YouTube Success: Create Your Own Brand and Stand Out!

1. Welcome to the Class!: More and more people are starting YouTube channels than ever before. Now, does this mean that it's too late to start? Of course not. New channels are still blowing up every day. But what is important is to take the time to consider how your unique skills and talents and perspectives can help you resonate with audiences and stand out in a crowded market. My name is Luciana. We have over a decade of experience working as a professional designer with brands both big and small. And more importantly, I also run two YouTube channels. I believe that everyone has a unique story to tell and telling yours is the key to unlocking success on YouTube, which is why in this class we're gonna be uncovering your brand story, starting with a series of brand exercises and then moving into developing your very own channel visuals and brand guidelines. 2. Class Project: For our class project, we're going to be developing our very own unique set of style guidelines. This is one of the most important documents for any brand, whether it's professional or personal, or for YouTube. This document is going to help guide your content creation now and in the future so that you can spend less time thinking about how you show up on YouTube and more time actually creating content. We're going to be building our guidelines in Canva, which is a free online graphic design service. I've already created a template to help get you started, which you can find a link to in the course notes below. And once you have finished your project, make sure to upload it in the class gallery so that other craters can look at it and find inspiration. 3. Lesson 1: The Importance of Branding for Creators: This lesson we're gonna be learning about the importance of branding for content creators. So what exactly does branding entail? Branding is the process of creating an identity for a product or a service. In a nutshell, it's how you differentiate yourself from other creators, which makes it a crucial element of success for any creator. So as a YouTuber, your branding is gonna be how people recognize and remember you. But it's not just about the visual elements that you might be thinking like your logo, your color there, typography, all those things are important, of course, but your branding is more about your overall identity as a creator, which means it includes your niche. You're filming style, the way you speak, and overall just your unique perspective, your brand is a reflection of who you are, what you stand for, and what you have to offer your audience. It's how you communicate your message and how you connect with your viewers. And at its core, branding is really a way for the roots to know that they belong with you. And it's the first step to building a loyal audience that will stick around with you for the long haul. Some really great examples of strong branding include the famous Mr. Beast, who is known for his philanthropy and his crazy stunts. Matt de Vela, who is known for his minimalist lifestyle and productivity tips, and Lynn Truong, who is often recognized for her aesthetic vlogs and hand-drawn visuals. These craters have all built a consistent and unique brand identity and it's what helps them stand out from the millions of other creators out there. And now we're gonna get started on helping you craft your own brand so you can stand out on your channel. 4. Lesson 2: Identifying Your Brand: In this lesson, we're gonna be focusing on the foundational elements of your brand. By the end of this module, you're going to have a clear understanding of your target audience, your elevator pitch, your brand name, your brand archetype, and your brand voice. Now it's time to actually start on the class projects so that you can follow along and build your brand as we go throughout the rest of the course, open the link provided to you in the class description. If you don't already have a Canva account, you're going to need to set one up, but don't worry, it's free. And once you're all set up, you will be brought to this page. The first step we always want to consider when building a brand is to decide on who exactly the target audience is. And from there, we can decide on the exact type of topics that, that target audience is likely to click on. Whether you have a very specific niche in mind, or you're just going for more general lifestyle content and covering a broad variety of topics. You always want to keep this target audience in mind as you're creating content, e.g. if I wanted to create a brand for a channel focusing on New York real estate, I might decide that my audience is going to be first-time home buyers in New York City. Potential topics I could cover for this audience would include different market conditions and the various neighborhoods, financing and taxes, housing trends, and common property types. Now let's move on to some exercises to help you clarify what your brand is actually about. Exercise number one is developing an elevator pitch. This is actually the most important part of creating your brand because once you have this down, you can refer to over and over again throughout your YouTube career to make sure that you are always delivering on the value that you initially set out for you using our real estate example, a possible elevator pitch would be, I help first-time home buyers in New York City to find their dream starter home. Other examples might include, I helped mothers create productive routines so that they can find more time for