A Compreshift Guide to Creating Profitable & Engaging YouTube Collaborations

YouTube Collaboration Guide to Find Partners and Make Collab Videos

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

The Art of YouTube Channels: Crafting Brands That Attract Viewers

How to Brand Your YouTube Channel to Get More Subscribers

Shanoon Cox

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

Epic Meal Time. Michelle Phan. Peter McKinnon. When you think of each of these YouTube creators, what comes to mind? The feelings and thoughts you have are vastly different because each one of these channels has its own unique branding.

Epic Meal Time’s YouTube brand is in-your-face and intense. It pumps you full of adrenaline and increases your heart rate.

Michelle Phan’s YouTube brand is calm, whimsical, and aspirational.

The color palette she chose is pleasing to the eyes and doesn’t evoke any of the stress we get from Epic Meal Time.

They have different branding because they want to reflect different feelings for different audiences.

Bad Branding Causes Mistrust

When a branding element does not align with the message or the tone does not match with the material, then the audience is not going to trust what you offer. Without trust, you won’t be able to get the advocacy that is essential for a YouTube channel to grow.

Imagine Michelle Phan using the aggressive colors of Epic Meal Time or vice versa. Pretty weird, huh?

What is YouTube Branding?

You might think that branding simply comes together while making videos, but that’s not true. Branding takes a bit of preparation and foresight.

YouTube branding is the idea your viewers have in mind and the emotion they get when they think about your channel.

Here are notable elements of your channel’s branding:

- Channel name

- Channel art

- Video thumbnail

- Video title

- Icon

- Watermark

- Catchphrase

- Style of video

How to Start Branding Your YouTube Channel?

Before you start designing thumbnails and coming up with a catchphrase, the first step in branding is understanding the purpose of your channel. Once you have a purpose, you will know how you want your viewers to feel.

Here is a quick exercise to find your channel’s purpose:

Draw a 3 circle Venn diagram.

In circle 1, write down everything you consider yourself an expert in.

- What do your friends know you for?

- What can you give advice on?

- What did you go to school to learn?

In circle 2, write down all the topics you are passionate about.

- What can you talk effortlessly about for hours?

- At a party, where do you lead conversations towards?

In circle 3, write down everything that people will pay for that you can supply. Here is where you find the demand of the audience.

- Can you give me travel advice?

- Can you make people forget about their stressful day?

- Do you have experience in a specialized field?

Understanding what people will pay money for will help guide you in creating content that has true value.

In the center, come up with all the ideas that can be associated with all three circles. This will be the ideal purpose for your YouTube channel as it harnesses your expertise, your passion, and the demand of a viewership.

Examples:

Epic Meal Time

Expertise = Eating

Passion = Fast Food Culture

Demand = Unique Meals

PURPOSE: Showcase a unique combination of fast food people won’t make at home.

Michelle Phan

Expertise = Beauty Products

Passion = Makeup and Fashion

Demand = Beauty School

PURPOSE: Give people more confidence in beauty products.

How Is Your Channel Different From the Others?

Now that you have your purpose, it’s time to separate you from others with similar purposes. YouTube is a crowded space for content creators. If your channel is mimicking another more successful channel, you will be in the shadows.

Good branding allows you to differentiate from others .

Pick a Unique and Memorable Name

If your name is Michelle Phan, and you are not the Michelle Phan, I’m sorry, but you will need to pick another name for your YouTube channel:

If you do have to pick another name or if your channel is an ensemble with multiple members, make sure the name you choose is original, memorable, and short (4 words max).

Picking an Icon

Not every YouTuber needs to design an original logo for their brand. In fact, if the channel is about you — the YouTuber — you are the brand, so using a high-quality picture of yourself as the icon is okay.

However, if your channel has a specific theme or topic and you want your branding to convey it so it sticks in the viewers’ heads, especially if it’s their first time viewing your channel. A clear logo will help in amplifying your message:

Create Video Thumbnails That Stand Out

The power of good branding is that your viewers will be able to spot your brand in a crowded space. On YouTube, the crowded space is the suggested video section.

