Cindy Ratzlaff

Bestselling author, award winning brand marketing and social media pro, Cindy Ratzlaff, creates sales driving campaigns for authors, books and publishers.

YouTube Adds Easy InVideo Branding | Entrepreneurial Toolkit

By Cindy Ratzlaff

*Editor’s Note: The video you feature must be hosted on YouTube.

YouTube quietly added a new feature to the platform that will help small businesses, cash strapped start-ups, entrepreneurs, authors, speakers and coaches promote their brands, in just a few simple steps, across all of their YouTube videos.

InVideo Programming allows users to insert a branded logo or even another video into the corner of all currently uploaded videos on an individual’s YouTube Channel, all at once.

Branding With a Logo or Video

Imagine that as a small business owner you are creating short informational videos and posting them to YouTube. Next you share them through e-mail or through Facebook and even your business website* (your video must be hosted on YouTube, even if it’s featured on your website).  Now with InVideo Programming, you’ll be able to embed another video into the corner of your informational video–say an announcement about a big launch, sale or special event–and ever consumer facing touch point for the original informational video now becomes an invitation to view the special announcement video in just one click.

YouTube InVideo Programming has leveled the playing field between big budget brands and entrepreneurs.

Step by Step Instructions for Using YouTube InVideo Programming

  1. Log into your YouTube Channel and in the upper right hand side of your screen, find the drop down menu and choose “video manager.”
  2. Next click the “Settings” link.
  3. Now you’ll see InVideo Programming on the left hand side.  Click there.

 

Next, you’ll come to a screen that looks like this:

From this screen you can choose to:

  1. Upload a logo and place it in the desired corner of all of your current videos or
  2. Choose from your current YouTube videos and feature one of those in the corner of all of your YouTube videos or
  3. Choose the URL of a video hosted elsewhere and feature it in the corner of all of your current YouTube videos

Uses for the New InVideo Option on YouTube

YouTube has simplified the marketing funnel for small business owners, allowing them to turn their entire inventory of videos into an announcement vehicle for something special.  It’s easy to do and you can change the featured video at any time.  Switch out the video and insert your logo, if you like, between promotional periods or change your promoted video across your entire YouTube video channel at any time. This low-cost branding and marketing strategy can be used for sales, special offers, promoting affiliate programs and more.

The only downside I can see is that currently your promoted InVideo option puts a logo or video in every YouTube upload on your channel.  So currently you don’t have the option to selectively use this feature and using it will put your branding on every video you’re hosting on your channel.  That will most likely change as users become more comfortable with this new option and demand more sophisticated control. But, for now, it’s an excellent new marketing feature I recommend you check out.

I’d love to see how you’re using this exciting low-cost marketing and branding tool from YouTube.  Be sure to post the link to your new YouTube InVideo Programming example below so we can all be inspired.

 

About Cindy Ratzlaff

Cindy Ratzlaff was named to the Forbes “20 Best Branded Women on Twitter” list and Forbes Woman called her one of the “Most Influential Women Tweeting about Entrepreneurship.”

During her 20-plus years as a publishing executive, Cindy created branded marketing and PR campaigns that ushered more than 200 books onto the New York Times bestseller lists. She was named to the Ad Age Marketing 50 list for the launch campaign behind The South Beach Diet.

She is the author of three books, and her essays on happiness have appeared on Oprah.com, CNN.com and her articles on social marketing have can be read on Business Insider. She speaks to conferences such as BookExpo America, Pennsylvania Conference for Women, Romance Writers of America, Ernst & Young, Garden Writers Association, Texas Conference for Women, United Way’s Ignite Leadership Network, Massachusetts Conference for Women, and more on the topics of happiness, personal branding and creating a digital footprint.

She engages daily with more than 450,000 people through her popular Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blog sites.

Comments & Feedback:

  2. Katie

    Is there anyway to make the logo larger? I have tried a variety of image sizes to try to make the logo show up better, but youtube keeps resizing it down so much that it’s not able to be read. Is there anyway to resize the logo so that it shows up larger?

    Reply

    • cindyratzlaff

      Hi Katie, At the moment there doesn’t appear to be any way to resize the logo. I suspect this will eventually be an option and maybe even a paid upgrade if YouTube goes in that direction. But for now, it’s just one size so using a simple image is best.

      Reply

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