V is for Valour #YouTube #AtoZChallenge

YouTube - What They Don't Tell You
V is for Valour

"Courage doesn't mean you don't get afraid. Courage means you don't let fear stop you." -Bethany Hamilton

My AtoZ theme this year is my YouTube journey with my new fiction channel, and all that I have learned - plus some free fiction - scroll down to the embedded vid for that.

Putting ourselves in front of a camera, or even just behind a microphone takes courage. All of us with blogs or who write books etc, know how hard it can be putting our work out there for the world to see. Being right there with it, in person as it were, can be harder (at least for those of us who did not grow up with TikTok).

Image by Gioele Fazzeri from Pixabay 

 I've had a podcast for a while now (it's naughty so not suitable for YouTube – Virginia Waytes' Sexy Stories), so recording the longer stories was nothing new for me. However, the shorts, with me actually being on camera, now that was a bit of a leap. I'm pretty used to it now, but at first it was nerve wracking.

Vid making is like anything else, we get better at it the more practice we have. Hence, the best advice I can give is:

• Practice before committing to that first vid, at least a little bit, to make it as good as possible.
• Accept that things will improve over time and the first vids will probably make us cringe when we look back.
• Ball up all that courage and hit post!
• Do not feed the trolls – I've had two so far (just little ones) and they are not worth our time. Ignoring them is best, unless they are breaking the rules, then report them.

How do you feel on vid? Do you love being on camera or do you need all your courage?

Current YouTube Episode

April's Theme - Ghost Stories

New story every week day at 4pm GMT

Please subscribe to never miss a vid (it's free).

---

About the AtoZ Challenge

The A to Z Challenge happens every April. Bloggers from all over the world come together to post every day in April, apart from Sundays, inspired by the letters of the alpha bet. A = April 1st etc. Some of us have themes, some of us don't. Click the image below for more info and links to other participants.

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Check Out My Fiction YouTube Channel

Tales with Tasha

Each week we have a theme and so there will be something for all tastes.

• 🎤Micro stories as YouTube Shorts Monday - Thursday - for fun quick viewing
• 🕮A longer story every Friday - for story time, over coffee or before going to bed

Tasha's Social Media

@beren_writesFacebookInstagramLinkedInAmazon

📚Join My Newsletter📚

Receive 2 FREE eBooks just for signing up and a free short story once every month on Free Fiction Friday.

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U is for Undertaking #YouTube #AtoZChallenge

YouTube - What They Don't Tell You
U is for Undertaking

"A schedule defends from chaos and whim." – Annie Dillard

My AtoZ theme this year is my YouTube journey with my new fiction channel, and all that I have learned - plus some free fiction - scroll down to the embedded vid for that.

The YouTube algorithm likes channels that have a regular schedule and don't have big gaps between videos. This is very important for new channels and smaller channels that don't have the help of having massive audiences to please the algorithm in other ways. Hence, once we begin to build our channels, we should be ready to keep it going with consistency.

This is a big undertaking, so timing is important. If other big things are coming up and might take us away from our channel, we should wait.

Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay 

In the smaller scheme of things, it also helps to have our own schedule. It makes it much easier not to miss a release if we know what needs to be done and when. We're back to my lists again. I have days and times planned out when I know I have to do things to get my vids ready and up. I give myself a little wiggle room, but try very hard to keep to my schedule in its purest form.

For example, here a few of my key milestones:

• Monday is shorts recording day. I set up my ring light, my phone, my tablet and off I go.
• Wednesday is book formatting and uploading day, because I have a book to go with every long ep on each Friday.
• Thursday is long vid editing day, because when I'm using After Effects I can do nothing else on my PC or the whole thing stops. Animation if memory, GPU and CPU hungry!

Current YouTube Episode

April's Theme - Ghost Stories

New story every week day at 4pm GMT

Please subscribe to never miss a vid (it's free).

---

About the AtoZ Challenge

The A to Z Challenge happens every April. Bloggers from all over the world come together to post every day in April, apart from Sundays, inspired by the letters of the alpha bet. A = April 1st etc. Some of us have themes, some of us don't. Click the image below for more info and links to other participants.

