When I first joined Coinbase, I noticed that the company wasn't using YouTube to its full potential. Instead of using it as social media or extension of social content, it was being used to share videos for external linking.
It quickly became my priority to align a multilateral distribution and content strategy for YouTube. From 2021-2022, the channel gained over 60,000 subscribers. Here's how...
Design elements
Thumbnails weren't being created for videos thus leading to random screenshots and a lack of visual cohesion on the channel. Using Figma to prototype designs, I set the precedent for creative style of thumbnails. Since thumbnails are the first things that viewers see, it was integral to me that the images accurately represented the content, drew viewers in, and that there was visual unity between them.
Aligning process and stakeholders
Initially, managers of the Coinbase YouTube channel rarely communicated with each other on what videos were being posted and when they were being posted. Videos would be launched concurrently leading to lower views due to subscription feed spam. My co-worker and I became the point of contacts for uploading. We created a new process for distribution: one that involved filling out a request form with key information (title, description, tags, launch date) to post.
Scheduling ahead
There were multiple series of videos that Coinbase ran on the channel so those days needed to be off-limits for other uploads. We created a scheduling/programming calendar and mapped out dates based on the intake request forms and priority video requests that we were receiving. This eliminated any issues with multiple uploads on the same day, thus leading to higher views per video.
Bringing in the right people to optimize
On the backend, tagging was a huge piece of the puzzle that we were missing. We brought in Coinbase's Google Ads analytics team in on the process as a stakeholder to optimize our SEO.
Creating YouTube native content and using social to promote it
With so many videos being created to live on the Coinbase website and blog, we realized there was a need for social videos that could be YouTube native. This came in the form of influencer and event activation videos. But how do we promote it? Our strategy was to create short cutdown videos for Twitter and Instagram and use that to link back to the longer form content on YouTube. With more traffic pointed to our channel from other social accounts, our reach and subscriber count grew.