Get the Call To Action Link You’ve Been Waiting for on Your YouTube Videos

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PLEASE NOTE: YOUTUBE NO LONGER ALLOWS US TO CREATE VIDEO ANNOTATIONS. USE CARDS AND END SCREENS INSTEAD. 

Previously I shared how you can use Annotations to add InVideo Programming across all the YouTube videos on your channel. If you missed the first post and video, you can check out Part 1 in this series called Now That You Stated Making Videos Here's How To Get More Views on YouTube. As promised, in Part 2 of the series I'll follow-up by showing you how to create those coveted, clickable Call to Action links from inside your YouTube videos back to your blog. You'll see how to successfully craft your Call to Action phrases to entice viewers to leave YouTube and check out your promotional offers.

Before you watch the video, I want to again stress how important it is to get started creating YouTube videos. Take a look at these stats, according to YouTube, the latest usage stats are more than mind-blowing:

YouTube Videos

“Viewership

  • More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
  • Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year
  • 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
  • 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
  • YouTube is localized in 56 countries and across 61 languages
  • According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network
  • Millions of subscriptions happen each day, and the number of people subscribing has more than doubled since last year”

You can capitalize on the popularity of YouTube and strike while the iron is hot!

I doubt if things will ever cool off when it comes to the power of using YouTube videos to reach your target audience, so don't take any chances. Don't wait until you get everything perfect or you will suffer from paralysis by analysis. Get started now,  and learn from your mistakes because that is the only way you'll get better recording videos.

You'll grow an active audience along the way the same way that I have. Now watch the video and give it a like, share it or leave me a comment below or on YouTube.

Transcript:

YouTube Annotations Part 2 Add A Video Annotation With a Clickable Link to Your Website


Hey guys it's Ileane from BasicBlogTips.com and today we're going to continue our series about
getting more views on YouTube using Annotations. If you didn't see the first video – we talked about InVideo programming.

Now today we're going to get into putting annotations on individual videos.

There's a few benefits of adding annotations to videos so let's go over those real quickly:

  • One would be to get more subscribers on your channel
  • The other would be to get people to watch more of your videos – you know YouTube likes when we keep people on YouTube – so if you have videos that are related, you want to get people to check out the other videos on your channel
  • And more importantly for bloggers and website owners we want to get people to come back to our website

So let's see how we can set up annotations to do those three things.

Go into your Video Manager and next to each one of your videos you'll see “Edit” and you can add your annotations that way.

Another way we can access the annotations is right from the watch page of a specific video and the annotations are indicated by this little icon right here.

Here's an example of an annotation that I set up on this video.

I put an overlay of the cover of this YouTube Report I did and when people click that link they go to a page where I have a sign up form for people to get the report and sign up for my email list.

Now let's go into YouTube and setup an annotation

The annotations interface is pretty simple. You come over here if you wanna add an annotation.Link To Your Blog From Youtube
Here's the different options you have:

  • Speech Bubble
  • Note
  • Title
  • Spotlight and
  • Label

Most of the time you're going to want to use one of these that will link back to something. So I recommend the
spotlight or the note, but you can experiment with all these to see which ones work best with your video and your content

Let's keep it simple and add a note.

Now what you'll see here is the timeline and this is the indication for where you want to place the annotation in video. Keep in mind
as I showed you in the previous video about InVideo programming you don't wanna have too many calls to action at one specific spot in the video. Since I know that my InVideo programming is in the last 30 seconds of the video then I wanna keep any other annotations towards the beginning or the middle of the video.

So you'll type in your message – you have choice of four different font sizes – the color of the text – and I would always just try to make it contrasting. It could be black or white but remember to not use black text on a black background or white on a white so use any of these other contrasting colors that will make the annotation standout then once you've done that this is where you get the choice to link to:

  • A video
  • One of your video playlists (that's also an excellent idea)
  • Your YouTube channel
  • You can also link to your Google+ profile
  • Get people to subscribe to your channel
  • If you have a fundraising project or
  • An associate website – and also
  • Merchandise

In this case we're going to link to an Associated website and just so you know, the “Association” has to be set up in your YouTube settings before you can use your website link.
In my case I already have my blog “Basic Blog Tips” setup as my associated website. Real quickly – In order to

Get That Associated Website

Go into your channel settings under the Advanced tab – Associated Website is right here. You add in your name of your website and then you'll get success – it will give you an option to approve that.

Once you've had annotations in place on a few videos, give it a few weeks, and then come over to your analytics. Go down to annotations – of course this is in beta  – and see how your annotations are performing. For ones that are doing well for you like I mentioned before – the spotlight and the notes do well for me so therefore I go back and I add more of those.