---

Check Out My Fiction YouTube Channel

Tales with Tasha

Each week we have a theme and so there will be something for all tastes.

• 🎤Micro stories as YouTube Shorts Monday - Thursday - for fun quick viewing
• 🕮A longer story every Friday - for story time, over coffee or before going to bed

Tasha's Social Media

@beren_writesFacebookInstagramLinkedInAmazon

📚Join My Newsletter📚

Receive 2 FREE eBooks just for signing up and a free short story once every month on Free Fiction Friday.

Click here to join the Wittegen Press Newsletter

List hosted on MailChimp, information will only be used for Newsletter contact, and we do not send spam.

T is for Thumbnail #YouTube #AtoZChallenge

YouTube - What They Don't Tell You
T is for Thumbnail

"Why would they have book covers if we aren't supposed to judge the book by them? It makes no sense." – Ingrid Weir

My AtoZ theme this year is my YouTube journey with my new fiction channel, and all that I have learned - plus some free fiction - scroll down to the embedded vid for that.

Thumbnails, contrary to popular belief are not just the annoying things on the ends of our thumbs that have a nasty habit of splitting in painful places. Thumbnails are what YouTube call the image everyone sees when they show your video before it is played. They are very important.

Well with one caveat – I'm honestly not sure how important they are on shorts (vids in portrait of less than 1 min), because YouTube keep messing with when they can and cannot be seen on shorts.

But let's pretend they are not completely screwing with our strategy and accept they will get it right in the end.

Image by Luisella Planeta Leoni LOVE PEACE 💛💙 from Pixabay 

Think of the thumbnail a bit like a book cover because it has the same job. Thumbnails are there to entice viewers to click on and watch our vids. Our vids will be judged by the thumbnails in searches or if someone just happens across our channel.

They should be:

• Bright
• Bold
• Eye-catching
• Have one or two, easily read, bold phrases.
• Should have something to do with the video content (you would be surprised how many lie – but we're not a huge content farm, so we need to make sure not to piss off our viewers)

For long form YouTube vids, the thumbnail is what always shows. We choose our thumbnail in YouTube studio when editing the content, and that is what is always served up for people to see first.

Many people put themselves in their thumbnail, usually over acting to grab people's attention.

This is a thumbnail by Nerdecrafter – a successful YouTuber. That would be her alter-ego SaltyCrafter, who is salty about all things. It is bright, it poses a question, and it intrigues us.

I do not put myself in my thumbnails because my vids are fiction, so I try to use the book cover method and drag people in with something that reflects the content. I use images from the following sites to create my thumbnails:

• Unsplash
• Pixabay
• Pexels

All of these can be used free for commercial purposes, with no attribution required, but I always put a credit in the description, because I feel it's the right thing to do. Pixabay is really useful because people post art there that can be used as well as just photos.

Thumbnails & Shorts

Now to the fun part – shorts. When I first started uploading shorts, the thumbnail showed just like it does on longer videos, then they changed the shorts interface, and they don't always show up anymore. However, sometimes they do, and I have seen it flip back to showing everywhere a couple of times, so I keep making them.

Thumbnails for shorts should be composed differently than for longer videos anyway. Think of them like a portrait central focus, like you would see on a phone screen, with a landscape background that may or may not be seen.

Thumbnail for my vid "Fight Forever"

When I upload my shorts via my phone, once it has been accepted as a short (it takes the algorithm a little while to check it to make sure it fits the requirements), all I see is the middle third of my thumbnail. Hence, I put everything important in that section of the image.

When I see the thumbnail on the regular YouTube interface I can see the whole picture, so I still try to put something in that space.

However, at the moment, the only place I ever see my thumbnail is in playlists, like this example of my Horror Fiction Stories playlist.

Everywhere else, I see a still of me taken from a random part of the vid that I have no control over at all. This following image is from my channel's front page.

This is extremely annoying.

