If you want to upload videos, collect videos, like or give thumbs-up to videos, you must also create a channel of your own. There are two types of YouTube channels: personal channels and brand channels. A channel is used as the homepage of a user account and is the user’s personal image on YouTube.
1. YouTube channel types
Before creating a YouTube channel, you must first understand the difference between a personal account and a brand account. A personal account is a YouTube account logged in with a personal Google account; a brand account is a YouTube account logged in with a Google account. When creating a channel, you set the option “choose to use a business name or other name” and a brand account is created.
(1) Personal channel.
A channel created with a personal account is a personal channel. Videos can only be managed through your personal Google account and cannot be managed with other people.
(2) Brand channel.
In actual business activities, a merchant’s YouTube account often needs to be managed by multiple people or in cooperation with other companies. In this case, a brand channel needs to be created. At this point, the YouTube account becomes a brand account and the merchant can add other Google accounts as administrators to manage the channel together. That is, channel administrators can upload videos to brand channels through their respective Google accounts. In fact, brand accounts refer to the names of brand channels. When creating a channel, choosing to use a business name or other name is equivalent to creating a brand account.
2. Create a YouTube channel
(1) Visit the YouTube official website, click “sign in” in the upper right corner, and enter your account name and password.
(2) Click “your channel”, and the pop-up window will automatically use your account name as the channel user name. Click “CREATE CHANNEL” to complete the creation of your personal channel.
If you want to create a brand channel, click “Use a business or other name” in the pop-up window, enter your brand name or company name as the channel user name in the new window, and click “Create” to complete the creation of the brand account and brand channel.
3. Basic settings for YouTube channel columns
As you can see, the channel is still blank. Click “CUSTOMISE CHANNEL” to edit the channel.
Then, set the channel icon, channel picture and channel introduction respectively.
(1) Set the channel icon.
Please hover your mouse over the square in the upper left corner and click the small pen that pops up. It will take you to your Google profile to change the picture. It is strongly recommended to submit JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG with a resolution of 800x800dpi. The channel icon displays different information on different devices. Therefore, when making pictures, put the key information content in a reliable position.
(2) Set the channel picture (branding picture).
Please click “Add channel picture” (English in the picture) and upload the file. It will show how the channel picture will be displayed on different devices. ① Minimum size for uploaded photos: 2048×1152 resolution; ② Recommended size: 2560×1440 resolution; ③ Minimum reliable area for text and logo: 1546×423 resolution, large photos will be cropped; ④ Maximum width: 2560×423 resolution, when this width is selected, the content in the “reliable area” of the photo will always be visible regardless of the screen size; ⑤ Image size: no more than 5MB.
(3) Set up a channel profile.
Click “About” to fill in some basic information about the business, including description and custom links. When writing a description, be detailed but also strategic; YouTube will scan this content to optimize the user’s search experience, so please enter as many keywords as possible. Next, you can also set up an email address for interested buyers to send inquiries.
You can also add additional links, up to 5 links, which can link to the official website of the merchant to guide viewers to purchase directly, or attach blog links, social media links, etc. to provide users with more meaningful content, which are all good choices. These links will appear in your YouTube channel to the right of your channel art.
Now that your YouTube channel is set up, you can start uploading videos.