Epic Meal Time thumbnails standing out amongst other loud thumbnails.

Once you have the feeling you want to evoke, test out different thumbnails. Go incognito, search up your videos, and see how the visuals appear beside your competitions. Do they all have the same style or is your far more impressive?

Good branding doesn’t happen in the first try so keep experimenting.

Designing Your Icon, Thumbnail, and Channel Art

There is a lot to consider when designing all the visual elements for your channel. I won’t get into all of it, but here are some tips that you should always keep in mind.

- Less is more: Don’t clutter your icons, thumbnails, or banner.

- Have a single focus: A channel and a video can have a lot of different topics, but the image can’t show everything a video can. Pick one important area and highlight that in the image.

- Quality matters: Your audience is savvier than ever. If they see a pixelated image, they will judge your channel poorly. That’s bad branding. Always use high-quality pictures.

- Make sure the color pops and the text is visible: Use eye-catching colors and visible text. This is a billboard, you have milliseconds to get people’s attention as they scroll past.

Want more resources for creating your channel’s visual elements? Yes? Well, we made this for you:

- How to Make YouTube Video Thumbnail

- How to Make YouTube Icons

- Free Youtube Banners

How to Make Your Visuals Consistent?

When a viewer finds your video and considers it pretty interesting, they will then go into your channel page to learn more. Here is where they make their decision: subscribe or not subscribe?

Consistent branding affirms the viewer that they are in the right place. Peter McKinnon’s brand is built upon his amazing photography, it only makes sense that his visual elements are awesome.

Peter McKinnon is best known for his photography and cinematography, and his branding amplifies that.

But Branding Is Not Designing, It’s A Feeling

Don’t get too caught up with a design.

Look at PewDiePie’s branding. You can argue that it is inconsistent and the design is not professional, but actually, his branding is spot on, because he is making you feel a certain way.

PewDiePie’s brand highlights its upbeat and unpredictable personality.

PewDiePie wants you to laugh. He is not branding his expertise like Peter McKinnon is, he’s branding his personality.

Consistent branding is about making the elements of your channel: channel art, logo, thumbnails, titles, etc. all harmonize together to evoke a sensation.

The humor in PewDiePie’s brand is consistent, even though his thumbnails don’t look like Philip DeFranco’s. It is up to you how you define consistency, and that will happen over time.

Philip DeFranco supplies commentary on current events with a satirical flair. Like a news broadcast, his branding and video format are consistent, while the daily news is different.

Inserting A Watermark

The main point of a watermark is to let the viewers know when they are watching your video that it is in fact your video.

Let’s be honest, YouTube content can all look the same, especially if you are making content that is quite general (like beauty or tech), so a watermark helps differentiate, so when viewers are ready to subscribe, they have an extra branding element connecting them to your channel.

Improvement Pill is a YouTube channel focused on inspiring and motivating its viewer to live a better life.

Above we see an example of a watermark from the YouTube channel Improvement Pill. You can see the watermark in the lower right-hand corner.

Improvement Pill is not the only channel that uses whiteboard animation to illustrate their story, and because of that, they need to set themselves apart. A watermark helps do that.

When a viewer lands on their video, the watermark gives the viewer another way to get more familiar with the channel, and if they are to scroll over the watermark a subscription button pops up.

Want to set up your subscription watermark? Here is a quick tutorial:

Coming Up With A Catchphrase

A catchphrase can be your greeting or sign off, but it doesn’t have to be an original line, it can simply be the way you say “hello.”

Check out some of the popular YouTuber’s catchphrases:

When coming up with a catchphrase that is connected to your channel’s branding remember how you want the viewer to feel. Do you want to leave them with a smile? Or do you want them to take action?

Final Thoughts On YouTube Branding

As you build and grow your YouTube channel, you can expand your purpose while still sticking within the overall theme. You might have started a channel that focused on the topic of nutrition, but as you grow, you will discover that your audience may also be interested in fitness tips or workout accessories as well. Take it slowly and grow with purpose.

