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Social Media Marketing Talk Show
YouTube Updates: Collaboration Opportunities, Shorts Features, Creator Tools, and More
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Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Talk show, your guide to the ever changing world of social media. On today's show, we are going to Explore some big YouTube updates for you, including a new feature that can help you grow your audience using your existing videos. This is really cool. Also, a B testing of titles is finally here. Plus an additional tip shared by someone from YouTube that I saw last week at the VidSummit conference in Dallas that I'll share. If looking at YouTube analytics is not your idea of a good title, good news from that front as well. And there's a common call to action that a lot of us have been making in our YouTube videos for years that we need to stop immediately. I'll tell you what that is as well. My name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a Social Media examiner production where we break down all the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. All right, let's start off with collaboration. So YouTube has been rolling this out and now it should be available to everybody soon. If you don't have it now. I got it. This is the. The ability to tag up to five collaborators on every video that you put out. And essentially when you do that, the name of the collaborator and the subscribe button will be shown prominently. So a few people that I've talked to have tested this and they're seeing their subscriber counts go up substantially. I immediately reached out to a few people that I've done videos with in the past and said, hey, maybe we test this out together so we'll see how well it works. But early, early observations are that it's going really well. So the way that it works is essentially you add this other person and then you send them a link, they click the link and then they have to approve. Yes, I'm a collaborator on this video. And now the video has a chance to go out to both of your audiences. Okay. But I don't want you to always think about this as other people's stuff. You also have the potential to do this if you have more than one channel. So things to know. One, the person who uploads the original video retains all the analytics. So it's not like all of a sudden, if a video gets 5,000 views, both channels get 5,000 more views. It's whoever uploads the video originally. So if you're doing an exchange collaboration, you'd probably do it two ways. Like both parties would each upload a video. So views AdSense dollars, if applicable, all of that goes to whoever uploaded the video. Another thing, you can add it to your home screen and this will happen automatically. I actually went in and turned mine off because I only had one collaboration. I thought it looked weird down there. But basically, you know how you can set up a YouTube homepage with different playlists? Well, now you can have one that is just your collaborations if you do this regularly. The cool part is you can do this on new or old videos and you can do this for any size channel. So this is where I think this is an incredible opportunity, if you have more than one channel, to use one channel to grow another. I have one primary channel, thinking about starting another one. And it's like, oh, that, that could be an interesting way. So some of the audience, you know, crosses over. That could be an interesting way to grow a new channel as well. So you should have that. If you don't, you should have it soon. But basically during the upload flow, you'll see an opportunity to add somebody as a collaborator up to five different channels or on an existing video, just go into the edit screen, scroll past the title description and you'll see it down there as well. All right, YouTube monetization updates. Brand collaborations has been a big thing over the last couple of years, obviously on YouTube, and now they're making them even easier. So if your brand wants to work with influencers, for example, and you do this through the brand marketplace, some new things. One, linkable shorts. So imagine somebody makes a short about your business and it's sponsored. Now they'll be able to link it back to your website, which is huge. Also, AI powered product tagging and expanded YouTube shopping access is coming to more markets. So that area is growing and growing and growing. And if you haven't delved into that, you know, definitely something to maybe think about this quarter or maybe in the beginning of 2026. All right, YouTube is another program called Open Call. So in the similar space, if you want to work with creators or influencers to make content about your brand, this is inside of brand connect on YouTube and it's just for the US right now. But if somebody is in the YouTube partner program and they want to break into sponsorships, essentially what you can do as a brand, you can go in and you can put up a branded content opportunity in the YouTube Studio app under the Earn tab. So this is only on mobile, this is not on desktop because it's for short. So they only put it on mobile for now. And so you'd be able to post your opportunity in there and Then creators can submit videos based on what you asked for, no edits allowed. And then they can earn up to $3,500 per approved submission. So it says up to. So I don't know if there's lower price points that you could get into this as the marketer or as the business, but pretty cool opportunity. Now, one thing to know about this, and I think this is good on both sides, if a video is selected to be used as a partnership, it automatically becomes a partnership ad for 100 days and then after that it's a renegotiation if the brand wants to continue to use it after that. And then the payment goes out through AdSense. So YouTube is taking care of all of that, which is Nice. Another update, YouTube has now grouped product tags for shopping, so you can now tag grouped products. So, for example, let's say that something you sell has multiple variations. You know, this happens a lot, I think, in clothing, shoes, certainly electronics. And in the past you'd have to go back and make sure all the stuff was always updated. Well, now you can group things with multiple variations, which will be really nice. Reduces tagging friction and avoiding out of stock issues. Another feature that may not feel like it's for us as marketers right away, but I really think this could be cool, is courses on YouTube. So this is something that they have been playing with and it's now available to anyone who has the advanced features unlocked. So if it's been a while since you set up your channel, you basically go in and you do different ID verifications to unlock all of the features, like the ability to publish longer videos, to have an end screen to do live streams, different things like that. And so if you have advanced features that's going to be turned on automatically, you can now have courses on YouTube and the courses have some different things, like you have course specific