famous song, like The Beatles’ Let It Be , on piano, that’s fine!

Mashups: Mashups tend to be built entirely out of copyrighted material, but when done well this style of videos are very creative and often serve to promote the original work as opposed to replacing it.

There couldn’t be two more different movies than Toy Story and Fight Club, but somehow thanks the the creativity of a YouTube creator, there is a now a mashup of it. Some might call it an abomination, but this type of recycled art takes skills and planning, and it wouldn’t exist without fair use.

Parody: Imitation for comedic or dramatic effect is an artistic pursuit as long as it is done in a transformative manner. What does transformative mean? It means in some way, the original is being examined.

In this example from The Hillywood Show, we see a parody of both BBC’s Sherlock Holmes and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s Thrift Shop. The nuisance of the show and song recreated are there, but nobody who enjoys the originals will sit down and appreciate it in the same way. A parody is in no way trying to replace the original, but rather using the subject, structure, and style of the original as a vessel to another creative work.

Part 4: What To Do When You Get a YouTube Copyright Strike

If you are reading this, you may have already gotten a YouTube copyright strike.

This may have surprised you. Don’t be too concerned. If it was a mistake, the copyright strike merely acts as a warning, letting you know that the content in your video is copyrighted material.

However, if you were to get 3 copyright strikes in 90 days, you may be penalized by:

- Having all your accounts and videos removed

- Not being able to create a new channel

So what should you do? Here are the steps to take after you receive a copyright strike:

1. Review the copyright strike by going into Creator Studio > Video Manager > Copyright notice

1. Click on the “Copyright Strike” link beside the flagged video to see details
2. Decide how to respond to the strike:
   1. Allow the strike to expire after 90 days and complete the YouTube’s copyright school
   2. Contact the person who reported your video and get the claim retracted
   3. Dispute the claim with a counter notification

Part 5: 5 Ways to Avoid Copyright Strike

It’s not always clear what YouTube deems fair use, but there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of meeting the qualification.

1. Use non-fictional copyright content instead of creative and fictional copyrighted content. You’ll have a better chance of meeting fair use if you use footages from a news broadcast than you would from a movie or television show.

The intent is clear when using non-fictional copyright content, such as in Bad Lip Reading. They aren’t trying to rebroadcast the Mark Zuckerberg integration, they are parodying it. The easier it is for the public to recognize that the content is from a source, and understand that the creator isn’t trying to take credit for it, the more likely it’ll pass the fair use qualification.

However, if Bad Lip Reading posted the content without lip dubbing, then one can argue that they are taking views away from the original news sources and that wouldn’t be fair use.

2. Make sure your video with copyrighted content isn’t replacing the original one. Only use enough of the source material to get your point across and ensure you are not negatively affecting the original through views and sales.

In this example from Screen Prism, we see scenes from Wes Anderson movies all through the video, however, it is not replacing any of the original films. In fact, you can say that because of this video, people will be motivated to go and watch a Wes Anderson movie, those benefiting the original creator.

3. The copyrighted material is essential to your video. Whether the copyrighted content is needed in order to illustrate a point or if that one moment from a well-recognized movie helps tie together the message, as long as the copyrighted material is serving the video in some significant way, then it will be consider fair use.

4. Give the original creator credit. Just because you give the original creator credit doesn’t mean you can rightfully use their content, however, it does give you a better chance at avoiding copyright strike. Most often, the original creators simply want credit for their work. If they see that you have noted that the content was made by them, it will only give them more exposure.

5. Keep it short. There is no precise number of seconds or ratio of copyrighted to original footage you should have in your video to qualify as fair use. But generally, if the copyrighted clip is short and/or broken up, then it stands a better chance at being approved by YouTube.

Part 6: What to Do When Other YouTubers Are Copying Your Content

As a new YouTuber, it’s a little freaky to think that someone is taking your content and republishing it or using your creations in their video without your permission.

If you ever notice that your content is being copied without your approval — if they have duplicated your video completely or is using your video without giving credit — and it is not benefiting your channel in any way, don’t worry, YouTube is designed to protect you.

