How To Get Verified On YouTube

in Influencers, Social Media

On every social network, verification is an added advantage for every profile. It comes with two benefits; one, that you are who you claim to be, and two, that you are serious about creating content on social media.

Verification can also function as identity protection. It enables your followers to find you and also identify you positively to brands. Some celebrities, businesses, and brands are challenged with the problem of impostors who try to steal their fans and monetize them for short-term gain. This can affect their reputation or even cause more problems like identity theft. A fraudster that sets up a fake website or even use fake profile for business can phish for financial information and steal from it all day long.

That little check shows everyone watching that you care about your profile. It’s a measure of trust, to prove that you put in the effort to meet the verification requirements.

YouTube Verification Requirements

YouTube does not carry out verification process by itself. When your YouTube account is linked to a Google+ account that has been verified, your YouTube account will become verified too.

If you are familiar with other social networks, you might have taken noticed that on other channels such as Twitter and Facebook, people who have just a few hundred followers can get their account verified by request. YouTube on the other hand requires a set number of subscribers, and that number is 100,000.

When you change your channel name your YouTube verification will disappear. However, if the reason for changing your name is legitimate, you might be verified again by reaching out to customer support directly. The essence of this is to be sure you didn’t change your name for a fraudulent purpose, and to make sure that the verified badge remains valuable.

Just for a reminder, you need 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and Google+ verification. So how does one go about getting verified on Google +?

Getting the Google+ Check

Verification on Google + doesn’t happen overnight, there are several requirements which must be met if you are wanting to earn a verified account. First, you need over 20,000 followers. If you are already popular on YouTube this should not be too difficult for you. By meeting the other requirements for a verified account it should not be too difficult for you to gain 20,000 Google + followers in a short amount of time. Some important tips to keep in mind include:

You are required to become popular in your field.
You cannot share anything illegal to grow your reach.
You cannot spam Circles to grow your followers.
You need to remain active on Google + with regular status updates and user comments.

While these are good rules to follow on any social channel, there are many suggestions which make your journey to verification much easier.

You need to meet Google + usage requirements. Don’t post spam to appear active. It is important to avoid any action which can get you banned from the platform. If your account is banned you will not be able to become verified. There are no shortcuts for gaining your YouTube verification.

You need to be active on Google+. Posting regularly, engaging with user comments, and optimizing your profile all show that you are committed to using Google +. Once you are verified, you will not lose that verification by abandoning Google +, so feel free to focus your effort on YouTube once you have reached that point. However, considering the effort you have put into growing your profile it will be worth it to stay active.

Activate an external blog or brand page. Being able to link your Google+ with Google Webmaster Tools will go a long way towards helping you gain followers. Every additional bit of casual verification between your site, your social profiles, and your brand pages will help you understand what is drawing in the most followers and what can use optimization.

The webmaster tools allow you to verify that your website belongs to you. As your popularity grows, many fans will begin creating fan pages and along with having a verified Google + page, having a check next to your listed website will ensure that your followers are directed to the correct website. It will allow you to add a little check-mark next to your listed website, this allows for double verifications and showing that your website is the official website for your profile.

There are two primary roadblocks to verification on YouTube: the 20,000 circles on Google+ level and the 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Here are some tips for growing on both platforms.

Google+: Reaching 20,000 Followers

Now that you understand the requirements for verifying your Google + account, here are some tips for how to gain followers in a quick and efficient manner.

Organize your Collections. Google + allows you to group your posts and photos together in separate albums called collections. These are helpful as personalized boards which you can use to showcase your personalized profile and really let people know what your interests are and are a great way to segment different ideas and hobbies you might have. These also allow you to target different groups within Google + by posting different content within different collections.

Engage with different communities. Activity is a big part of gaining followers online. If you are not actively creating content and engaging with your followers you cannot expect people to stay interested in what you have to say. If you’re spending most of your time interacting with a closed group of 500 people, you can expect to only gain those same 500 people as followers. A better idea is to join and actively work to be active in larger communities with many active members. You want as many people as possible seeing your content and re-posting it as often as possible. The more eyes that see your posts the more likely it is that someone will re-post or comment on it, and the more followers you will have.

Curate your content. There are a few ways to go about publishing and organizing your content. The most suggested ratio is to split your content up into 80% posts about your brand and 20% posts about the niche and groups you are involved with. This will ensure that the content you are publishing is varied and will keep your audience interested in what you post.

Growing on YouTube

Besides the basics, such as channel art, page info, consistent content, and video descriptions, there are a few tips to help grow the number of subscribers for your YouTube channel. Don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as you may think.

The first step towards verification is to create a custom channel URL. This has a low bar for eligibility, but can make all of the difference. By creating a custom URL, fans will not only have an easier time finding your page, but your channel will also appear more professional. Just be sure that you pick one that you are comfortable with. You will not be able to change it later.

Because it takes a lot of time to edit and produce videos, it would not be practical for most people to post videos every day. When you begin getting serious about your YouTube channel it is a good idea to develop a schedule for when your videos are published. You should produce at least one or two videos with high quality content each month. These videos encourage people to re visit your channel. Let the videos contain qualities that are worth sharing and does not depreciate with time.

Another helpful technique is the video end-cap. This will allow you to display additional content at the end of your videos encouraging your audience to continue viewing additional content on your channel. This is also a great opportunity to encourage people to like and subscribe directly from the video player through the use of annotated links, and also enable them to move from one video to another through the available thumbnails. Ideally, everything will be on the playlist, so they if they take no action the next video will automatically play.

In conclusion, carry out a proper study of your community and find out the exact thing they like about your channel, your brand and your videos, and create more of it. This way they can always get more of what they want and also share it with those who like the same. Creating contents that suits the wants of your audience is better than trying to force an audience that isn’t as large as it could be.