Your branding doesn’t dictate the content you create, but it does affect how you go about making it.

Got more questions about branding your YouTube channel? Let us know in the comments below.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

Epic Meal Time. Michelle Phan. Peter McKinnon. When you think of each of these YouTube creators, what comes to mind? The feelings and thoughts you have are vastly different because each one of these channels has its own unique branding.

Epic Meal Time’s YouTube brand is in-your-face and intense. It pumps you full of adrenaline and increases your heart rate.

Michelle Phan’s YouTube brand is calm, whimsical, and aspirational.

The color palette she chose is pleasing to the eyes and doesn’t evoke any of the stress we get from Epic Meal Time.

They have different branding because they want to reflect different feelings for different audiences.

Bad Branding Causes Mistrust

When a branding element does not align with the message or the tone does not match with the material, then the audience is not going to trust what you offer. Without trust, you won’t be able to get the advocacy that is essential for a YouTube channel to grow.

Imagine Michelle Phan using the aggressive colors of Epic Meal Time or vice versa. Pretty weird, huh?

What is YouTube Branding?

You might think that branding simply comes together while making videos, but that’s not true. Branding takes a bit of preparation and foresight.

YouTube branding is the idea your viewers have in mind and the emotion they get when they think about your channel.

Here are notable elements of your channel’s branding:

- Channel name

- Channel art

- Video thumbnail

- Video title

- Icon

- Watermark

- Catchphrase

- Style of video

How to Start Branding Your YouTube Channel?

Before you start designing thumbnails and coming up with a catchphrase, the first step in branding is understanding the purpose of your channel. Once you have a purpose, you will know how you want your viewers to feel.

Here is a quick exercise to find your channel’s purpose:

Draw a 3 circle Venn diagram.

In circle 1, write down everything you consider yourself an expert in.

- What do your friends know you for?

- What can you give advice on?

- What did you go to school to learn?

In circle 2, write down all the topics you are passionate about.

- What can you talk effortlessly about for hours?

- At a party, where do you lead conversations towards?

In circle 3, write down everything that people will pay for that you can supply. Here is where you find the demand of the audience.

- Can you give me travel advice?

- Can you make people forget about their stressful day?

- Do you have experience in a specialized field?

Understanding what people will pay money for will help guide you in creating content that has true value.

In the center, come up with all the ideas that can be associated with all three circles. This will be the ideal purpose for your YouTube channel as it harnesses your expertise, your passion, and the demand of a viewership.

Examples:

Epic Meal Time

Expertise = Eating

Passion = Fast Food Culture

Demand = Unique Meals

PURPOSE: Showcase a unique combination of fast food people won’t make at home.

Michelle Phan

Expertise = Beauty Products

Passion = Makeup and Fashion

Demand = Beauty School

PURPOSE: Give people more confidence in beauty products.

How Is Your Channel Different From the Others?

Now that you have your purpose, it’s time to separate you from others with similar purposes. YouTube is a crowded space for content creators. If your channel is mimicking another more successful channel, you will be in the shadows.

Good branding allows you to differentiate from others .

Pick a Unique and Memorable Name

If your name is Michelle Phan, and you are not the Michelle Phan, I’m sorry, but you will need to pick another name for your YouTube channel:

If you do have to pick another name or if your channel is an ensemble with multiple members, make sure the name you choose is original, memorable, and short (4 words max).

Picking an Icon

Not every YouTuber needs to design an original logo for their brand. In fact, if the channel is about you — the YouTuber — you are the brand, so using a high-quality picture of yourself as the icon is okay.

However, if your channel has a specific theme or topic and you want your branding to convey it so it sticks in the viewers’ heads, especially if it’s their first time viewing your channel. A clear logo will help in amplifying your message:

Create Video Thumbnails That Stand Out

The power of good branding is that your viewers will be able to spot your brand in a crowded space. On YouTube, the crowded space is the suggested video section.