themselves. I hope college students build good study habits so they can ace all of their exams. Or I hope aspiring cooks master the basics so that they can create easy and accessible meals all the time. Exercise number two is going to be figuring out your channel name. Now a lot of people choose to go with their own name, or you can also choose something that is relevant to your niche. And of course, there are pros and cons to both methods. Using your own name is going to help you build up your personal brand and make it easier to expand into different topics in the future if you so choose, but picking a name that is relevant to your niche is going to help other people discover you much quicker and build your channel at a faster rate, especially in the early stages. We continue with our New York real estate example. I'm going to choose the name New York and nesting exercise number three is going to be choosing your brand archetype. Brand archetype is the representation of the personality of your brand. This graphic shows a range of different archetypes you can choose from. Now, going back to our New York real estate example, most creators in this niche are pretty formal and business-like, which makes sense since buying a home is a huge purchase, of course. But for some home buyers aren't necessarily going to be real estate savvy and they might be a little bit intimidated or overwhelmed by the jargon and general vibe of a traditional real estate channel. So one way to send out here would be leaning into that Every Man brand archetype which focuses on a more friendly and approachable and overall relaxed personality for the brand. No, exercise number four is going to be developing your brand voice. Brand voice is simply just how you sound when you're talking to your audience. So for New York nesting, again, we're channeling the every man, which means we want our brand voice to feel very approachable and have a low barrier of entry. So some adjectives I might include for the brand voice would be friendly, informal, and helpful. You can also find more examples of brand voice adjectives for inspiration in the class notes below. 5. Lesson 3: Vision Boarding: In this lesson, we're gonna be building a vision board for our brand and start gathering some inspiration and ideas for what we want our channel to look and feel. Personally, I find the best app for this is Pinterest, but you can also use Canva or any other mood boarding out that you're already comfortable with. So first, I'm going to open up the Pinterest site and start typing in keywords that might be related to my niche or my topic in terms of might use for New York missing would be the New York City skyline, maybe dream condo, Brooklyn brown stones, urban interior design. And here I'm collecting some visuals that feel aspirational and elevated but don't feel too upper-class since again, we're talking to first-time home buyers. I also might look for, if you photos of New York City fashion, maybe people who are around their 30s because that typically is the age of someone who's looking to purchase there for. So once you have a solid selection of images, you can always come back and refer to this at any point during your content creation journey. Whether you need inspiration for B-roll channel art or thumbnails, which we'll go over later in the course. 6. Lesson 4: Logo & Profile Picture: Now that you have a better idea of who you're serving and what your channel looks and feels like. We're going to start creating the actual visual assets for your channel. First is your channel profile picture. And the approach we're gonna go with here is going to depend on the type of channel that you are creating. If you create more lifestyle or personality-based content and you're gonna be showing your face a lot on camera. The simplest approach is to just take a head shot and use that, especially since it's going to help you create a connection with your viewers. Now, if you are building more of an educational content channel and you're using a lot more B-roll and voice-overs, it might make sense to use a logo or another image as an alternative to a head shot. Once you have your profile picture selected and you can easily drop it into the style guidelines. 7. Lesson 5: Choosing Colors: This lesson we're gonna be learning how to create your very own brand color palette. Now given how much time it takes to create videos, I'm assuming you're not looking to become a color theory expert, but don't worry, I have a great resource for helping you pick colors quickly and easily. That is the Adobe color out. You can access it online. No sign-up is required. And what's really cool about this is that all the standard color theories are already built in here for you. What this means is that you can choose just one or two base colors that really appeal to you. And as you click on these different options, you're going to see different palettes automatically generated for you based on different color theories. And there's also a ton of options under the exploring tab and the trending tab. If you want some inspiration to get started, this is going to save you a ton of work on your end and help you build something beautiful with zero design experience. Now, most colors have some sort of mood or association to them. So I suggest picking a base color depending on what you want your audience to feel. Once again, taking our example, New York nesting. We want this brand to feel very friendly and approachable. And because of that, I'm going to use brown as a base color because it emphasizes a feeling of dependability and trustworthiness. From here I'm just clicking and finding more inspiration for additional colors. And I really liked the idea of using a blue to further that concept of confidence and trust. So I think we're gonna be using brown and blue as our main brand colors. And I think I'll add a little bit of orange to help bring out that enthusiasm that most people have when purchasing their first home. Now that we have our brand colors established, it's time to move on to typography. 