What are YouTube Cards and how can I use them effectively?

Have you ever wondered how your favorite YouTube personalities are able to easily recommend more of their videos to watch with those handy pop-ups? Or how they are able to send viewers straight to their online store right from the video? We all want the best-kept trade secrets for better and effective marketing on YouTube but, the truth is, this one isn’t a secret at all. They do it all with the use of YouTube Cards.

YouTube Cards can direct viewers to certain content, encourage interaction, and even increase sales. Today’s post will cover everything you need to know about YouTube Cards and how you can use them more effectively in your YouTube strategy.

What are YouTube Cards?

YouTube Cards are the pop-up panels you see when watching a video. These panels often link to more relevant videos, channels, or even the website or merchandise of the channel creator. The best YouTube cards example is the cards that you see at the end of a video that encourage you to click or watch another piece of content.

Within the YouTube video, a YouTube Card can appear as a teaser with a call-to-action. Once the viewer clicks on the small teaser, a larger panel with the linked content appears. YouTube Cards are great tools to promote your other content to boost traffic and encourage sales when used in a YouTube monetization strategy.

The different types of YouTube Cards include:

• Channel Cards: Allow you to link directly to a YouTube Channel. This is great for promoting your own channel, other channels with similar content that your audience would find helpful, or the channels of those who you collaborate with.
• Video/Playlist Cards: Allow you to link to another video or playlist with similar content that your viewer would find interesting based on the video they just watched or content you mentioned within the video. Sorelle Amore does a fantastic job of using video/playlist cards to direct her audience to more of her content.
• Poll Cards: Allows your audience to vote in a poll you create. YouTube poll cards are perfect for asking for feedback from your audience and getting them to interact with your videos.
• Donation Cards: Allow you to ask for and collect donations to a nonprofit of your choice. Although, if you want to link to a crowdfunding site, you will need to use a link card as mentioned below.
• Link Cards: Have three different subcategories of cards and allow you to link directly to your own website with associated website cards, crowdfunding websites with crowdfunding cards, and your own merchandise with merchandise cards. You must be a member of the YouTube Partners Program in order to have access to this feature.

Link cards are one of the best ways of linking to your store from YouTube. To use the merchandise cards, the URL your merchandise is located at must be on YouTube’s approved URL list. Sellfy is already an approved merchandise site, so adding your Sellfy store here won’t be a problem. Austin Newman is a great example of effectively using his YouTube channel to promote his Sellfy store.

How to Use YouTube Cards More Effectively?

The best way to use YouTube Cards is to pair your card with a relevant video and, if possible, mention the card in the script of your video. When you reference the card for the viewer to click through audio and/or visuals, they are more inclined to follow through and click the teaser.

To draw more attention to the teaser, consider adding some kind of graphic or visual that will draw more attention to it and carefully choose the text that appears so people will definitely want to click on it. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can see YouTube cards on mobile devices, but only when using the YouTube app.

You can add up to five cards on one video, so choose your content wisely. Make sure that every card you add is relevant to the content in your video and that your users will genuinely gain something of value by clicking on it. YouTube also recommends placing your YouTube Cards in the last 20% of your video for the best results.

Stick With It

In the end, as long as you are producing quality content and attract the proper audience to your channel, you are heading in the right direction to monetize your YouTube channel. YouTube Cards can help jump start your marketing efforts and start sending your viewers in the right direction to increase sales.

No matter what level of expertise you have as a YouTuber, using YouTube Cards is a must for your YouTube strategy.

Ready to monetize your YouTube? Check out our guide on making $1000 from 1000 followers without using paid ads with an easy 4 step system below.