Epic Meal Time thumbnails standing out amongst other loud thumbnails.

Once you have the feeling you want to evoke, test out different thumbnails. Go incognito, search up your videos, and see how the visuals appear beside your competitions. Do they all have the same style or is your far more impressive?

Good branding doesn’t happen in the first try so keep experimenting.

Designing Your Icon, Thumbnail, and Channel Art

There is a lot to consider when designing all the visual elements for your channel. I won’t get into all of it, but here are some tips that you should always keep in mind.

- Less is more: Don’t clutter your icons, thumbnails, or banner.

- Have a single focus: A channel and a video can have a lot of different topics, but the image can’t show everything a video can. Pick one important area and highlight that in the image.

- Quality matters: Your audience is savvier than ever. If they see a pixelated image, they will judge your channel poorly. That’s bad branding. Always use high-quality pictures.

- Make sure the color pops and the text is visible: Use eye-catching colors and visible text. This is a billboard, you have milliseconds to get people’s attention as they scroll past.

Want more resources for creating your channel’s visual elements? Yes? Well, we made this for you:

- How to Make YouTube Video Thumbnail

- How to Make YouTube Icons

- Free Youtube Banners

How to Make Your Visuals Consistent?

When a viewer finds your video and considers it pretty interesting, they will then go into your channel page to learn more. Here is where they make their decision: subscribe or not subscribe?

Consistent branding affirms the viewer that they are in the right place. Peter McKinnon’s brand is built upon his amazing photography, it only makes sense that his visual elements are awesome.

Peter McKinnon is best known for his photography and cinematography, and his branding amplifies that.

But Branding Is Not Designing, It’s A Feeling

Don’t get too caught up with a design.

Look at PewDiePie’s branding. You can argue that it is inconsistent and the design is not professional, but actually, his branding is spot on, because he is making you feel a certain way.

PewDiePie’s brand highlights its upbeat and unpredictable personality.

PewDiePie wants you to laugh. He is not branding his expertise like Peter McKinnon is, he’s branding his personality.

Consistent branding is about making the elements of your channel: channel art, logo, thumbnails, titles, etc. all harmonize together to evoke a sensation.

The humor in PewDiePie’s brand is consistent, even though his thumbnails don’t look like Philip DeFranco’s. It is up to you how you define consistency, and that will happen over time.

Philip DeFranco supplies commentary on current events with a satirical flair. Like a news broadcast, his branding and video format are consistent, while the daily news is different.

Inserting A Watermark

The main point of a watermark is to let the viewers know when they are watching your video that it is in fact your video.

Let’s be honest, YouTube content can all look the same, especially if you are making content that is quite general (like beauty or tech), so a watermark helps differentiate, so when viewers are ready to subscribe, they have an extra branding element connecting them to your channel.

Improvement Pill is a YouTube channel focused on inspiring and motivating its viewer to live a better life.

Above we see an example of a watermark from the YouTube channel Improvement Pill. You can see the watermark in the lower right-hand corner.

Improvement Pill is not the only channel that uses whiteboard animation to illustrate their story, and because of that, they need to set themselves apart. A watermark helps do that.

When a viewer lands on their video, the watermark gives the viewer another way to get more familiar with the channel, and if they are to scroll over the watermark a subscription button pops up.

Want to set up your subscription watermark? Here is a quick tutorial:

Coming Up With A Catchphrase

A catchphrase can be your greeting or sign off, but it doesn’t have to be an original line, it can simply be the way you say “hello.”

Check out some of the popular YouTuber’s catchphrases:

When coming up with a catchphrase that is connected to your channel’s branding remember how you want the viewer to feel. Do you want to leave them with a smile? Or do you want them to take action?

Final Thoughts On YouTube Branding

As you build and grow your YouTube channel, you can expand your purpose while still sticking within the overall theme. You might have started a channel that focused on the topic of nutrition, but as you grow, you will discover that your audience may also be interested in fitness tips or workout accessories as well. Take it slowly and grow with purpose.

