Regular readers may remember that we held a drawing back in March among blog commenters for a free MiniMatters YouTube channel audit. Every YouTube channel needs periodic refreshing to respond to trends, keep up with new features YouTube makes available, and keep your audience interested.

And the winner of the free MiniMatters 6 point YouTube channel audit is…

Shira Oler, Director of Gift Planning at the Jewish Social Service Agency (JSSA), entered the drawing and won. JSSA has been helping people across the Washington metropolitan area meet emotional, social and physical challenges for 120 years. Based on our audit, Shira’s colleague Liz Slovenkay (left), the Marketing and Communications Manager, made key edits to the JSSA YouTube channel that have significantly improved their channel branding and marketing effectiveness. JSSA’s been paying increased attention to its social media presence in the last year, and as it turns out we timed our drawing perfectly at a time that they were ready to improve their YouTube channel. JSSA’s designed its social media strategy around increasing visibility, referrals, and donors. They seek to emphasize that they are nonsectarian and drive traffic to  their website’s extensive resources.

YouTube channels with dynamic title bars attract viewers

We’ll talk more about JSSA’s YouTube channel refresh next week, and describe their return on investment in a later post, but to give a taste of their immediate results, take a look at this: The title bar before: JSSA YouTube Channel Top Bar The title bar after: JSSA Top Bar revised JSSA’s new title bar shows beneficiaries of the organization’s work as well as the organization’s logo. It’s also bright and engaging with a great human dimension. Like many organizations, JSSA had a serviceable logo in this general spot before YouTube converted to its YouTube Channel One format, and the conversion generated the mainly gray title bar above. It’s really a pity that organizations that don’t update their title bar end up with something so plain, since the title bar is one of the first things you see on every organization’s page. Since the title bar stays the same even as you update your videos, you want your title bar to make a general statement about your organization and brand. It’s kind of a visual, “About Us.”JSSAtopbardetail In the image above you may not be able to make it out, but the one on the right shows how the bottom right corner of the bar appears in full size. It has direct links to JSSA’s home pageJSSA’s Facebook page, and their Twitter feed. It’s vital to interconnect every source on your organization in this manner so that your YouTube channel can drive traffic to your website as well as satisfy every viewer’s need to engage with the organization, keep up with its current news, and perhaps make a donation using their preferred communication channels.

There so much more to updating your YouTube channel

Congratulations to JSSA! We’ll show more of JSSA’s updates in this space next week, including the changes they made to optimize their videos for search engines. The title bar fix fell under point one of our 6 Point YouTube Channel Audit service: 1. Branding 2. Organization 3. SEO 4. Calls to action and other annotations 5. Community building 6. Leveraging YouTube special features. Would you like to see what our 6 Point YouTube Channel Audit would do for your YouTube channel? Get in touch to discuss the service, or enter our new drawing by commenting! We’re excited to announce a second drawing for the same service! Comment on our blog anytime between now and September 30, and we’ll enter you in another drawing to win. We’ll announce the winner in October. How about entering now? What’s your envisioned audience for your YouTube channel going forward? Let us know in the comments and enter our drawing! Comment on this topic If MiniMatters can help you with business video, fundraising video, association video, or other video production needs, we’d love to provide an estimate through our online form, talk with you at 301-339-0339, or communicate via email at [email protected]. We serve associations, foundations, nonprofits, and businesses primarily in Washington, DC, Maryland, and northern Virginia.