But you just continue to test until you find out the ones that are helping you reach your goals. That's it for today and I wanna see you succeed on YouTube. Please subscribe to my channel and keep following me for all these tips I have lots of them on my website as well and I'll see you in the next video…

Wrapping Up the YouTube Annotations Series

I hope you enjoyed part 1 and part 2 of the series on creating annotations for your YouTube videos. I plan to bring you more tips and strategies that will help you use video marketing to get more traffic and subscribers. Effective use of video can help you quickly increase your authority no matter which niche you're in. In the meanwhile, take your time and go through all of the YouTube related posts and tutorials on this blog by clicking the YouTube link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

One more tip: I use a combination of LeadPages and Pretty Link Pro to create the sign up form and the clickable Call to Action link that I use for the annotation example during this YouTube video. Stay tuned for more information about those two tools to grow your email list, promote your YouTube videos and more in future blog posts. Those are my affiliate links and if you use them I'll earn a commission but it doesn't effect the price that you pay.

If you have questions about creating annotations for your YouTube videos, now would be a good time to ask. Tell me what you think about me using the full video transcript in the blog post too. I'd love to hear your feedback.

24 thoughts on “Get the Call To Action Link You’ve Been Waiting for on Your YouTube Videos”

  1. Mohit

    Ileane your videos on Youtube are always very useful..I think that you are helping out bloggers in knowing that how one can promote the videos on Youtube in right way..Call to action links can be really very useful…

    1. Ileane

      Hi Mohit,

      Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you enjoy my videos. I hope you get a chance to give them a thumbs up!

  2. Tom Jamieson

    Hi Ileane, I’m glad to see you doing this series on YouTube. I’m looking forward to learning all about it. Have a great evening!

    1. Ileane

      Hi Tom,

      It’s my pleasure to share any YouTube tips that I can get my hands on. Thanks for the comment and you have a good one too.

  4. Zenelia

    Hi Ileane….
    well no doubt these are the great tips for youtube platform but like youtube there are some other video platforms also and I want to work on them well also ..you youtube tips were really wonderful but if you have some thoughts over platform like Wistia then do share… I am also going through it , so I just want to discuss it with you over it so that we can result out some best ones….

    Thanks….and keep posting

    1. Ileane

      Zenelia,

      I signed up for Wistia and tried out their platform and I think it’s great.
      The platform you use for video is very dependent upon your goals. If you want exposure to a new audience you will want to use YouTube because Wistia doesn’t have a “social” aspect to it. But if you are only interested in using video to promote your business on your website then give Wistia a try.

      By the way, YouTube is the only video site that provide annotations with clickable links on their site.

      You should also check out Viewbix to enhance your videos with calls to action.

      1. Zenelia

        Thanks Ileane…for your response…and now m just looking forward to manage both the platforms simultaneously so that I can promote my business video in both manner . I know youtube is an unmatchable platform with some sort of application…..so youtube will be my main source for sure and Wistia will be a new one to try….
        In the end result matters is the audience and for that both are nice one to go for…:)
        Thanks for your responses and keep posting these valuable articles….keep it up

  5. Hyptia

    You Tube is one of the best platform to attract unique visitors on your site but for that you will need to do things like that which all comes in favor of you.

  6. Priya

    I was trying to put a link on my video & looking for some help & I came across your website.
    Thanks for your suggestion as I was thinking to provide the link in the middle of the video but I think, its good idea to insert near the end.

  8. Muhammad Waqeel

    Your youtube video are always helpful for bloggers……..i think its the best way to promote the blog with uploading a valuable video and getting traffic on it!
    Nice article…..thanks for sharing!

  9. Pramod

    Thanks for sharing the tutorial Ileane ! I think on a platform like YouTube creativty matters , if your content is creative …it would surely help you to accomplish your goals.

    -Pramod

  10. Ashi

    Hey Ileane.
    Well Youtube is the great way of driving huge traffic to your blog/website. I used to create video casts and upload them on the YT, Some of them went viral and I received lots of traffic.
    many people earning thousands of bucks using YT,
    Want to ask you one thing. You have disabled the comment luv plugin ?

    1. ileane

      Hi Ashi,

      I didn’t disable the CommentLuv plugin. I just turned off the Luv module. I still use all the other awesome features like GASP, ReplyMe and more.

  11. Lynne

    Thanks for the tips for the you tube videos. I agree that youtube videos can help promote your blog or business a great deal and any help is very much appreciated. Thanks again.

  12. James

    Very useful article about YouTube … It’s very informative…I learn so many things to add to my YouTube videos from now 🙂 thanks Ileane…

  13. Nithin Upendran

    I read your last post on How to get more views on youtube.Thanks again for sharing such a great advice to beginners like me.Your videos are always helpful for me.Thanks again!

  14. Reginald

    Hi Ileane,

    Thanks for sharing this video. Bloggers like me (newbie in Youtube) really can learn a lot from your videos. It is extremely useful and voted up! Definitely worth the time reading and watching.

    Keep it up!

    Reginald

    1. Ileane

      Hi Reginald,

      Have you thought about what kind of videos you will post on YouTube? I hope you are not camera shy? Let me know if you need help getting started.

  15. Ian Ray

    Thanks for this great article posting. I finally found tips in how to create video blogging in youtube and how to increase more traffic on it. Thanks

  16. Parker

    Ileane,
    Parker here. Thanks for the info. Adding annotations is like leaving no stone unturned for traffic conversions. One would be enormously benefited by adding one, I would add this to my arsenal here after.

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