The recent YouTube cards feature is a way for you to engage your viewers while they watch your video. Today I am introducing you to these Interactive Cards, giving you some effective ways to use them and showing you how to add the Associated website YouTube card. Here’s how they work:
YouTube card teaser text appears at a predetermined time in your video along with an icon. When the teaser text disappears after few seconds the icon continues to be shown in the upper right. A viewer can click the icon at any time.
You have up to 5 cards in video, which would appear with a scroll bar once the icon is clicked so viewers can browse all cards in your video.
You can also view the analytics for cards under Engagement Reports in YouTube Analytics. I highly recommend that you check your YouTube Cards analytics weekly to see which cards are working best for you.
Cards are the next evolution of annotations on YouTube – they will eventually replace them. YouTube Annotations do not work on mobile and other devices but YouTube Cards do.
If you are doing YouTube video marketing, these interactive cards are a must!
Video – YouTube Cards Feature Tutorial
Effective Ways to Use YouTube Cards
There are six types of cards to choose from:
- Associated Website (use as lead generation cards)
- Fundraising
- Merchandise
- Video or Playlist
- Channel
- Fan Funding – (only available if you have set up monetization, have a linked AdSense account, and turn on Fan Funding)
Cards provide a call to action in your video. Cards are effective for things like
- Driving traffic to your website – you’ll need to set up an associated website.
- Opt in to your email list.
- Sell stuff.
- Promote other related videos or playlists on your youtube channel or another
- Promote another youtube channel.
- Download your giveaway ebook.
- And much more!
YouTube Cards are very simple to add to videos.
- Make sure you YouTube account is in good standing. Click here for more information.
- From the Video Manager, edit the video to which you want to add cards.
- In the top tab bar above your video, click Cards and then Add Card.
- Select Associated Website. Click here to learn how to connect an associated website to your YouTube channel.
- Enter a URL of the webpage you want to use as your call to action. The fields automatically populate and you can change any of these.
- Use the image that automatically populates from your website or upload a new one.
- Edit the title, call-to-action and teaser text to fit in the allowed character count of 50 for the title and 30 for the call-to-action and teaser.
- Click Create card when you’re ready.
Youtube Cards Timeline Adjustment
- Check the timeline just below the video. If you have multiple cards, spread them out so they don’t all appear at the same time.
- Click hold and drag the teaser card to a designated start time. It works well if you are talking about that call to action and then the teaser appears.
YouTube cards… awesome, wanted to learn more about them, great post.
Wow what a great post… didn’t know about youtube cards…and you explained perfectly… thanks for sharing this Lisa… going to look into this today…
Let me know what you think after you add a YouTube Card to your videos. They are powerful and free!
This is great. I saw something on Youtube Cards a while back but it wasn’t described like this. So simple to follow
Glad you like it! YouTube cards are a powerful method to get leads for your business. You can easily drive traffic to your website or other videos via the interactive cards. I’ve used them for a few months now and they do a great job!
Hi Lisa!
What an informative post on utilizing You Tube cards and the best ways to implement them 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Cards are so powerful! Thanks for sharing Lisa. This was a great post.
Hey Justin!
Have you used cards on your YouTube videos? If yes, what type of click rates are you getting? How are they working for you?
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
I haven’t incorporated videos into my marketing strategy yet but plan to in the near future.
The use of video cards in your video seem simple enough to use and adds value to your content. You have presented this method in such an easy way, I think everyone can understand it.
I am going to bookmark this post so I can come back to it when I buy my video camera as the one on my computer does not work well.
Thank you for sharing, Lisa and you have a wonderful week!
Linda
Hey Linda!
Always appreciate your visits here.
Let me know when you get started with videos…they are so much fun!
The video cards are super easy and add so much value to the video itself.
Do you have a camera on your mobile phone? Usually the smart phone camera take the best videos.
For the laptop, I used the Logictech C920 which worked great!
Have a great week as well!
Lisa