Steps to Report Copyright Infringements on YouTube

1. View the video that contains your copyrighted material.
2. Click on “Report”

1. Select “Infringes my rights” in the pop up window and click “infringes my copyright” in the dropdown options.

1. Supply additional information to the report form, including the URL of the video infringing your copyrighted content and the URL of your own video.
2. Submit report and wait for an email confirmation that the infringing content has been removed.

Part 7: YouTube Copyright Match

In 2018, YouTube launched a new feature called Copyright Match Tool, which automatically finds videos that are very similar or the same as the ones you’ve created. This gives you the power to determine what to do once you know the video exist.

- You can choose to do nothing.

- You can contact the publisher.

- You can report the video to YouTube for removal.

Key Takeaways

I hope this article has clarified what you can and cannot do with copyrighted content. Here is a quick summary of what we touched on in this post:

- Avoid having 3 copyright strikes on your channel at all costs.

- When using copyrighted material, ensure it is essential to the video and you are not overdoing it.

- Make sure that the copyrighted content does not take views and sales away from the original source.

- Strive to use the copyrighted content in a transformative way, as a parody or a commentary, to educate or inform.

- Give the original creator credit or have it benefit the original by giving more publicity.

- Report any creator that is infringing on your content.

Got any questions on YouTube copyright? Leave a comment below and we’ll help you answer it.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

One of the trickiest terrains for new YouTubers to navigate is the land of copyright rules.

We get it, it’s confusing and stressful, especially when what you want to focus on is making videos, but instead, you are worried about getting your account terminated or being sued.

Can you or can’t you use that song or that clip from the movie? That’s all you want to know.

In this article, we are going to address the key areas that YouTubers need to understand when it comes to YouTube copyright. What is okay and what isn’t? What may be considered risky or what would be worth taking a chance?

Remember that everything discussed in this article is only best practices and shouldn’t be taken as definitive legal advice.

Now that we are set, let’s dive in:

Part 1: What is Fair Use?

When we talk about YouTube copyright, we have to talk about fair use.

Without fair use, there wouldn’t be any flexibility for creators. There wouldn’t be mashups, parodies, or lip dubs. Without fair use, any video with copyright content such as music in the background or a reference to a scene from a famous movie will require approval from the content owner and can be removed. Because of fair use, you can publish a video with copyrighted material in it and not have to ask anyone.

Think of fair use as exceptions to copyright rules.

Part 2: What YouTube Considers Fair Use

There are a few aspects YouTube looks at when it comes to determining whether creators are using copyrighted content that meets the fair use exceptions.

1. Is the copyrighted content being creatively or purposefully used?
2. Are there more original content used than copyrighted content in the video?
3. Will your video benefit the original copyrighted content?

Part 3: Types of Content That Meet Fair Use

Some acceptable styles of videos that allow you to exercise fair use are:

Critiques and Reviews: You can use clips of a movie that you review or play a chorus from a song that you are analyzing in a video and it will be okay to use because it’s serving a purpose of educating the viewer.

Tutorials and Commentary: A YouTube gamer streaming the video games and making comments throughout, that is within fair use, because it can be said that it is giving the video game exposure. Additionally, anything that can be classified as tutorials can also fall under fair use. If you have a video teaching people how to play a famous song, like The Beatles’ Let It Be , on piano, that’s fine!

Mashups: Mashups tend to be built entirely out of copyrighted material, but when done well this style of videos are very creative and often serve to promote the original work as opposed to replacing it.

There couldn’t be two more different movies than Toy Story and Fight Club, but somehow thanks the the creativity of a YouTube creator, there is a now a mashup of it. Some might call it an abomination, but this type of recycled art takes skills and planning, and it wouldn’t exist without fair use.

Parody: Imitation for comedic or dramatic effect is an artistic pursuit as long as it is done in a transformative manner. What does transformative mean? It means in some way, the original is being examined.