comments, you can have quizzes, different things like that. So it's got some features that you wouldn't have just in a basic playlist. And in addition, if you add these, because I had an email marketing course on my channel, a basic thing for helping people get started. And so I went in and just turned the playlist into a course. On your homepage you will now have a courses tab. So if somebody lands on your page and they're like, oh, I want to learn something, they can click on courses. So I think there's a lot of opportunities there. But even if you're not in the education space, imagine having better formatted tutorials for your products or how to use or using these to answer some of the frequently asked questions so you can cut down on customer support later on. So I think that's a really cool opportunity there. All right, lots more updates that we got to talk about, including AB title testing and specifically how to use it properly. Great tip that I heard from somebody from YouTube last week when I was at the VidSummit conference. But if you are wasting time right now on generic marketing advice, Social Media Marketing World is coming and it delivers proven strategies you can put to work before you even leave the conference. Attendee Beth Harner said, great lineup of speakers, content was great, relevant and useful. I walked away with many things that I could start doing right away. And Jules McGuire said, Every single session I attended I've been able to take away probably three things, things minimum that I'm going to be able to implement immediately. So every session that we build at Social Media Marketing World is designed for that immediate implementation, including AI workflows that streamline content creation, Instagram tactics that boost engagement fast, LinkedIn strategies that generate qualified leads, video creation shortcuts that save hours each week for YouTube and other platforms. Plus your all access ticket includes an extra day of workshops where we go even deeper into implementation. So claim your spot now. Early Bird Pricing Just go to Social mediamarketing World Again. Social mediamarketing World all right, if you are a business or a marketer that has a podcast, some new tools that are going to be really impressive assuming they work well. Now I haven't seen these quite yet, but this is for YouTube lives and for podcast tools that will generate video clips and shorts from the audio using Google's veo, their generative AI video tool. So if this works the way that I think it's going to work, you know, if you're already publishing your audio podcast on YouTube automatically, you would be able to select or AI would select certain clips and then VEO would generate video clips to match up with what you're talking about. So it's almost like automatic B roll that goes with your audio podcast to turn it into shorts. So they're not going to do this for full podcast episodes, at least not yet. Because obviously generative video is exp but pretty cool way to get a lot more I was going to say eyeballs, but really I guess it'll be both eyeballs and ears on your podcast episodes. By taking clips, adding video to make them more engaging, and getting then people to subscribe to audio podcasts. Another feature that is rolling out and so much clever stuff they're doing right now, they call it a member only stream switch. So if you have a membership on YouTube or you want to build a membership on YouTube for your best clients and customers, you can essentially be doing a public live stream that goes out to everybody on YouTube and then you can say, by the way, after I finish teaching this, I'm going to be doing, for example, a Q A for members only, or I'm going to teach a bonus thing, or I'm going to show you a bonus thing, or to see the results of this stunt or this experiment we're doing for members only, I'm going to be, we're going to be doing that. And so it's the same live stream. And so you'd go through and you do your thing. You could promote it either through on screen graphics or by telling people. And then at some point you switch and the stream goes to members only. So people could sign up and become a member because they wanted to stay on. Right. FOMO is powerful and so when members look at the replay later, they see the whole thing, the public part and the private part all together. But then people who are on the public side only see the public part. I don't know this for sure, but theoretically somebody could join your membership after the live stream, even if they watched it later, and then see both halves. I can't imagine why that wouldn't work. It just popped into my head. But that's another way to grow memberships if you are doing that. All right, another update for shorts. A new Live to Shorts preview is essentially going to extract a short video from mobile live streams viewable after ending the stream. So this is something else that was talked about a bit at VidSummit last week, where you do a live stream on mobile, right? So it's one of the vertical live streams and it will automatically pull shorts out of it. You'll be able to approve them and then publish them after it's over. So it's really interesting to see all of these ways that YouTube is making it easier to get content out on YouTube without even needing anything else, without having to use a third party tool. Now, I'm not suggesting that people will stop editing, you know, their really nice looking videos and other tools. I certainly won't. But it is interesting to see them pushing this in quite a few different ways. Another shorts update, they call it Extend with AI. So this is a new remix feature where you take somebody else's short and then you can add on to it. But what happens is it lets you generate AI generated segments to the existing shorts. So basically you take a 5 second clip from an eligible short, choose an AI suggested prompt and then create a new short with additional music and editing options. So then these remix shorts are linked back to the original uploaders video, which can then boost discoverability for both people, both on both ends of it. So extend with AI is what it's called, so that's what you want to watch for. And it's rolling out globally, excluding the European Union and the UK for now, and initially in English, but they are planning to expand it to other languages and regions as well. And then another thing with shorts, again, this is what I was just talking about, where it looks like we're going to be able to create better and better videos all within YouTube. Inside of Shorts they are integrating Google DeepMind's VO so again the video generation to enable features like motion effects, video restyling and even speech to song. So if you've seen platforms like suno where it'll write a song and sing it or perform it, or I don't know what we call it when AI makes it, does AI sing the song that'll be included in there for shorts creators. So it's pretty impressive if you think about, oh, I used to put up a video and maybe I choose a, I don't know, a Taylor Swift song or a Blink 182 song or whatever it might be, but now you'd be able