8. Lesson 6: Typography: Typography is a critical component of any YouTube brand because it shows up across your videos, your titles for your captions or channel art, your thumbnails. So in this lesson we're going to be selecting two different fonts, your primary font and your secondary font. And both of these are going to make up your brand's typography. Now before we get going, let's take a look at some of the best free resources for finding fonts online. This includes Google fonts, Adobe fonts, if you have a subscription to Adobe programs and deaf font. Now we can dive into selecting the main fonts for your brand. When choosing a main font, you want to consider the tone and personality of your brand. You can reference previous exercises before this to get a better idea. E.g. if you're creating content for a younger audience, you're going to want to choose fonts that are a little bit more playful. And on the other hand, if you're creating for finance or business, you want to pick fonts that feel a little more professional or serious. It's also important to consider the readability or legibility of the fonts that you are picking, makes sure that it can be read on various sizes, especially when you size it down small because your thumbnails are going to be very tiny when people see them on mobile. I want New York nesting to feel relatable, approachable, but also still have a sense credibility. So this is the main font that I'm going to be choosing. Once you've chosen a main font, it's time to move on to a secondary font that compliments it. The secondary font should be distinctive from your main font, but it should still compliment it in terms of style and tone. When choosing your secondary font, you can consider using a different typeface families such as a Serif font. If your original font was a san-serif, and also make sure your secondary font is legible when stocked with your primary bond. This is a secondary font that I'm going to be using for our example, selecting the right fonts can make a significant difference in how your brand is perceived. 9. Lesson 7: Channel Banner: Youtube banner is one of the first things that visitors see when they come to your channel. So it's important to make it not only visually interesting, but also informative. In this lesson, I'm going to be guiding you through the steps to create a beautiful banner that represents your brand and channel. Let's get started. Step one is to choose the right dimensions. Youtube recommends a size of 25, 60 by 14, 40 pixels, and a maximum file size of 6 mb. I like creating my banners in Photoshop, but this is also something that can be very easily done in Canada. And one thing that is important to keep in mind is that your banner is going to be resized differently depending on the platform that your viewers are coming to your channel from a mobile, you're going to see more of that vertical spacing. And on desktop there's going to be more horizontal elements showing makes sure that any important text or graphics, or sitting at the very center of your channel art with a lot of negative space around it. Now when you're designing your channel banner and make sure you're reflecting on your style guidelines and all the exercises we have done previously to make sure that all of your visuals are saying consistent. You can pull from the colors, the type that we've added so far. And it's also important to think about the overall message that you want to convey to your visitors. Because a lot of them are gonna be seeing this for the first time. You can also include any graphics or photos, background images that you think are relevant to your brands, topics and niche for New York. And I saying, I'm going to choose an image of Brooklyn brown stones since those are one of the most iconic forms of New York real estate. And by the way, unsplash is a great resource for free images. Now the next step is to add texts. You probably want to have your channel name here as well as how often you plan on posting and maybe some of the topics you cover. And finally, before you post it makes sure you review what this is looking like on mobile and on desktop, and that none of that important information is getting cut off. Congratulations, you now have your very own unique channel banner that represents your brand. 