19Optimizing, Launching, and Promoting Your Video
Most content creators upload a video and just let it do its thing, but the upload is not the end. If you want to really succeed on YouTube, you have to actively watch and respond to the data coming in after upload. Your #1 goal is to get the right type of viewer coming in quickly so the algorithm can recognize them and know who to keep pushing it to. You should treat the upload as a part of a sequence when you're launching a new video. Let's walk through step‐by‐step on uploading a video to YouTube. Then we can get to the fun part of optimizing, launching, and promoting your content.
How to Upload a Video
In your YouTube Creator Studio, click on the icon in the upper right corner that gives you the option to upload a video. Then you can upload your video in one of two ways: either drag and drop, or click on Select a file. You can actually upload as many as 15 videos at once here, which can be a huge time saver. How long it takes to upload obviously depends on your file size and your Internet speed. Once it's done with the processing time, you'll need to change the default title to the custom one you've carefully crafted from the exercise in Chapter 15. Then you need to fill out the description, which is also important to include words that deliver on the promise of the title and video. Next up, change the auto‐generated thumbnail to the custom one you've spent a lot of time creating (also from Chapter 15).
After you've plugged ...
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