In this example from The Hillywood Show, we see a parody of both BBC’s Sherlock Holmes and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s Thrift Shop. The nuisance of the show and song recreated are there, but nobody who enjoys the originals will sit down and appreciate it in the same way. A parody is in no way trying to replace the original, but rather using the subject, structure, and style of the original as a vessel to another creative work.

Part 4: What To Do When You Get a YouTube Copyright Strike

If you are reading this, you may have already gotten a YouTube copyright strike.

This may have surprised you. Don’t be too concerned. If it was a mistake, the copyright strike merely acts as a warning, letting you know that the content in your video is copyrighted material.

However, if you were to get 3 copyright strikes in 90 days, you may be penalized by:

- Having all your accounts and videos removed

- Not being able to create a new channel

So what should you do? Here are the steps to take after you receive a copyright strike:

1. Review the copyright strike by going into Creator Studio > Video Manager > Copyright notice

1. Click on the “Copyright Strike” link beside the flagged video to see details
2. Decide how to respond to the strike:
   1. Allow the strike to expire after 90 days and complete the YouTube’s copyright school
   2. Contact the person who reported your video and get the claim retracted
   3. Dispute the claim with a counter notification

Part 5: 5 Ways to Avoid Copyright Strike

It’s not always clear what YouTube deems fair use, but there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of meeting the qualification.

1. Use non-fictional copyright content instead of creative and fictional copyrighted content. You’ll have a better chance of meeting fair use if you use footages from a news broadcast than you would from a movie or television show.

The intent is clear when using non-fictional copyright content, such as in Bad Lip Reading. They aren’t trying to rebroadcast the Mark Zuckerberg integration, they are parodying it. The easier it is for the public to recognize that the content is from a source, and understand that the creator isn’t trying to take credit for it, the more likely it’ll pass the fair use qualification.

However, if Bad Lip Reading posted the content without lip dubbing, then one can argue that they are taking views away from the original news sources and that wouldn’t be fair use.

2. Make sure your video with copyrighted content isn’t replacing the original one. Only use enough of the source material to get your point across and ensure you are not negatively affecting the original through views and sales.

In this example from Screen Prism, we see scenes from Wes Anderson movies all through the video, however, it is not replacing any of the original films. In fact, you can say that because of this video, people will be motivated to go and watch a Wes Anderson movie, those benefiting the original creator.

3. The copyrighted material is essential to your video. Whether the copyrighted content is needed in order to illustrate a point or if that one moment from a well-recognized movie helps tie together the message, as long as the copyrighted material is serving the video in some significant way, then it will be consider fair use.

4. Give the original creator credit. Just because you give the original creator credit doesn’t mean you can rightfully use their content, however, it does give you a better chance at avoiding copyright strike. Most often, the original creators simply want credit for their work. If they see that you have noted that the content was made by them, it will only give them more exposure.

5. Keep it short. There is no precise number of seconds or ratio of copyrighted to original footage you should have in your video to qualify as fair use. But generally, if the copyrighted clip is short and/or broken up, then it stands a better chance at being approved by YouTube.

Part 6: What to Do When Other YouTubers Are Copying Your Content

As a new YouTuber, it’s a little freaky to think that someone is taking your content and republishing it or using your creations in their video without your permission.

If you ever notice that your content is being copied without your approval — if they have duplicated your video completely or is using your video without giving credit — and it is not benefiting your channel in any way, don’t worry, YouTube is designed to protect you.

Steps to Report Copyright Infringements on YouTube

1. View the video that contains your copyrighted material.
2. Click on “Report”

1. Select “Infringes my rights” in the pop up window and click “infringes my copyright” in the dropdown options.

1. Supply additional information to the report form, including the URL of the video infringing your copyrighted content and the URL of your own video.
2. Submit report and wait for an email confirmation that the infringing content has been removed.

Part 7: YouTube Copyright Match

In 2018, YouTube launched a new feature called Copyright Match Tool, which automatically finds videos that are very similar or the same as the ones you’ve created. This gives you the power to determine what to do once you know the video exist.

- You can choose to do nothing.

