YouTube: Getting interactions with annotations and cards | Tech Help for Churches

On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Getting people to take actions in your video with annotations and cards.

Hi and welcome again to another episode of Tech Help for Churches. This is the show where every week we talk about using the Internet, new media, social media, etc. in your church. My name is Paul Alan Clifford I’m your host love for you to join the conversation ask your questions etc So if you’re watching the video just leave those questions below. If you’re listening to the audio just hit me up on Twitter @PaulAlanClif — P A U L A L A N C L I F or you can always just drop me a line. Paul {at] Trinity Digital Media dot com, a perfectly acceptable way to do it as well.

So with the exception the last week which was an interview that I got to do, we’ve been talking a little bit about using YouTube in your church. So the question you might have is, “Well it’s all fine and good that people are watching videos on my YouTube account. at least on the church’s YouTube account. But how can I get them to take action to actually do something.” You know getting people to watch is one thing; getting people to interact is something totally different. So happily YouTube has added a couple of features that make this possible.

First off I didn’t put this in the intro, but you can absolutely put your church’s web site immediately below the video in the description box. You’ll see on my videos that are on YouTube I’ve done just that. I’ve put in my website so that people can click on that. Now as long as you’ve got a started out with the http or http:// got to start with and then do the rest of the URL but as long as you do that that becomes clickable. And if you do it in one of the first three lines then they can see that at all times unless they’re full screen on the video. So that’s hint number one and hint number two is you want to be using a dedicated account for your church and make your church his website the associated web site. So what do I mean by Associated website?

In YouTube, they don’t want people just making videos that go left right and center all over the web. You know spammy videos etc, but if it goes to your Web site that’s OK with them. So you can inside the creator tool box in YouTube you can designate a website to be your associated web site the website that goes with this YouTube account. You’ve got to do a couple of things to make sure that it actually is your website and not just one the picked out at random. But once you do that then you can put that website in an annotation. Now an annotation is kind of a cool little thing it’s a box that becomes clickable so you can make that box link to another video (you’ve probably seen this) or you can make that box link to your website. You can make it just say words. There are a lot of things you can do with annotations.

One thing that has changed recently is they’re experimenting with something called cards and now cards are a little bit better than annotations at least from a design standpoint from a functionality standpoint maybe not so much. So all try and remember and leave a link to a video I saw from the FrugalFilmMaker where he talked about some of the downsides of cards. But from a design standpoint from the standpoint of something that looks like it is much more professionally done a card is actually a better way to go. So you have the ability at a certain time to bring up a card and say hey click this right now. And if they don’t click on it that’s OK it will shrink down and they’ll always be able to click it. So that’s something pretty cool.

So annotations and cards are ways to get interactivity in your website, well in your YouTube account rather, interactivity that just watching a video won’t provide. Now I will admit it can get a little tiresome to put in a lot of annotations and this is probably one of the biggest problems that I have personally. I have a place for an annotation at the end of all the videos that I upload to YouTube, but most of the time I’m too lazy to fix that. You know actually put the little link that goes somewhere so I’m probably actually leaving a lot of traffic on the table by not having a place where people can actually click it just looks like they can click. So that’s something that I would recommend that you do is you don’t follow my example, you don’t create a video with a place for an annotation and don’t actually link to that. But you do the best practice which is create the video with a place for that annotation and you actually create a link to it. So someone who really does a good job at this is Jimmy Fallon. Now I’m sure it’s not Jimmy himself. I’m sure it’s a staff person that does this and this is their job, but at the end of all the Jimmy Fallon tonight show videos you’ll notice there are a couple of boxes you can click on where you can watch other episodes, you can watch previous episodes, etc. That is a great example.

So for your church you can just create a little graphic that goes on the end and says hey the previous week’s series, this current series, this is how you give your life to Christ. Anything you want and have those link via annotations to other videos or even directly to your church’s website so you can really get people to go back to your church’s website based on the content you upload to YouTube.

So I hope that is just a couple of things for you to consider as you’re going out and changing eternity. If you like this content, don’t hesitate to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter that’s located at TrinityDigitalMedia.com/gifts — G I F T S. There I’ve got a bunch of Free Church tech gifts for you and you’ll get a free copy of my email newsletter which tells just some quick tips and also upcoming news in the church tech world.

Until next time. This is Paul Alan Clifford with TrinityDigitalMedia.com.