Your branding doesn’t dictate the content you create, but it does affect how you go about making it.

Got more questions about branding your YouTube channel? Let us know in the comments below.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

Epic Meal Time. Michelle Phan. Peter McKinnon. When you think of each of these YouTube creators, what comes to mind? The feelings and thoughts you have are vastly different because each one of these channels has its own unique branding.

Epic Meal Time’s YouTube brand is in-your-face and intense. It pumps you full of adrenaline and increases your heart rate.

Michelle Phan’s YouTube brand is calm, whimsical, and aspirational.

The color palette she chose is pleasing to the eyes and doesn’t evoke any of the stress we get from Epic Meal Time.

They have different branding because they want to reflect different feelings for different audiences.

Bad Branding Causes Mistrust

When a branding element does not align with the message or the tone does not match with the material, then the audience is not going to trust what you offer. Without trust, you won’t be able to get the advocacy that is essential for a YouTube channel to grow.

Imagine Michelle Phan using the aggressive colors of Epic Meal Time or vice versa. Pretty weird, huh?

What is YouTube Branding?

You might think that branding simply comes together while making videos, but that’s not true. Branding takes a bit of preparation and foresight.

YouTube branding is the idea your viewers have in mind and the emotion they get when they think about your channel.

Here are notable elements of your channel’s branding:

- Channel name

- Channel art

- Video thumbnail

- Video title

- Icon

- Watermark

- Catchphrase

- Style of video

How to Start Branding Your YouTube Channel?

Before you start designing thumbnails and coming up with a catchphrase, the first step in branding is understanding the purpose of your channel. Once you have a purpose, you will know how you want your viewers to feel.

Here is a quick exercise to find your channel’s purpose:

Draw a 3 circle Venn diagram.

In circle 1, write down everything you consider yourself an expert in.

- What do your friends know you for?

- What can you give advice on?

- What did you go to school to learn?

In circle 2, write down all the topics you are passionate about.

- What can you talk effortlessly about for hours?

- At a party, where do you lead conversations towards?

In circle 3, write down everything that people will pay for that you can supply. Here is where you find the demand of the audience.

- Can you give me travel advice?

- Can you make people forget about their stressful day?

- Do you have experience in a specialized field?

Understanding what people will pay money for will help guide you in creating content that has true value.

In the center, come up with all the ideas that can be associated with all three circles. This will be the ideal purpose for your YouTube channel as it harnesses your expertise, your passion, and the demand of a viewership.

Examples:

Epic Meal Time

Expertise = Eating

Passion = Fast Food Culture

Demand = Unique Meals

PURPOSE: Showcase a unique combination of fast food people won’t make at home.

Michelle Phan

Expertise = Beauty Products

Passion = Makeup and Fashion

Demand = Beauty School

PURPOSE: Give people more confidence in beauty products.

How Is Your Channel Different From the Others?

Now that you have your purpose, it’s time to separate you from others with similar purposes. YouTube is a crowded space for content creators. If your channel is mimicking another more successful channel, you will be in the shadows.

Good branding allows you to differentiate from others .

Pick a Unique and Memorable Name

If your name is Michelle Phan, and you are not the Michelle Phan, I’m sorry, but you will need to pick another name for your YouTube channel:

If you do have to pick another name or if your channel is an ensemble with multiple members, make sure the name you choose is original, memorable, and short (4 words max).

Picking an Icon

Not every YouTuber needs to design an original logo for their brand. In fact, if the channel is about you — the YouTuber — you are the brand, so using a high-quality picture of yourself as the icon is okay.

However, if your channel has a specific theme or topic and you want your branding to convey it so it sticks in the viewers’ heads, especially if it’s their first time viewing your channel. A clear logo will help in amplifying your message:

Create Video Thumbnails That Stand Out

The power of good branding is that your viewers will be able to spot your brand in a crowded space. On YouTube, the crowded space is the suggested video section.

Epic Meal Time thumbnails standing out amongst other loud thumbnails.

