New features for teachers

It’s World Teachers’ Day, and to honor the hard-working and talented people in front of classrooms everywhere, we’ve put together some new resources to make YouTube even more useful for learning. (Oh, and we’re celebrating teachers in the YouTube logo today too! Check it out!).

First, we’ve created a special YouTube EDU Creator Playbook Guide (download it here), full of video best practices for online educators to learn from each other. The Guide suggests ideas for organizing curriculum videos on YouTube, attracting a bigger audience to your educational content, and explains how to use YouTube features like annotations and playlists to make educational channels more interactive.

Second, we asked James Sanders, KIPP Bay Area Innovation manager (and former YouTube teacher-in-residence), to create a presentation on 10 ways teachers can use YouTube to build a 21st century classroom. It’s full of great, proven ideas for using YouTube to bring educational topics to life. For more advice, and playlists of educational videos visit YouTube.com/Teachers.

Today we also hit a great milestone at YouTube EDU - more than 1000 educational channels to learn from. So whether you’re a teacher looking to make physics more fun, an art student looking for inspiration, or a parent needing help with algebra homework, there’s a channel on YouTube EDU for you.

If you create great educational content and are interested in having your channel added to YouTube EDU, you can nominate your channel here.

And to teachers everywhere - thank you for all you do!

Arthur Woods, YouTube EDU team, recently watched “Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation”.

Game on: YouTube Creator Playbook Version 2 now available

When we first released the YouTube Creator Playbook with tips for succeeding on YouTube, things were a little different. You didn’t have all the new channel features, the homepage didn’t yet have a guide to help you find and follow to channels you like, and you were uploading 48 hours a minute.

As we work on the site, we want to make sure you’re the first to know every tip and trick to succeed on YouTube, so today we’re launching version two of the YouTube Creator Playbook. In addition to these updates, almost every page includes your feedback (thank you!). Here’s a few of the key things to look for in the new version:

New channel & homepage section
With the launch of our new channel pages and updated homepage, we’ve created a new section on how to organize your videos for different audiences, and how to program your channel to help you make the most of the feed on the YouTube homepage.

Go global
Your channel reaches a global audience, so we’ve added a new section to help creators create, program, and optimize for audiences around the world.

Updates to annotations, playlists, publishing and more
Your feedback and new features helped us update much of the playbook on topics like annotations, playlists & video responses and call to actions.

Glossary
If you’re new to YouTube or the Creator Playbook, we’ve included a glossary to help you quickly learn all the site’s features, and the strategies, terms, and topics used in the playbook.



We hope this update to the YouTube Creator Playbook is a helpful tool if you’re just coming to YouTube for the first time, as well as help YouTube pros quickly learn new features to keep expanding your audience. We’ll be talking more about the new playbook during our Partner Meet-Up Livestream on YouTube.com/youtube at 5pm PT today.

Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched “Rodrigo y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. - Area 52 Album Trailer.”

YouTube Creator Playbook: Use analytics to build an audience

This is part of an ongoing series sharing tips from the YouTube Creator Playbook, a resource of best practices and tips you can start using on your Channel and videos right away.

There’s tons of data and information available about your Channel, videos and audience in YouTube Analytics, but the power of this information rests in how you use it. Here are tips for how to monitor the overall performance of your Channel and how to assess your videos based on the what the data is telling you.

Find the Story Behind the Data

• Learn what each metric means and how the different metrics correlate to one another to find the 'why' and 'how' of trends you're seeing. Don't just kick your feet up when you see a nice spike in views - dig deeper to learn more. Find what video is causing the increase or look at traffic sources to see where the new views are coming from.
• Hear FreddieW discuss how he uses tracking and measuring to assess the impact of all the strategies he tries on his Channel:

Peaks, Most, Biggest

• Use Analytics to investigate ‘peaks’ and ‘most’ of each metric. What videos are driving the most subscribers and why? What week did your Channel get the most views and what traffic source makes up the biggest portion of your views? Answers to these can help you plan your future videos based on where you’re seeing the most success.
• Gunnarolla uses Analytics to find out where his views come from for his Channel:

Videos Driving Subscribers

• Now you can not only track your daily subscriber gains and losses, but you can see what specific videos are driving your subscriptions. Find out which call-to-action are helping you get the most people to subscribe to your Channel.

Use Your Archive

• YouTube Analytics is a great way to keep an eye on how your archive is performing, beyond just new uploads. The 'Top 10' and video level metrics allow you to see which videos from your archive are still performing well or maybe even spiking in viewership. Use this information to prioritize what videos to optimize with annotations, new thumbnails or playlists.

To learn more about using YouTube Analytics to help your Channel succeed and many other tips, check out the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched “Echoes...”