- You can contact the publisher.

- You can report the video to YouTube for removal.

Key Takeaways

I hope this article has clarified what you can and cannot do with copyrighted content. Here is a quick summary of what we touched on in this post:

- Avoid having 3 copyright strikes on your channel at all costs.

- When using copyrighted material, ensure it is essential to the video and you are not overdoing it.

- Make sure that the copyrighted content does not take views and sales away from the original source.

- Strive to use the copyrighted content in a transformative way, as a parody or a commentary, to educate or inform.

- Give the original creator credit or have it benefit the original by giving more publicity.

- Report any creator that is infringing on your content.

Got any questions on YouTube copyright? Leave a comment below and we’ll help you answer it.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

One of the trickiest terrains for new YouTubers to navigate is the land of copyright rules.

We get it, it’s confusing and stressful, especially when what you want to focus on is making videos, but instead, you are worried about getting your account terminated or being sued.

Can you or can’t you use that song or that clip from the movie? That’s all you want to know.

In this article, we are going to address the key areas that YouTubers need to understand when it comes to YouTube copyright. What is okay and what isn’t? What may be considered risky or what would be worth taking a chance?

Remember that everything discussed in this article is only best practices and shouldn’t be taken as definitive legal advice.

Now that we are set, let’s dive in:

Part 1: What is Fair Use?

When we talk about YouTube copyright, we have to talk about fair use.

Without fair use, there wouldn’t be any flexibility for creators. There wouldn’t be mashups, parodies, or lip dubs. Without fair use, any video with copyright content such as music in the background or a reference to a scene from a famous movie will require approval from the content owner and can be removed. Because of fair use, you can publish a video with copyrighted material in it and not have to ask anyone.

Think of fair use as exceptions to copyright rules.

Part 2: What YouTube Considers Fair Use

There are a few aspects YouTube looks at when it comes to determining whether creators are using copyrighted content that meets the fair use exceptions.

1. Is the copyrighted content being creatively or purposefully used?
2. Are there more original content used than copyrighted content in the video?
3. Will your video benefit the original copyrighted content?

Part 3: Types of Content That Meet Fair Use

Some acceptable styles of videos that allow you to exercise fair use are:

Critiques and Reviews: You can use clips of a movie that you review or play a chorus from a song that you are analyzing in a video and it will be okay to use because it’s serving a purpose of educating the viewer.

Tutorials and Commentary: A YouTube gamer streaming the video games and making comments throughout, that is within fair use, because it can be said that it is giving the video game exposure. Additionally, anything that can be classified as tutorials can also fall under fair use. If you have a video teaching people how to play a famous song, like The Beatles’ Let It Be , on piano, that’s fine!

Mashups: Mashups tend to be built entirely out of copyrighted material, but when done well this style of videos are very creative and often serve to promote the original work as opposed to replacing it.

There couldn’t be two more different movies than Toy Story and Fight Club, but somehow thanks the the creativity of a YouTube creator, there is a now a mashup of it. Some might call it an abomination, but this type of recycled art takes skills and planning, and it wouldn’t exist without fair use.

Parody: Imitation for comedic or dramatic effect is an artistic pursuit as long as it is done in a transformative manner. What does transformative mean? It means in some way, the original is being examined.

In this example from The Hillywood Show, we see a parody of both BBC’s Sherlock Holmes and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s Thrift Shop. The nuisance of the show and song recreated are there, but nobody who enjoys the originals will sit down and appreciate it in the same way. A parody is in no way trying to replace the original, but rather using the subject, structure, and style of the original as a vessel to another creative work.

Part 4: What To Do When You Get a YouTube Copyright Strike

If you are reading this, you may have already gotten a YouTube copyright strike.

This may have surprised you. Don’t be too concerned. If it was a mistake, the copyright strike merely acts as a warning, letting you know that the content in your video is copyrighted material.