I have no idea if it will stay like this now, or if they will change it again, but I wish they would make up their mind.

Summary

Thumbnails are there to be eye-catching and enticing. They are part of our brand and I would suggest finding something that works and sticking with it. I have missed vids from channels I subscribe to because they completely changed their thumbnail format before now.

There are many vids on YouTube that go into detail about how to compose thumbnails, I suggest watching some of them.

If you frequent YouTube, what attracts you to a video? If not, what attracts you to books or movie posters?

Current YouTube Episode

April's Theme - Ghost Stories

New story every week day at 4pm GMT

Please subscribe to never miss a vid (it's free).

---

About the AtoZ Challenge

The A to Z Challenge happens every April. Bloggers from all over the world come together to post every day in April, apart from Sundays, inspired by the letters of the alpha bet. A = April 1st etc. Some of us have themes, some of us don't. Click the image below for more info and links to other participants.

---

Check Out My Fiction YouTube Channel

Tales with Tasha

Each week we have a theme and so there will be something for all tastes.

• 🎤Micro stories as YouTube Shorts Monday - Thursday - for fun quick viewing
• 🕮A longer story every Friday - for story time, over coffee or before going to bed

Tasha's Social Media

@beren_writesFacebookInstagramLinkedInAmazon

📚Join My Newsletter📚

Receive 2 FREE eBooks just for signing up and a free short story once every month on Free Fiction Friday.

Click here to join the Wittegen Press Newsletter

List hosted on MailChimp, information will only be used for Newsletter contact, and we do not send spam.

S is for Subtitles #YouTube #AtoZChallenge

YouTube - What They Don't Tell You
S is for Subtitles

"I think MTV should consider using subtitles. Half the time even I can't understand what the f**k I'm talking about." – Ozzy Osbourne

My AtoZ theme this year is my YouTube journey with my new fiction channel, and all that I have learned - plus some free fiction - scroll down to the embedded vid for that.

There are a surprisingly high number of people who use subtitles [Edit: Thanks to some helpful input in the comments, I think I may be talking about closed captions, but YouTube just calls them subtitles in the back end so I failed to realise there was a difference 😉] when watching videos. They are not just useful for those with a hearing impediment, but for neurodiversity, or those who need to watch the vids without sound because they forgot their headphones, or aren't allowed to use them and more.

There is also some evidence that Google spiders subtitles to help list pages, which can only help with the visibility of videos.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

So, if we can, we should add subtitles to our videos. First and foremost, to be inclusive, and secondly because it can help us too.

I do this by typing them in by hand in YouTube's Studio. When using this method there are a couple of things that are good to know:

1. Wait until the vid is fully uploaded and processed to be able to see the waveform of the soundtrack. This makes it much easier to see where to begin and end each subtitle.
2. It is awkward to resize a subtitle using the mouse if it's too long or not long enough. Move the timeline pointer to where the end needs to be, look at the timestamp just above the waveform and type it into the second box on the subtitle in question. It is much easier than trying to get the little arrow to show up when clicking around with the mouse.
3. When creating a new subtitle, put the timeline pointer where the end should be before clicking the plus button below the previous subtitle to create a new one. The new subtitle will then appear at the correct length without having to fiddle with it.
4. If you have a long vid with large gaps in the subtitles, it is faster to note down where these need to go using the preview pane, then type in the approximate times for beginning and end of the next one, rather than trying to scan through vid on the timeline panel. At least for me it is.

If you have much longer videos that would require a great deal of time to subtitle, there are companies that offer specialist services.

Do you use subtitles when watching videos? Why?

Current YouTube Episode

April's Theme - Ghost Stories

New story every week day at 4pm GMT

Please subscribe to never miss a vid (it's free).

---

About the AtoZ Challenge

The A to Z Challenge happens every April. Bloggers from all over the world come together to post every day in April, apart from Sundays, inspired by the letters of the alpha bet. A = April 1st etc. Some of us have themes, some of us don't. Click the image below for more info and links to other participants.

---

Check Out My Fiction YouTube Channel

Tales with Tasha

Each week we have a theme and so there will be something for all tastes.