Once you have the feeling you want to evoke, test out different thumbnails. Go incognito, search up your videos, and see how the visuals appear beside your competitions. Do they all have the same style or is your far more impressive?

Good branding doesn’t happen in the first try so keep experimenting.

Designing Your Icon, Thumbnail, and Channel Art

There is a lot to consider when designing all the visual elements for your channel. I won’t get into all of it, but here are some tips that you should always keep in mind.

- Less is more: Don’t clutter your icons, thumbnails, or banner.

- Have a single focus: A channel and a video can have a lot of different topics, but the image can’t show everything a video can. Pick one important area and highlight that in the image.

- Quality matters: Your audience is savvier than ever. If they see a pixelated image, they will judge your channel poorly. That’s bad branding. Always use high-quality pictures.

- Make sure the color pops and the text is visible: Use eye-catching colors and visible text. This is a billboard, you have milliseconds to get people’s attention as they scroll past.

Want more resources for creating your channel’s visual elements? Yes? Well, we made this for you:

- How to Make YouTube Video Thumbnail

- How to Make YouTube Icons

- Free Youtube Banners

How to Make Your Visuals Consistent?

When a viewer finds your video and considers it pretty interesting, they will then go into your channel page to learn more. Here is where they make their decision: subscribe or not subscribe?

Consistent branding affirms the viewer that they are in the right place. Peter McKinnon’s brand is built upon his amazing photography, it only makes sense that his visual elements are awesome.

Peter McKinnon is best known for his photography and cinematography, and his branding amplifies that.

But Branding Is Not Designing, It’s A Feeling

Don’t get too caught up with a design.

Look at PewDiePie’s branding. You can argue that it is inconsistent and the design is not professional, but actually, his branding is spot on, because he is making you feel a certain way.

PewDiePie’s brand highlights its upbeat and unpredictable personality.

PewDiePie wants you to laugh. He is not branding his expertise like Peter McKinnon is, he’s branding his personality.

Consistent branding is about making the elements of your channel: channel art, logo, thumbnails, titles, etc. all harmonize together to evoke a sensation.

The humor in PewDiePie’s brand is consistent, even though his thumbnails don’t look like Philip DeFranco’s. It is up to you how you define consistency, and that will happen over time.

Philip DeFranco supplies commentary on current events with a satirical flair. Like a news broadcast, his branding and video format are consistent, while the daily news is different.

Inserting A Watermark

The main point of a watermark is to let the viewers know when they are watching your video that it is in fact your video.

Let’s be honest, YouTube content can all look the same, especially if you are making content that is quite general (like beauty or tech), so a watermark helps differentiate, so when viewers are ready to subscribe, they have an extra branding element connecting them to your channel.

Improvement Pill is a YouTube channel focused on inspiring and motivating its viewer to live a better life.

Above we see an example of a watermark from the YouTube channel Improvement Pill. You can see the watermark in the lower right-hand corner.

Improvement Pill is not the only channel that uses whiteboard animation to illustrate their story, and because of that, they need to set themselves apart. A watermark helps do that.

When a viewer lands on their video, the watermark gives the viewer another way to get more familiar with the channel, and if they are to scroll over the watermark a subscription button pops up.

Want to set up your subscription watermark? Here is a quick tutorial:

Coming Up With A Catchphrase

A catchphrase can be your greeting or sign off, but it doesn’t have to be an original line, it can simply be the way you say “hello.”

Check out some of the popular YouTuber’s catchphrases:

When coming up with a catchphrase that is connected to your channel’s branding remember how you want the viewer to feel. Do you want to leave them with a smile? Or do you want them to take action?

Final Thoughts On YouTube Branding

As you build and grow your YouTube channel, you can expand your purpose while still sticking within the overall theme. You might have started a channel that focused on the topic of nutrition, but as you grow, you will discover that your audience may also be interested in fitness tips or workout accessories as well. Take it slowly and grow with purpose.

Your branding doesn’t dictate the content you create, but it does affect how you go about making it.