However, if you were to get 3 copyright strikes in 90 days, you may be penalized by:

- Having all your accounts and videos removed

- Not being able to create a new channel

So what should you do? Here are the steps to take after you receive a copyright strike:

1. Review the copyright strike by going into Creator Studio > Video Manager > Copyright notice

1. Click on the “Copyright Strike” link beside the flagged video to see details
2. Decide how to respond to the strike:
   1. Allow the strike to expire after 90 days and complete the YouTube’s copyright school
   2. Contact the person who reported your video and get the claim retracted
   3. Dispute the claim with a counter notification

Part 5: 5 Ways to Avoid Copyright Strike

It’s not always clear what YouTube deems fair use, but there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of meeting the qualification.

1. Use non-fictional copyright content instead of creative and fictional copyrighted content. You’ll have a better chance of meeting fair use if you use footages from a news broadcast than you would from a movie or television show.

The intent is clear when using non-fictional copyright content, such as in Bad Lip Reading. They aren’t trying to rebroadcast the Mark Zuckerberg integration, they are parodying it. The easier it is for the public to recognize that the content is from a source, and understand that the creator isn’t trying to take credit for it, the more likely it’ll pass the fair use qualification.

However, if Bad Lip Reading posted the content without lip dubbing, then one can argue that they are taking views away from the original news sources and that wouldn’t be fair use.

2. Make sure your video with copyrighted content isn’t replacing the original one. Only use enough of the source material to get your point across and ensure you are not negatively affecting the original through views and sales.

In this example from Screen Prism, we see scenes from Wes Anderson movies all through the video, however, it is not replacing any of the original films. In fact, you can say that because of this video, people will be motivated to go and watch a Wes Anderson movie, those benefiting the original creator.

3. The copyrighted material is essential to your video. Whether the copyrighted content is needed in order to illustrate a point or if that one moment from a well-recognized movie helps tie together the message, as long as the copyrighted material is serving the video in some significant way, then it will be consider fair use.

4. Give the original creator credit. Just because you give the original creator credit doesn’t mean you can rightfully use their content, however, it does give you a better chance at avoiding copyright strike. Most often, the original creators simply want credit for their work. If they see that you have noted that the content was made by them, it will only give them more exposure.

5. Keep it short. There is no precise number of seconds or ratio of copyrighted to original footage you should have in your video to qualify as fair use. But generally, if the copyrighted clip is short and/or broken up, then it stands a better chance at being approved by YouTube.

Part 6: What to Do When Other YouTubers Are Copying Your Content

As a new YouTuber, it’s a little freaky to think that someone is taking your content and republishing it or using your creations in their video without your permission.

If you ever notice that your content is being copied without your approval — if they have duplicated your video completely or is using your video without giving credit — and it is not benefiting your channel in any way, don’t worry, YouTube is designed to protect you.

Steps to Report Copyright Infringements on YouTube

1. View the video that contains your copyrighted material.
2. Click on “Report”

1. Select “Infringes my rights” in the pop up window and click “infringes my copyright” in the dropdown options.

1. Supply additional information to the report form, including the URL of the video infringing your copyrighted content and the URL of your own video.
2. Submit report and wait for an email confirmation that the infringing content has been removed.

Part 7: YouTube Copyright Match

In 2018, YouTube launched a new feature called Copyright Match Tool, which automatically finds videos that are very similar or the same as the ones you’ve created. This gives you the power to determine what to do once you know the video exist.

- You can choose to do nothing.

- You can contact the publisher.

- You can report the video to YouTube for removal.

Key Takeaways

I hope this article has clarified what you can and cannot do with copyrighted content. Here is a quick summary of what we touched on in this post:

- Avoid having 3 copyright strikes on your channel at all costs.

- When using copyrighted material, ensure it is essential to the video and you are not overdoing it.

- Make sure that the copyrighted content does not take views and sales away from the original source.

- Strive to use the copyrighted content in a transformative way, as a parody or a commentary, to educate or inform.

- Give the original creator credit or have it benefit the original by giving more publicity.

- Report any creator that is infringing on your content.

Got any questions on YouTube copyright? Leave a comment below and we’ll help you answer it.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Also read: