Lithys 2017: YouTube - Digital Design Excellence

Lithys 2017: YouTube - Digital Design Excellence

At YouTube, we want to support and celebrate our Community of creators, by giving them the necessary tools, information and inspiration to bring their talent to life.

 

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googleteaser (1).pngCompany: YouTube                                                                

Entry submitted by: Berta Altarriba, Aparna Singh (Community Program Manager / Community Product Manager)

Community: YouTube Creator Community

Lithy category: Digital Design Excellence 

 

 

 

At YouTube, we believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories. As part of this experience, we want to support and celebrate our Community of creators, by giving them the necessary tools, information and inspiration to bring their talent to life.

To help creators grow and follow the way for success, we offer a series of online and offline development opportunities to help them through every step of the way. The YouTube Creator Community is a vital part of this journey, becoming a central destination for Creator growth and connection.  

 

 

At YouTube, we believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories. As part of this experience, we want to support and celebrate our Community of creators, by giving them the necessary tools, information and inspiration to bring their talent to life.

 

To help creators grow and follow the way for success, we offer a series of online and offline development opportunities to help them through every step of the way. The YouTube Creator Community is a vital part of this journey, becoming a central destination for Creator growth and connection.  

 

Our community goals

Since its launch in 2015, the Creator Community, powered by Lithium, has become the primary destination for YouTube Creators to connect, share best practices and help each other with their growth on the platform. It’s a destination where they can share their passion, talk to the YouTube team, find people to collaborate with but also connect with peers who are going through the similar struggles that are common in the life of a content creator.

 

The YouTube Creator Community offers creators in 95 countries and 11 languages, the opportunity to learn about channel development from more experienced creators as well as resolve any development doubt with the YouTube team experts. They can also find other creators in there are, find their new collab partner or get an expert in video editing that will make their videos shine.

 

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 Integrated creator experience

YouTube is devoted to help Creators through their growth journey, and we have worked really hard to offer the best opportunities at each step of the way.

 

We launched YouTube for Creators in summer 2016, with the aim of connecting all opportunities directed to Creators and to unlock new opportunities for our users as they grew in the platform. The main goal was to create an integrated experience, with seamless handoff points, so that our creators feel supported in their diverse needs.

 

The Creator Community has become a central point of this integrated experience. As the backbone of the Creator experience, we use it to connect our different areas of activity. 

 

Event integration

The Creator Community is utilized to promote events in each market and amplify the offline experience online. Each workshop and networking event is promoted in the community so the creators can meet other attendees. After the event, creators can return to the community to follow up on learnings, share experiences and see who else was there.

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In 2016 we covered more than 300 events in 14 markets.

Webinar experience

Hosting live streams through the community has become a primary tool to educate and inspire creators around the World. Through a series of monthly live streams, Creators can tune in to ask questions to the YouTube team or other Top Creators in their area.

 

We launched this experience in 2016, reaching more than 50K viewers driving the conversation in the community:


 

 

ytlive.pngInteractive education

The Creator Community works hand in hand with its twin sister in Creator Development: The Creator Academy. This online learning platform, offers self-study options for YouTube Creators, teaching them from production to branding and channel optimization basics.

 

Both platforms are integrated through the Bootcamp Experience, an online learning course that guides you through self-study lessons and brings you to the community for practical interactive learning with a cohort of students.

 

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By integrating both educational offerings, we’ve managed to triple completions and increase average engagement in the Community conversations (>5 answers/post). 
Social amplification

We engage with Creators in the platforms that they most use, and their natural habit is Social. This is why we have deployed a joint content plan to drive traffic from social to a more in depth conversation in the community.

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Investing in a unique design

YouTube is a social and community platform by nature. We want the Creator Community to be integrated with the use of the rest of our product and this is why design has been a priority for us.

 

This year we launched a new responsive design that includes the following improvements:

 

  • Responsive design: Creator can access the community through Mobile devices wherever they are
  • Improved usability and navigation: Find more threads and engage with popular content
  • Improved UX and design: Aligned look and feel with other YT destinations (Hub, Academy, Creator dashboard)
  • Aligned YouTube look and feel: Follow design principles of other YouTube sites and align branding, color and style

 

Since the redesign launch in April, we’ve seen significant improvement in key community metircs:

  • x2 average session time (1.5min)
  • Increase in user retention by +50% on Monthly Active useractive.png

     

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Community results and business impact

We have seen strong results from investing in the community experience, both from pushing a new responsive design as well as driving an integrated development experience:

 

  • Strong community growth in 2016, helped achieve scale and grow by x40 the community members base (+57% av. PV growth rate MoM)
  • Achieved above average engagement through quality content, with an average of 7 PV/visit and 3.8 replies per topic
  • Increased user retention (+50% MAUs) and average session time (x2) since launch of community mobile responsive redesign

 

Proved business impact on YouTube Watch time consumption: internal impact analysis has shown that creators that use the Creator community see a positive x% increase in their channel’s Watch time performance [Internal data].