• 🎤Micro stories as YouTube Shorts Monday - Thursday - for fun quick viewing
• 🕮A longer story every Friday - for story time, over coffee or before going to bed

Tasha's Social Media

@beren_writesFacebookInstagramLinkedInAmazon

📚Join My Newsletter📚

Receive 2 FREE eBooks just for signing up and a free short story once every month on Free Fiction Friday.

Click here to join the Wittegen Press Newsletter

List hosted on MailChimp, information will only be used for Newsletter contact, and we do not send spam.

R is for Review #YouTube #AtoZChallenge

YouTube - What They Don't Tell You
R is for Review

My AtoZ theme this year is my YouTube journey with my new fiction channel, and all that I have learned - plus some free fiction - scroll down to the embedded vid for that.

As an author, I have always been told, do not engage with reviewers, be they good or bad. I once got a 1 star review saying my book was "Full of lies" – it was fiction about vampires, so can't fault them on that one, but it was a very odd review to leave. I went on my way and ignored it.

With YouTube, we don't have reviews per se, we have comments. And that's all we have to begin with (later we are given a community tab we can play with to talk to our subscribers, but we don't get that to begin with). Comments are a bit like reviews, in that they comment on our content. Unlike reviews, however, we very much need to engage.

Comments fluff the algorithm. Be they good comments or bad comments, they make the algorithm happy. We want more comments, lots of them, and we want engagement.

So, when starting out, we need to respond to every comment we get.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Further down the line this is likely to be impossible, but when we are starting out, we need to get in there every time a comment drops.

Oh, and as I mentioned in my "B is for Bugs" post, if your comments are sorted by "Top Comments" which I believe is the default, you may not see what the algo deems questionable comments. Resort by "Newest First" and you should be able to see them.

Some of these questionable comments are perfectly innocent, some are trolls. And when I say engage, I do not mean, feed the trolls. If you get really nasty comments report them and be done, well, unless that is the vibe you are going for. Some channels thrive on drama.

I've had a couple of odd comments so far, but nothing nasty. Honestly, most of my comments have been from family and friends so far, but I have still engaged with every single one.

There is a very useful comments tab in YouTube Studio which allows us to see all comments and sort and filter them, including by "I haven't responded". And it allows us to reply right there rather than having to go to the vid post too.

So basically, think of comments a bit like reviews that we have to respond to. How we respond will set the tone for our little slice of the YouTube community. And, as I mentioned in my "K is for Karma" post – go out and comment on other people's content too. And make sure to make it about their content, not just a chance to mention yours, because it's a bit like reviewing – you don't spend a whole review talking about your own book. Comments are part of the life blood of YouTube and should very much not be ignored.

Do you comment on vids when you use YouTube?

I am trying to train myself to leave comments - I always like vids I enjoy, but comments are something I am forcing myself to leave. 

Current YouTube Episode

April's Theme - Ghost Stories

New story every week day at 4pm GMT

Please subscribe to never miss a vid (it's free).

---

About the AtoZ Challenge

The A to Z Challenge happens every April. Bloggers from all over the world come together to post every day in April, apart from Sundays, inspired by the letters of the alpha bet. A = April 1st etc. Some of us have themes, some of us don't. Click the image below for more info and links to other participants.

---

Check Out My Fiction YouTube Channel

Tales with Tasha

Each week we have a theme and so there will be something for all tastes.

• 🎤Micro stories as YouTube Shorts Monday - Thursday - for fun quick viewing
• 🕮A longer story every Friday - for story time, over coffee or before going to bed
• This week we're going for 5 micro stories & a box set kind of vid on Saturday - to see what happens.

Tasha's Social Media

@beren_writesFacebookInstagramLinkedInAmazon

📚Join My Newsletter📚

Receive 2 FREE eBooks just for signing up and a free short story once every month on Free Fiction Friday.

Click here to join the Wittegen Press Newsletter

List hosted on MailChimp, information will only be used for Newsletter contact, and we do not send spam.