As with anything, information is key, and that is certainly the case when it comes to YouTube as well, knowing and understanding your potential audience and what they like to see can be more than important.
Whether you are trying to do YouTube as a hobby or with a career in mind there’s no doubt that you would like to see success in doing so. With the right tools and programmes you can greater your understanding and even drive your content in the direction it needs.
TubeBuddy
There are many helpful tools for YouTube, one of those is TubeBuddy, although a lot of the useful features are apart of the paid for subscription option, the free version is more than enough for a beginner and you always have the option to upgrade later when it suits.
When you are uploading a video there are a lot of details and steps you need to take to maximise your reach and potential, TubeBuddy has a upload checklist available to free users to make sure you add everything you want, from tags, to social promotion.
An additional feature that TubeBuddy offers is the ability to see and copy tags from another video, this allows you to find videos and tags that are proven to work and use them for your content.
Cross promoting your uploads can be useful for drawing in traffic to your new videos, the Description Promotion tool inside TubeBuddy makes doing so incredibly easy, with it you can enter a message and link that you want to be displayed in the descriptions of old content and directly add it without hassle.
The Premium features can also be quite powerful, they offer an array of bulk features which are helpful and time saving. With the Bulk End Screen component of TubeBuddy you can modify or change the end screens on all or some of your YouTube videos at once.
End screens give a chance of having a viewer move on to another one of your videos, however perfecting the formula for a high click through rate can be rather difficult, this feature allows you to test different images and videos easily to find what works best for you and your content, and even change all the existing links to newly uploaded videos for increased traffic.
Adobe Photoshop
When it comes to YouTube thumbnails Photoshop gives plenty of room for creativity to take form, you can use brushes and third party packs or templates to create the look you’re after, or make your own with the array of capabilities at your fingertips.
Whether you opt for a simple design or complex you can make it with photoshop. If you work in a non destructive manner and keep all the adjustments and effects on different layers you can create a template that you can use for the base of future thumbnails.
VidIQ
VidIQ Simplifies statistics and makes them easy to understand with its video scorecard, the scorecard gives great data on where a video is doing well and where it needs some work, this works with all videos on YouTube and allows you to see the tags and keywords that a video is targeting, making it ideal for planning out your own content and getting ideas.
Although the free version of VidIQ is great, the product offers so much more under its premium plans, with more detailed statistics and helpful information that can help maximise the viewership potential of your videos.
Keywords are important when it comes to ranking on Youtube and getting your video out there to the right audience, you could manually research the keywords that best work for each of your videos or take advantage of a useful keyword research tool like that in offered by VidIQ.
Gimp
For creating thumbnails for your YouTube videos a good free program you can use is Gimp. This can be used for videos of all kinds and allows you to mask out people, objects or characters that you can use in your designs. There are plenty of tutorials and helpful guides online that you can use to learn Gimp and create the ideal image.
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe really brings the heat when it comes to creativity, and Premiere Pro is no exception. Inside Premiere you can adjust and set your work space accordingly to maximise your workflow and efficiency. Premiere comes with effects and adjustment options that you can use to edit and improve your video clips.
Much like Adobe’s other creative products you can use it on a Mac or Windows computer, and due to the commonality of the program you can find many guides and tutorials to help you learn and create.
Canva
Creating thumbnails can be a hassle, however Canva makes it incredibly easy with different premade templates to choose from, as well as a bundle of graphic elements, free fonts and images that you can use. Canva is also good for other types of designs, such as logos, infographic and banners.
YouTube Creator Studio
People often overlook the YouTube Creator Studio app, however for content creators it can make connecting with their viewers on the go easy and fast. Inside the App you can check on your latest stats, upload video thumbnails and manage your existing content. One of the best features of the app is that you can engage with your community and reply to your comments.
Magix Vegas Pro
Magix Vegas Pro is a long running video editing software originally developed by Sony as apart of the Sony Creative Software line. For a long time Vegas has been a tool used by YouTubers across many genres, with it you can edit HD videos easily.
Magix Vegas comes stacked with existing effects that you can use, however there are also an array of third party plugins that you can get to take your editing to the next level.
YouTube and Google Auto-Fill
When looking for keywords or video ideas the YouTube and Google search bar can be incredibly powerful and is very simple to do, begin typing in a related question, phrase or keyword in the realm of your content and let the auto-fill feature suggest other related ideas for you.
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)
Gamers and Streamers are all very familiar with the popular free software OBS, the program is available on Windows, Mac and Linux and has varying features that can be useful to all YouTubers and particularly those in the gaming niche.
With the software you can create scenes, stream and record your gameplay or screen, and add varying other media sources on top for a seamless live stream of content. Although OBS is mainly used for live streaming and recording gameplay it is incredibly effective for its screen recording features, which can be used for informational videos or tutorials.
ShadowPlay
Made by Nvidia, ShadowPlay is one of the best ways to record and capture your PC gameplay, it provides the ability to record as you play, or use the instant replay feature to record a moment after it has already happened. For gaming creators this can be helpful for making sure to never miss out on an awesome moment and create content for your social media. You can also take screenshots in 4k resolution and create GIFs which you can share.
