Create a hub for your videos using YouTube

What is a video hub?

Well, if you have a series of videos, or some videos which fall under a particular theme, a hub is a place where you can access all the videos in that series or group. The above video is an example of this. It's a video which presents the six videos in our One-Minute Content Marketer series. Just click on an episode to watch it.

Why should I create a video hub?

It just makes things easier for your audience. If you're publishing a series of related videos over a number of weeks, even interested viewers might struggle to watch every part over, say, a six week period.

Also, once you've finished publishing all of the parts, creating a hub just means that you have one place to direct your audience to where they can choose which videos to watch, whether they missed some when they were originally posted, or they're just interested in some topics more than others.

Ultimately, presenting your content like this is just another way you can be flexible to make the content easier to consume for your audience. You're giving them a better experience.

How do I create a video hub?

There are a few ways you can approach this, such as by building new landing pages and microsites. However, the easiest (and cheapest) thing you can do to get you started is to use YouTube. There are three tools on youTube which allow you to add interactivity to videos: Annotations, cards and end screens. Here are the key differences between them:

1) Annotations

• Add as many as you like
• Not mobile friendly
• Annotations have a size limit and they are only allowed to cover up to 30% of the player size.
• Add text and hotspots which can be linked
• You can manually create end screens.

2) Cards

• Add up to 5 cards
• Mobile friendly
• Not movable within the video frame - Cards are shown on the right-hand side of the video on desktop and below the video on mobile. If there are multiple cards on a video, viewers can scroll through them while the video is playing.
• Add links, polls, videos, playlists and donation or funding cards
• Best used to link viewers to more information on things as they're mentioned in the video.

3) End screens

• You can only add up to 4 end screens
• Mobile friendly
• Add videos, playlists, links and text
• Cover the last 5-20 seconds of a video
• Best used for giving viewers more associated videos at the end.

On one hand, it's great that YouTube are regularly tweaking their interactive video tools. However, in the case of a video hub like we've got at the top of the post, annotations are still the best tool to use. In our case, it allowed us to link to 6 videos, and ultimately we needed this for our 6-part series. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on mobile devices, which is frustrating. End screens look like a step in the right direction, but you can only have 4, and they only last 5-20 seconds. Also, by creating a picture-in-picture video, you can just use the spotlight annotation so users can click on a moving video, which is superior to clicking on a thumbnail anyway.

To get started, you need to:

• Make sure you're signed in to your YouTube account.
• On the YouTube home page, click on your user icon in the top right hand corner and go the Creator Studio.
• In the menu bar on the left, select Video Manager.
• Select the video, then click Edit.
• In the tab bar at the top, you'll see End screen & Annotations, and Cards. Once you select one, there'll be a button on the right of the video frame which will allow you to add these to your video.

If you found this useful, take a look at some of our other advice on publishing your content:

• SEO and video: how to boost your rankings
• Why use an Online Video Platform (OVP)? Finding alternatives to YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo, Part 1
• Drawbacks of Online Video Platforms (OVP): Finding an alternative, Part 2

Author: Sam Willet

Sam is a Producer and Client Manager at Ember Television. He has worked in online media since graduating with an MA in Film and TV from the University of Birmingham, and loves a good human interest story. You can contact him at [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=294919697&authType=name&authToken=k-zK&trk=prof-proj-cc-name https://twitter.com/ember_samw