10. Lesson 8: Thumbnails & Titles: Thumbnails and titles are arguably the most important part of any YouTube strategy. It's the first point of contact that any viewer is going to see from you. And most of the time, it's not even on your channel, it's on the YouTube homepage itself. One of the keys to a great thumbnail strategy is to be consistent. You don't have to box herself into a very specific style, but you should be using some elements. While graphy or color, or types of images that are consistent throughout most of your thumbnails. Let's return to some of our examples that we mentioned earlier in the course. If you look at Mr. Beast or Matt de Vela or Lynn strong, you can see that they're thumbnails, although there are variations depending on the topic or the video, there are a lot of consistent elements. And if you see one of these thumbnails on the homepage, you'll immediately know it's them posting it before you even see their name. Titles are equally important and give you another opportunity to showcase your brand when writing them, make sure that you're referencing your brand voice to have a consistent tone and style. You can also use similar formulas and capitalisation across all of your videos. E.g. some people like to only use lowercase to make it feel a little bit more casual. And some people want to use title case or uppercase to indicate a more formal or educational video, e.g. if New York nesting, we want our audience to see our videos as informal and approachable. So instead of titling a video, the realities of investing in Upper East Side real estate. We might say, what is the operating side really like once we have an idea of what we want our thumbnails to consistently look like. We can go ahead and create some examples using stock images and our brand guidelines just so we have something to reference in the future. So here's what I would want. Our thumbnails will look like for New York nesting. 11. Lesson 9: Filming & Editing Style: In addition to traditional styling elements, there are also plenty of ways we can incorporate our brand identity specifically when creating videos on YouTube. First, is to create a specific interests style for your videos. I suggest using something simple, like, Hey, I want Santa, welcome back to the channel. Or incorporating a catchphrase that your viewers can recognize each time they come back to your videos. It's important to keep this short because the days of long, elaborate animated intros of YouTube are far behind us. So a simple greeting nowadays is more than enough. In addition to an intro, creating an altro is also important. And the best thing you can do with your outros Is to promote your next videos so that your viewers are enticed to keep watching. You can also create a consistent and goodbye message to include an all your video altro similar to how you do in your intros. Another way to brand yourself is to set the scene. You can film your videos in the same location or always include the same pets or plants or background elements. Or maybe you have a specific drink you always like to use. All of this can help create a consistent environment across all of your content. Now when it comes to cameras, more isn't better depending on the type of audience you're looking to connect with. Sometimes even having just an iPhone or something that isn't quite as sharp and production quality can be leveraged to your advantage, e.g. if you are creating a reaction channel to video games and your marketing towards teenagers, they might feel more connected and it might make you seem more authentic if you're not using a giant camera rig with tons of studio lighting. And on the other hand, if you want something more professional than having an entire studio and a backdrop and a really nice camera could work to your advantage. The way you edit your videos is another part of your brand identity. If you wanted to create a very energetic Cooking Channel, then maybe you might experiment with quick cuts, lots of Zooms and graphics and animations. Or if you want it to be maybe a more leukemia cell blogger then might focus on more longer cinematic cuts and incorporating low-fi music or jazz in the background, they're editing is going to be one of the key parts of how your brand is remembered by your viewers. So feel free to keep experimenting until you find something that clicks. Color grading is another great tool to create a consistent look for your content more relatable and Raul you want your content to feel, the less editing you're going to have to do when it comes to color grading. Whereas the more cinematic you want your videos to lock, the more you may want to experiment with dramatic effects. And finally, it's a good idea to use the same captions and titling across most of your videos. And of course, you can experiment with different fonts and title styles. But in general, you want to create something that is at least consistent with the tones and guidelines that you've set in your style guideline. Once again, building an identity on YouTube goes far beyond just your traditional branding and style guidelines. And by using all of the elements we've gone over this course, you're gonna be able to create a brand that your audience will recognize and connect to for years to come. 12. Conclusion: Congratulations, you've now completed the course. By now you should have a solid understanding of what brand identity is, how to build one and how to implement it on your YouTube channel. And remember, building a strong brand identity. It takes time. It's not just about having a catchy logo or a tagline. It's about consistently conveying your unique style, voice and personality. And by following all of the tips and techniques taught in this course, you'll be able to create your own unique brand identity. The truly represents who you are and what your channel is about. I encourage you to take the time to review and reflect on your brand as your channel grows. And most importantly, don't be afraid to experiment and try new things. Youtube is an ever evolving platform and your brand should always reflect that. Thank you for joining me on this journey and I wish you the best of luck in creating your very own brand identity on YouTube. Keep creating, keep innovating, and most importantly, keep posting.