Got more questions about branding your YouTube channel? Let us know in the comments below.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

Epic Meal Time. Michelle Phan. Peter McKinnon. When you think of each of these YouTube creators, what comes to mind? The feelings and thoughts you have are vastly different because each one of these channels has its own unique branding.

Epic Meal Time’s YouTube brand is in-your-face and intense. It pumps you full of adrenaline and increases your heart rate.

Michelle Phan’s YouTube brand is calm, whimsical, and aspirational.

The color palette she chose is pleasing to the eyes and doesn’t evoke any of the stress we get from Epic Meal Time.

They have different branding because they want to reflect different feelings for different audiences.

Bad Branding Causes Mistrust

When a branding element does not align with the message or the tone does not match with the material, then the audience is not going to trust what you offer. Without trust, you won’t be able to get the advocacy that is essential for a YouTube channel to grow.

Imagine Michelle Phan using the aggressive colors of Epic Meal Time or vice versa. Pretty weird, huh?

What is YouTube Branding?

You might think that branding simply comes together while making videos, but that’s not true. Branding takes a bit of preparation and foresight.

YouTube branding is the idea your viewers have in mind and the emotion they get when they think about your channel.

Here are notable elements of your channel’s branding:

- Channel name

- Channel art

- Video thumbnail

- Video title

- Icon

- Watermark

- Catchphrase

- Style of video

How to Start Branding Your YouTube Channel?

Before you start designing thumbnails and coming up with a catchphrase, the first step in branding is understanding the purpose of your channel. Once you have a purpose, you will know how you want your viewers to feel.

Here is a quick exercise to find your channel’s purpose:

Draw a 3 circle Venn diagram.

In circle 1, write down everything you consider yourself an expert in.

- What do your friends know you for?

- What can you give advice on?

- What did you go to school to learn?

In circle 2, write down all the topics you are passionate about.

- What can you talk effortlessly about for hours?

- At a party, where do you lead conversations towards?

In circle 3, write down everything that people will pay for that you can supply. Here is where you find the demand of the audience.

- Can you give me travel advice?

- Can you make people forget about their stressful day?

- Do you have experience in a specialized field?

Understanding what people will pay money for will help guide you in creating content that has true value.

In the center, come up with all the ideas that can be associated with all three circles. This will be the ideal purpose for your YouTube channel as it harnesses your expertise, your passion, and the demand of a viewership.

Examples:

Epic Meal Time

Expertise = Eating

Passion = Fast Food Culture

Demand = Unique Meals

PURPOSE: Showcase a unique combination of fast food people won’t make at home.

Michelle Phan

Expertise = Beauty Products

Passion = Makeup and Fashion

Demand = Beauty School

PURPOSE: Give people more confidence in beauty products.

How Is Your Channel Different From the Others?

Now that you have your purpose, it’s time to separate you from others with similar purposes. YouTube is a crowded space for content creators. If your channel is mimicking another more successful channel, you will be in the shadows.

Good branding allows you to differentiate from others .

Pick a Unique and Memorable Name

If your name is Michelle Phan, and you are not the Michelle Phan, I’m sorry, but you will need to pick another name for your YouTube channel:

If you do have to pick another name or if your channel is an ensemble with multiple members, make sure the name you choose is original, memorable, and short (4 words max).

Picking an Icon

Not every YouTuber needs to design an original logo for their brand. In fact, if the channel is about you — the YouTuber — you are the brand, so using a high-quality picture of yourself as the icon is okay.

However, if your channel has a specific theme or topic and you want your branding to convey it so it sticks in the viewers’ heads, especially if it’s their first time viewing your channel. A clear logo will help in amplifying your message:

Create Video Thumbnails That Stand Out

The power of good branding is that your viewers will be able to spot your brand in a crowded space. On YouTube, the crowded space is the suggested video section.

Epic Meal Time thumbnails standing out amongst other loud thumbnails.

