If you ask any person who works with social media, without a doubt he will say that a huge part of your successful performance depends on how good is your knowledge in the promoting channels you use.
As YouTube videos are rapidly becoming one of the most effective ways to engage with the target audience, understanding how to skillfully use various video tools is crucial in becoming number one.
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Despite the fact that YouTube is the most popular video streaming platform, there are a lot of YouTube features you may do with YouTube that you probably had no idea about, no matter if you are viewer or have your own channel and create videos.
For instance, have you ever heard about an opportunity to share a YouTube video at a specific time? If not, don’t miss a chance to learn some little known secrets that the famous social media platform offers in order to impress your audience.
In today’s article we will not only see what the special features of YouTube are, but also discuss how to apply them in your daily activities.
Let’s get started.
1. Turn a video into a GIF
Nowadays for a lot of people GIFs are more attractive than videos, however not everyone knows how to make them. Actually, it is easy, the only thing you need to do, is a little trick with your YouTube video’s URL.
Here are steps how to do it:
- Select and turn on the video.
- Find the URL at the top of your browser and enter the term “gif” between www. and youtube.com.
- It will redirect you to website gifs.com where you will find your video ready for editing.
- On the left side of the screen find a menu with editing options and at the bottom a timeline; here you can select which time interval to convert into a GIF, add captions or sticker, change colors and more.
- Press the button “Create GIF”, it will ask you to write GIF title and add tags.
- When process of GIF creation and editing is finished, press the button “Next” and it will transfer you to the page from which you will be able to share your created GIF.
If you want to download your GIF and use it offline, you need to sign up on gifs.com.
2. Select specific replay time
Have you ever found yourself wanting to share a video but skipping some unimportant parts and jump to a particular moment? Probably yes, but as you know there is no official suggestion how you can do it.
Normally you send a whole video and tell other user from which minute they need to press start. However, you probably didn’t know that there is a YouTube feature which lets you to easily create links that automatically start from a right moment in the YouTube video.
Here is how it works:
- Open up the video and click “Share” (under the video title).
- Under the first tab (Share) that appear, put a tick next to “Start at” and enter the time from which you want to start the video; there is an option just to pause the video at the time you want to begin and YouTube will automatically insert the time.
- After entering a specific time into a box, you will notice a tag to the end of your video URL that means video start time.
- Copy and use it wherever you need.
Once the user opens the YouTube link, the video will play automatically from the time you specified. You see, it is easy; however, it is a quite useful feature about which a minority of us know.
3. Save videos to watch later
Have you ever faced a situation when an entertaining video catches your attention but you have other important tasks to do? Probably at these moments you was thinking that it would be great if you could leave this video for later viewing without repeatedly searching for it.
Don’t panic, in similar situations like this, YouTube suggests using the function “Watch Later”.
How to save videos to watch later:
- Open up the video.
- Click on icon “Save”.
- From drop-down menu select “Watch Later”.
- In order to find and view your saved videos, go to YouTube’s homepage, click on three horizontal lines’ icon on the left top corner of the screen and select “Watch Later” from the menu.
4. See the transcript for videos
Have you heard that YouTube automatically creates a written transcript for every video that is uploaded on its platform?
Actually, anyone has an access to the video’s transcripts and without a doubt a lot of people will agree this function is useful and saves your time. Imagine, you don’t want to watch a whole video but need to take some quotes from an interview and write them in your report, so you can easily open transcript’s section and find the text there.
How to find the transcript:
- Select and turn on the video.
- Click on “More” icon which is under the video title.
- From drop-down menu select “Transcript”.
However, if you can’t see “Transcript” from a selection, it means that video uploader has hidden the written transcript.
5. Delete search history
Do you want to delete all unnecessary things from your YouTube search and watch history? In this case, you are lucky one because YouTube platform lets to clear your previous browsing history and turn off the function of recording what you are searching for or watch.
If you want to know how to clear your history, follow the steps below:
- Go to YouTube’s homepage, click on three horizontal lines’ icon on the left top corner of the screen and select “History” section from the menu.
- From the list choose the particular thing you want to delete (for instance, watch history, search history, comments and etc.).
When you tick off “clear all watch history”, you will clear all the records related to your past activity, and when you mark “pause watch history”, you will stop recording your performance later.
If you think that this YouTube feature is handy, go ahead and use it.
6. Schedule videos for later publishing
This YouTube feature is significant especially for social marketers because it lets to publish a video when it’s the most strategic time for you, in other words when your audience’s active hours are. What is more, scheduling will help you not to forget to upload a video and to stay consistent.
This short guide will explain how the scheduling feature works:
- Go to your YouTube channel.
- Click icon “Upload” on the top right corner of the screen.
- From the menu choose “Scheduled”.
- Upload your video as you usually do.
- Once your video is uploaded, on the right side select the date and time when you want the video to be posted. Furthermore, you can write a message where you will describe some details about your video to you subscribers.
- In order to confirm your scheduled video, clink on “Publish” button. Note: your video will be private until the scheduled time.
Don’t forget that YouTube gives you an opportunity to schedule the several videos for the future with a different date and time.
As scheduling isn’t an attractive part of being YouTube video creator, but it’s consider to be important because it helps to reach your audience at their most active hours, increase your subscribers’ base and upload the content regularly.
7. Create a live stream
Live stream’s feature introduced by YouTube is an interesting and useful way to interact with your audience in real time. When the video is live-streaming, a chat section will appear where users can write their comments.
How to do it:
- Go to your channel and click “Upload” button.
- In an appeared window choose “Live Streaming” on the right side and click “Get started”.
- Before you start your live-streaming video, YouTube platform will check your channel’s verification and make sure of the fact that you are free of live restrictions for the past 90 days.
- Once everything is approved, before starting live-streaming, you need to download and set-up encoder. Here are the instructions how to do it: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853700.
- It is advised to choose “Events” instead of “Stream now” because it provides you with better control of your live video, it means that you can set the time at which you want to start and privacy options and enable backup live streams.
Without a doubt, YouTube live streaming is a pretty new and compelling feature. Try it and you will see that users appreciate your sociability and openness.
Wrapping up, we hope that these 7 YouTube features and tricks which were discussed in today’s article will make your experience on YouTube platform richer and probably give you more success.
Now don’t sit and wait for some miracles to happen, just go to your YouTube channel and try our tips!
