Mashable.com posted a great article with four easy steps for optimizing your Youtube channel, and grow the number of people who see your ministry’s videos. Optimizing your video channel increases the odds of your content bubbling up to the top of everyone’s search results both in Youtube, and in other search engines like Google. And getting your videos in front of more people increases your ministry’s reach simply by making more people aware of you.

Here are three takeaways from the article that I think any Christian ministry can benefit from.

Clever Video Titles Don’t Help You

What I mean by that, is that a video title that is too creative and artistic can actually hurt you if it’s not very descriptive, or if it’s a phrase that that’s not commonly searched for. You can increase the odds of someone stumbling upon your video if you form your title around a key phrase that is commonly searched for, and quickly sums up your video. What’s really interesting is the suggestion of using that key phrase in some form twice in your title, once at the beginning, and again towards the end. The idea being that search engines reward you for having key phrases in strategic places.

Link Back To Your Own Christian Ministry Website

At the beginning of the description field for each of your videos, include a link that takes people back to your ministry website or blog. This simple step gives people the opportunity to connect with your ministry beyond Youtube, which is important if they’re finding your videos before they find your website. Your videos are now a gateway to the rest of your ministry.

Post Your Videos As A “Video Reply”

Youtube allows you to reply to someone’s video through comments, and through video replies. By posting your videos as a “video reply” to other videos that are related in topic to yours, you can easily build and expand your viewers. People who weren’t searching directly for your content are now much more likely to see it as they search for, and watch, other people’s videos.

What are some ways your church or ministry is using YouTube?

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Mashable did an interesting article about how non profits can use YouTube to increase their impact. Unfortunately, most of their ideas aren’t applicable to Christian ministries since they hinge on being a part of YouTube’s non-profit program which excludes organizations that are religious or political in nature. One really helpful insight they gave though is about how to make your videos, and thus your ministry, more visible on YouTube, as well as in Google search returns.

Something as simple as strategically thinking through the title of your videos, and which tags to use, can make a huge impact in helping them go viral. By using words and phrases related to terms that people are already searching for, your videos have a better chance at appearing at the top of their search results. Tying in keywords from a popular current event, or popularly searched topics can also help your videos gain more organic traffic.

Another feature you can take advantage of to encourage a deeper level of viewer engagement and participation is embedded annotations.

With embedded annotations, you can insert buttons that overlay your video. These buttons are really just links to your other YouTube videos. With a little creativity, you can make your own “Choose Your Own Adventure” video series. Here’s a great example

How is your ministry using Youtube? Let us know.

Photo by fabricio CC BY 2.0

It can be difficult to connect students in your ministry to each other, especially if they are different ages or do not live close to each other. Producing videos is not only an awesome and effective way of communicating with your students but can provide a unique opportunity to unify the students within your ministry.

Brendon Patubo a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo produced this video for one of their social events. Check it out!

Here’s what he said about the process:

There was a lot of coordination involved and required all participants to be timely and patient. Each 5×5 segment was produced by creating a plan on a word processing document that was then posted on a secret Facebook group. Each participant was asked to be attentive to this Facebook
group to get the latest instructions.

Each had to be timely in the filming of their own part and submitting it quickly so I could put it all together. We all learned how to be patient with one another as clips were submitted at various times (some later than others, past our scheduled deadlines) and patient as some clips often had to be redone due to incorrect timing or misread individualized instructions. In the end, we were able to craft a fun video illustrating the dedication of a small group of students in a way that helps to promote our ministry as down-to-earth and comfortable to be around.

If you have yet to set up a YouTube channel for your ministry, do it RIGHT NOW! More and more students are going to YouTube to discover and explore information. Think of it as the cool kid’s Google!

But before you do, be sure to create a separate gmail account for your ministry (ex: yourministry@gmail.com) so that you can link the YouTube channel to that address and not your personal email.

Otherwise personal videos will show up alongside ministry videos, which can be distracting for the person coming for one or the other.