Once you have the feeling you want to evoke, test out different thumbnails. Go incognito, search up your videos, and see how the visuals appear beside your competitions. Do they all have the same style or is your far more impressive?

Good branding doesn’t happen in the first try so keep experimenting.

Designing Your Icon, Thumbnail, and Channel Art

There is a lot to consider when designing all the visual elements for your channel. I won’t get into all of it, but here are some tips that you should always keep in mind.

- Less is more: Don’t clutter your icons, thumbnails, or banner.

- Have a single focus: A channel and a video can have a lot of different topics, but the image can’t show everything a video can. Pick one important area and highlight that in the image.

- Quality matters: Your audience is savvier than ever. If they see a pixelated image, they will judge your channel poorly. That’s bad branding. Always use high-quality pictures.

- Make sure the color pops and the text is visible: Use eye-catching colors and visible text. This is a billboard, you have milliseconds to get people’s attention as they scroll past.

Want more resources for creating your channel’s visual elements? Yes? Well, we made this for you:

- How to Make YouTube Video Thumbnail

- How to Make YouTube Icons

- Free Youtube Banners

How to Make Your Visuals Consistent?

When a viewer finds your video and considers it pretty interesting, they will then go into your channel page to learn more. Here is where they make their decision: subscribe or not subscribe?

Consistent branding affirms the viewer that they are in the right place. Peter McKinnon’s brand is built upon his amazing photography, it only makes sense that his visual elements are awesome.

Peter McKinnon is best known for his photography and cinematography, and his branding amplifies that.

But Branding Is Not Designing, It’s A Feeling

Don’t get too caught up with a design.

Look at PewDiePie’s branding. You can argue that it is inconsistent and the design is not professional, but actually, his branding is spot on, because he is making you feel a certain way.

PewDiePie’s brand highlights its upbeat and unpredictable personality.

PewDiePie wants you to laugh. He is not branding his expertise like Peter McKinnon is, he’s branding his personality.

Consistent branding is about making the elements of your channel: channel art, logo, thumbnails, titles, etc. all harmonize together to evoke a sensation.

The humor in PewDiePie’s brand is consistent, even though his thumbnails don’t look like Philip DeFranco’s. It is up to you how you define consistency, and that will happen over time.

Philip DeFranco supplies commentary on current events with a satirical flair. Like a news broadcast, his branding and video format are consistent, while the daily news is different.

Inserting A Watermark

The main point of a watermark is to let the viewers know when they are watching your video that it is in fact your video.

Let’s be honest, YouTube content can all look the same, especially if you are making content that is quite general (like beauty or tech), so a watermark helps differentiate, so when viewers are ready to subscribe, they have an extra branding element connecting them to your channel.

Improvement Pill is a YouTube channel focused on inspiring and motivating its viewer to live a better life.

Above we see an example of a watermark from the YouTube channel Improvement Pill. You can see the watermark in the lower right-hand corner.

Improvement Pill is not the only channel that uses whiteboard animation to illustrate their story, and because of that, they need to set themselves apart. A watermark helps do that.

When a viewer lands on their video, the watermark gives the viewer another way to get more familiar with the channel, and if they are to scroll over the watermark a subscription button pops up.

Want to set up your subscription watermark? Here is a quick tutorial:

Coming Up With A Catchphrase

A catchphrase can be your greeting or sign off, but it doesn’t have to be an original line, it can simply be the way you say “hello.”

Check out some of the popular YouTuber’s catchphrases:

When coming up with a catchphrase that is connected to your channel’s branding remember how you want the viewer to feel. Do you want to leave them with a smile? Or do you want them to take action?

Final Thoughts On YouTube Branding

As you build and grow your YouTube channel, you can expand your purpose while still sticking within the overall theme. You might have started a channel that focused on the topic of nutrition, but as you grow, you will discover that your audience may also be interested in fitness tips or workout accessories as well. Take it slowly and grow with purpose.

Your branding doesn’t dictate the content you create, but it does affect how you go about making it.

Got more questions about branding your YouTube channel? Let us know in the comments below.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

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