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YouTube Annotations Are Dead

Why?

They don’t work on mobile, and never did. Over 60% of YouTube views are on mobile.

So how can add interactivity to your videos now? And how can you get that same experience on mobile? YouTube Cards and End Slates.

Below is a guide on how to implement end cards in your videos, and drive more subscribers and views to your other videos.

Repost from: 

TUTORIAL: HOW-TO CREATE A CUSTOM YOUTUBE END SLATE / CARD [CREATORS TIP #64]

by: MARK R ROBERTSON

http://tubularinsights.com/outro-end-slate-youtube/

Creating a custom, interactive end slate (A.K.A. tail slate, outro, end screen) for the end of your YouTube videos is something that I recommend in all of my talks and to all my clients looking for best practices in YouTube marketing.  They offer a great way to drive awareness and views to your other video assets, increase engagement and subscribers, and using interactive annotations along with it can also help with rankings in search. Custom end slates can also be used to reinforce your brand or even take the focus away from YouTube’s default related videos end screen.

On this week’s Creator’s Tip, Tim demonstrates how we create our outro slates for videos on the ReelSEO channel.

Benefits: How to Use Custom End Cards for YouTube

Typically the way we use outro slates is to annotate to previous videos we’ve done.  The subscribe button will generally be there and people can listen to the end of the show while it’s fading out.   This is important because, YouTube is paying more and more attention to how much time videos contribute to people’s overall viewing session on YouTube.  If your video can do more to send more views and more traffic to your other videos, then your videos will rank better in search and do better for audience retention.

Additionally, viewers may be more inclined to click on subscribe when they are reading some of the titles.  They may think to themselves, “This channel is making other good content.”  Even if they don’t click on some of the other videos, they’re more likely to subscribe because they have a glimpse of some of the other videos you’ve done.

How to Create a Custom, Interactive YouTube End Slate

Although we use Adobe CS6 Premier Pro to create our outro, you should be able to achieve the same effect with any other decent video editing software with the exception perhaps of iMovie and Windows MovieMaker.

First off, be aware there are numerous different layers. The bottom layer should be the background.  If you turn the visibility off, you will see that the background goes away.  If you turn that visibility back on it appears again.

The next layer can be the titles of all your video clips and continues all the way up to the logo.  The visibility of each layer can be turned on and off.

If you’ve worked with layers before, you know the way it works is it starts with the top layer and you look down through all these layers.  If you want to move the layers around, you can do it until you get each layer in the position you want it.   Now you know what you want on your layers, and you’re ready to start.

  • Use key frames.  You’ll probably want to start with 100% scale for the position to be nice and centered.  Select the frames you want, and key frame them.
  • Find where you want it to end.  This is probably going to be at around 43%.  If you remove these key frames, you would see that it would just stay on top of all of your other stuff.  So you want it to get smaller.
  • Move the frames where you want it to end.  You’ll have them the right size, but in the middle.
  • Move them to the place you want them.
  • Go to your effects.  Keep moving them by dragging them where you want them.  Then zoom them in until they fit in the area.
  • Add your titles underneath.
  • At the end of your video, be sure to freeze about 15 frames so that when you add the pause annotation your video does not look like it jerks.

YouTube End Card Template:

Here’s a link for you to download a template that we’ve created for our YouTube Outro – http://rseo.co/Ubt8xQ

Hopefully this will help you think of some neat ways to create a custom end slate for your videos and increase engagement, views, rankings and more…

QUESTION: What other creative ways can you think of to use a custom outro or end slate on YouTube videos?

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Using Animation To Catch Their Attention

          My generation was fortunate to grow up during an era of emerging technologies and we were able to experiment with them as they came to the surface. The most prominent of these technologies, without a shadow of a doubt, would be computers and the Internet.

            While growing up and advancing through school, most of what I learned came from textbooks. Then, we were given computers and the Internet, which turned into a phenomenon of ‘how did I live without this?’ It was an explosion of technology; people across the globe had access to just about any information. It was limitless what we could do, and what did I want to do? I wanted to make light sabers for the short films I created with my friends.

            Thanks to the Internet, after a not so short period of time, I was able to teach myself Adobe After Effects and then turn that knowledge into fun features for my short films. They featured a lot more lasers, explosions and light sabers. Every good film needs explosions, right? Kind of, depending on the look and effect of the explosion it could very well be pointless. I was not alone in my aspirations and being self-taught with Adobe After Effects. People the world over were doing the same as me, teaching themselves and seeing what came of it. This became noticeable when YouTube became so prominent. However, no matter how much experience you had with the program, the effects almost always felt amateur and flat. I don’t want to use the word “boring”, it’s such a terrible word, plus how can an explosion be boring? The fact of the matter is, some of the effects and animations kind of were.

            The reason the effects were flat, fake looking, and boring was because everyone had learned After Effects the same as I had. We were animating things without knowing the proper way. Adobe had unintentionally bred an army of animators with no background on animation. Behind a computer screen, you think to yourself I want an object to move from point A to B within a 1-second timespan. The computer will do as it is told and move the object from A to B in that 1-second and that’s it. In life, things do not simply move from one point to another, they flow, wiggle, bounce, jump, run and creep. In life, there is expression and emotion in movement. This is the first thing many cartoon animators learn while in animation school. However, when you are self-taught, you don’t have someone to tell you these things and correct your errors. Humans relate to emotions and sense it in so many ways. Seeing someone walk slowly, shoulders slumped and their head lowered you would get the sense that they’re sad or upset. While in the inverse, if you see someone strolling upright with their head held high, you will get the sense of their confidence or happiness.

            We are still a ways away from being able to tell a computer to create exactly what we’re looking for with our animations. For now, I continue to look every day for new ways to add life to my animations. I look for ways to add expression, exaggeration to every movement, to make something as simple as moving from one point to another relatable and attractive to the eye. It is my goal everyday to put life into my work, so my question to you is; what can you do to add life to your work?

If you would to like to hear more Best Practices from our Design Team, contact us today!

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