to actually create your own song about whatever the video is there. There's also going to be another edit with AI tool that converts raw footage into video drafts. So lots and lots of exciting stuff that is rolling out with all of this. All right, I got to talk about this. I was excited about the collaborations, which is what we talked about at the very beginning of the show. But the A B title testing is also potentially a huge game changer. But it's important how you use it. And this is something that I picked up from somebody at YouTube at VidSummit last week. So YouTube is rolling out the ability to test up to three different titles. So we've had a B testing for thumbnails for a while. And so with the new tool, and you may already have access to it, I do. You can test up to three different titles, or you can test up to three different thumbnails, or you can test combinations. So this was a big talk. There was a lot of discussion about this @VIDSummit last week. And one of the things to, you know, think about if you had three different titles and three different thumbnails. I don't know the math off the top of my head, but that is a lot of variables. So unless you have a massive channel that is getting, I don't know, tens of thousands of views in the first 72 hours, it's going to be hard to get statistically relevant data from that because there's just too many variables. So two things that were suggested by Renee Ritchie, who's YouTube's creator liaison that spoke at VidSummit last week. Number one, if you are going to test different things, test wildly different things. So don't test changing out the word the with the word and or something, if that made sense in your title, don't just change. The example he gave was don't just change somebody's shirt color on the thumbnail. Like, try very different concepts to get more concrete data. And then the second thing he said, unless you're one of these channels that's going to get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views in the first few days, either decide that you like your title and then test the same title with different thumbnails, or decide you like your thumbnail, you love your thumbnail, and then test different titles, because again, once you start filling out all of those different variations, the data is just not going to be as accurate. Of course, you can always go back and run new tests, right? You can go back and start a new test anytime if you're willing to put in that time. And for some channels, it's obviously worth it. But the general idea is either decide I love my title, so I'm going to test these different thumbnails, or I love my thumbnails. So I'm going to test these different titles. A couple of updates in YouTube Studio 1. If you do not like looking at analytics or you go, you know, you get in there, you just go, oh, it's just too much. Wish you had somebody to do that for you. Well, they're rolling out what they call Ask Studio, which is a conversational assistant for insights. So some of us have tried downloading the analytics and putting it in Chat GPT and asking chatgpt about it or Gemini or something like that. But now this is all going to be built into AI Studio, where you can basically just say, hey, what are some recommendations? Or you can ask it very specific questions. You can ask it about your AB title testing. You can ask, you know, different things like that, all based on your analytics. So, so huge game changer if you want to just be able to talk to somebody. So it's almost like you have an analytics person on your team and you can just ask them based on that. Still, AI, obviously we still want to use our best judgment. All right, important update. If you have ever said, hey, subscribe to my channel, which a lot of us do, and you have pointed to the little hover button in the lower corner for them to do that where they hover over your watermark and then they can subscribe. Well, YouTube is removing that. Okay, so on desktop, YouTube is removing that hover to subscribe button from video watermarks, they say to simplify the interface, they said they've tested it and it shouldn't have much of an impact. But obviously if you're in your videos telling people to go click there and they can't, that's not going to work any longer. The other thing though too is if your watermark is a subscribe button, then it's time to maybe go in and change that to something else or remove it altogether. All right. And I'm really excited about this tool. So if you have a channel where you are managing the comments and there's a significant amount of comments, we've always had this great filter that's on by default in YouTube studio that shows you all the comments without replies. So you can just quickly go through and reply to the comments that haven't been replied to or since your last session. Right. But if somebody then replies to your reply, that has not been an option. You had to go look at notifications and kind of chase those down or take off that filter and then scroll through trying to find that stuff. So now there's a new filter called responses with new replies. So now we can go in and manage comments even faster. All right. Another big thing that was Talked about at BitSummit last week, there was a couple of things around doing videos either with no language or in multiple languages to reach the expansion of YouTube across the globe. And on the the Multiple languages side, YouTube has been rolling out this auto dubbing where you can have your video automatically translated into different languages. Well, now they're rolling out a test to have what they call expressive speech and lip syncing in those auto dubbed videos. So in other words, it will not only change to the other language, but the mouth of the presenter will actually change to match up as well. Like it'll be easier for somebody to follow because they can literally read your lips as they are hearing it in the other language as well. Well, and if you do vertical live streams on YouTube, a new interactive sticker poll is rolling out. This is your ability to customize polls with up to four options. A great way to get really high engagement during your live streams. All right, quick reminder. Learn about an all access ticket to Social Media Marketing World. Today we're going to be talking about YouTube along with all the other platforms, AI and more. Just go to Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing World again, Social mediamarketing World to get your ticket right now. And if you want to add another podcast to your listening lineup. If you enjoy this one, you'll probably also love the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Search for that wherever you get your podcasts. All right, until next time, may you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks everyone. Bye. The Social Media Marketing Talk show is a Social Media examiner production. For more social media insight, visit Social Media socialmediaexaminer. Com. This is the year to finally come to social media marketing world 2,026. Grab your tickets right now by visiting socialmediamarketingworld info.