Using the New YouTube Studio

Can you believe YouTube has been around for thirteen years? A lot has changed since then, but YouTube has largely stated the same… until now. (Cue action movie music.)

Last year, YouTube started beta testing a new version of it’s platform, called YouTube Studio- not to be confused with the world’s best influencer marketing platform, Obviously Studio. YouTube is still in a transitional phase, but the new features are available to everyone.  Many of you have undoubtedly already mastered the new setup, but for others it might seem a bit overwhelming.  After all, YouTube hasn’t changed in over a decade! I can say, though, after playing around on our own channel, that YouTube Studio absolutely gets the Obviously stamp of approval.  

I’m going to walk you through the basics of using the new YouTube Studio, so you can dive back into doing what you love.

The new YouTube Studio Dashboard looks like this:

The great thing about the main dashboard is it allows you to get the most important information about your channel at a glance, rather than having to search for it. You’ll also find important updates from YouTube, like news or known issues, such as outages.

On the lefthand side, you’ll see the menu, where you can navigate towards different tools within the platform. Here are a few highlights:

Videos

My favorite thing about the new videos page, is that you can actually edit the descriptions of your videos right here, rather than having to open them up. You can also get sharable links and download those videos here. Clicking on an individual video opens up the options to see insights for that video, as opposed to overall channel insights, which you get from the main dashboard.

Analytics

Obviously loves numbers, so we’re obsessed with the new analytics page. YouTube has really stepped up it’s game, providing four separate pages full of in-depth analysis that’s both interactive and customizable. It also offers explanations about what all the metrics mean as well as written descriptions of what’s actually going on with your channel, for those of us who don’t absolutely love charts and graphs.

I’m not going to go into every layer of the YouTube analytics tool here (future blog post idea?) but the overview tab provides important metrics such as Watch Time- the total number of minutes your channel has been watched- Views, and Subscribers. You can also see which videos are performing best and when you have the most activity on your channel. There’s really a lot right here, but it’s only scratching the surface!

Video Editor

While we’re most excited about the data, I have a sneaking suspicion that our influencers might be even more interested in YouTube’s brand new editing tool. Note: to get here, you must first go to the videos page on the main dashboard, then select the video you want to work on.

In the past, YouTube had several different editors that all functioned slightly differently. Now, everything from captions to audio, to special effects are all in one place. The tool is very intuitive and feels a lot more like a professional video editor. Plus I’m really digging the sleek new look.

We’ve covered the most significant changes to YouTube, but there’s still plenty more being worked on, so stay tuned for updates as changes roll out. We cannot wait to see all the awesome new content our influencers create.

Interested in doing a deep-dive into the YouTube analytics tool? Let me know in the comments!