When I first inherited the channel from the client, it was evident that it had not kept up well with the last five years of YouTube development. It was also more about utilising YouTube to show embedded videos on the client’s website rather than a channel in its own right.
Although a banner was present, there was no profile image, no video thumbnails, only several very outdated playlists and an inadequate channel identifier (“motorscouk”). In short, none of the features that defines a progressive and interactive channel.
I was given free reign to clean up the channel and make it into a fulfilling and dynamic experience for customers. To that end, I made these improvements:
Change the channel’s username from “motorscouk” to the correct “Motors.co.uk”, using the Google Plus feature. This was also represented on all posted videos.
Created a new profile image using the company’s “M” symbol. This too was seen on all posted videos, emphasising the client’s brand on every video they posted.
Organised each video series into its own, self-updating playlist, enabling customers to subscribe to a series of their choosing.
Completely revamped the channel’s homepage to primarily feature current, on-going series, with the addition of previous series as separate pages.
Created a new template for video thumbnails utilising the corporate font and colours, featuring the car and series name in distinct, bold text to make the videos stand out amongst the other video suggestions. I added these to new releases and retroactively applied to previous series-based videos.
The refresh was completed in March. I continued to manage the YouTube channel until August, uploading videos, tagging them and writing descriptions.
I also started a series timetable, with certain episodes of each series being queued and released automatically on a certain day of the week. This regular release schedule was designed to enable customers to anticipate the next episode and therefore increase viewership.
Channel views picked up significantly after the refresh, and the client’s newly thumbnailed videos enjoyed noticeably higher viewcounts than they had previously
