5 Tips For Branding Your YouTube Channel in 2024

With how many creators and videos there are on YouTube in 2024, it has never been more important to successfully brand your channel. Without any branding, it will be next to impossible for your channel and content to stand out and find their audience, regardless of how good your videos are.

Some marketing and branding tips won’t make sense for every creator, especially if you’re more of a business owner than a content creator and don’t know how to brand a YouTube channel (and don’t have the time to learn). However, for as important as branding your channel is, it doesn’t mean that its particularly difficult or time-consuming to get started.

Let’s look at five tips for branding your YouTube channel that you can apply to your content today.

1. Create a Custom Logo and Banner

One of the most effective ways to brand your YouTube channel is also one of the easiest. Uploading a logo and banner to your YouTube channel gives people a clear, front-facing way to quickly identify your content and gain a sense of your channel’s vibe and brand.

We used Canva to design our YouTube banner, as well as the banners for our other social media pages. One of the nicest parts of creating your banner on Canva is that they have templates for banner images on several social media platforms. That way, you can design your banner in the exact image dimensions required for YouTube’s uploads. And if you’re not much of a designer, the pre-built templates on Canva can give you a nice jumping-off point.  

You can take the design of your YouTube banner in many different ways. For us, we found that using an image of our team was great for our banner image. But you can use an image of anything, as long as it communicates something important about the content you upload. You could also make a custom design that doesn’t use an image at all, as long as it’s eye-catching and on-brand with your content.

2. Utilize SEO Best Practices in Your Channel Description

You want to have a channel description that is informative about who you are and what kind of content you upload, but you also want to make sure that description finds its way to your target audience. One way to do that is by writing it out with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices in mind.

To do this, make sure your channel description is direct and informative and utilizes language and phrases related to the question that your audience will be searching for. Having the keywords and phrases in your channel description that your audience is searching for when they’re looking for content creators on YouTube and Google will help your channel rank higher on those search engines.

It also doesn’t hurt to apply those methods to your video descriptions as well. Like the channel description, this will help your content stand out on search engines when people make relevant search inquiries.

3. Take Advantage of Video Playlists

Playlists are an often overlooked element of branding a YouTube channel, but one that can be particularly advantageous if you use them properly. Giving your channel specific content categories where people can quickly determine who you are and what kind of content you create.

Rather than having to scroll through your entire videos page and read each video title to determine what your average uploads look like, an interested viewer can pull up your playlists and see the topics you often discuss and the series’ you run and know within a matter of seconds what your channel is all about.

The right playlist will give your audience an easy way to find all the content on your channel that speaks to them, which is also a great way to grow your channel. It typically takes people a few videos before they go from a fan of one of your specific videos to a fan of your content overall. If you can provide them with clearly labeled, carefully curated playlists where they can find all the videos on your channel most relevant to them, they’re more likely to stick around and give your channel the chance it deserves.

Remember, YouTube is a big place with millions of creators across the platform, and some of them are bound to be making similar content to yours. With that in mind, you want to be able to convince people that your channel is what they’re looking for and convince them of it fast. Having properly labeled playlists that illustrate the kinds of content you make is a great way to do that.

4. Record a Channel Trailer

YouTube gives you a space on the home page of your channel to record and upload a short channel trailer. Most YouTube trailers are one-to-two minutes long and original recordings where the channel host details basic information about their content. You can really make your trailer your own, but you’ll want it to convey points about your channel you want people to know, including your typical upload schedule, the types of content you create, and maybe some details about why you started uploading in the first place.

Your YouTube channel trailer doesn’t necessarily have to be a unique video. In some cases, you might have a clip from a previous video that you think encapsulates your brand and channel well, or you might be able to find a series of clips you can cut up into a montage for your trailer. 

Either way, you want your trailer to be a quick way for people to get a sense of who you are and what type of content you upload. Most of the time, that means recording a trailer where you can explain those two points in quick detail.

5. Communicate Your Brand Identity Clearly

More than anything, you want your brand and voice to leap off the screen at people when they pull up your channel. You want to establish a clear identity with your content so that when your current and future audiences find your videos recommended to them on YouTube, they know immediately that it's your content and what that content is about.

There are plenty of ways to do this, many of which we’ve discussed already. But one effective method we haven’t really touched on is to develop a consistent design for your thumbnails. Having each of your thumbnails have the same distinct look and feel can make each upload unmistakably yours. Not only is having good thumbnails a great way to build a cohesive brand,  but it's also one of the best ways to bring viewers to the channel. The thumbnail is the first thing people will notice about your videos, and if it stands out, there’s a better chance they’ll want to see what the content is all about.

Consistently creating engaging and informative YouTube content is hard enough without having to worry about marketing your entire channel on top of that. But the reality is that YouTube is too big and too competitive a space to stand out while being lazy, and you’re going to have to put effort into branding if you want to grow your channel.

But not every step you take to brand your channel has to be super high-effort. With these five simple tips, you can start successfully branding your channel, reaching a wider audience, and keeping your current audience happy.

Looking for help branding your business? Contact NAV Creative to schedule a free consultation call.