Having difficulty maintaining an audience to watch your YouTube videos? If you are uploading videos on this platform, it is especially important to include information that makes your video discoverable and interesting to an outside viewer. Confused about where to start? We’ve got the basic information and tips to include to help you upload your videos to YouTube. We explain what the keywords, thumbnails, categories, end cards, descriptions, and titles have on your videos’ audience engagement and reach.

Uploading videos to YouTube requires more than just simply selecting the file. There are multiple steps that will dramatically help you to reach your target audience and upload more efficiently, and we’re here to help you with some of the basics.

First of all, videos can actually be uploaded from both computers and mobile devices. On mobile, you can upload videos you have on your camera roll, or film something to directly upload.

There are various elements that will help you reach your audience, these being titles, descriptions, categories, and keywords. Titles may seem self-explanatory, but are incredibly instrumental in a user’s decision to click on your video or not. Descriptions will normally have a short paragraph describing your video and may include links to things such as your website or other videos. Keywords are words associated with your video that you can include in the upload process. These can be researched using tools such as Google Adwords and will help users find your video when searching phrases that include your keywords. Lastly, categories are what your video roughly falls into, such as music, gaming, or comedy. Only one category can be chosen, however, so pick what category your video fits into best if it would work with several.

Thumbnails, along with titles, will be the first thing that users see about your video, and so are extremely important. Thumbnails should have an aspect ratio of 16x9, and ideally a resolution of 720p.

Lastly, end cards can be added to the last little bit of your video. These can direct users, with only one click, to subscribe to your channel, another one of your videos, playlists, another user’s channel, or even your website. These can be great to keep the user engaged with your content after watching your video.