As your channel grows and you reach viewers around the world, consider creating different channels for different languages or countries/regions. Below are three strategies for reaching global audiences. To help reach a more global audience, you can use automatic captions, manually add translations, or use third-party tools and services.
Keep all of your content on one channel. Upload videos in multiple languages for different geographies.
Branding
Your brand will be consistent across countries/regions. If your audience uses the same terms to search for your brand regardless of language, your channel will be easier to discover.
Engagement
Using one channel consolidates your viewership and subscribers. It also makes it easier for viewers to find your channel in YouTube Search.
Your channel will get posts, comments, and feed updates in many different languages. This may be confusing for your audience.
To help your audience:
- Add subtitles and captions to make your videos more accessible.
- Add sections and playlists for different languages or geographies to your channel.
Management
With your content in one place, your team can focus on managing one single channel, making it easier to maintain consistent global branding and tone.
Create separate channels for different languages and geographies. This strategy is helpful for languages with varied alphabets or search terms.
Branding
You can customize each channel to its local audience and easily incorporate local events and promotions. If your brand varies slightly in different countries/regions, this strategy allows you to incorporate those differences into your channel strategy.
Engagement
Separate channels give you focused communication with your different audiences. All items on each channel will be tailored to a specific audience, which may be an improved viewer experience. Viewers may be less likely to get confused or disengaged because of varying language content.
To improve discoverability:
- Specify the language or geography of each channel so viewers can find their local channel in YouTube searches.
- Cross-promote your various language channels between each other to improve discoverability.
- Add channels of interest to the “featured channels” section of your channel page.
Management
Each individual channel will need ongoing maintenance and attention. Be sure that your brand can devote enough resources to maintain each channel with a regular upload and engagement schedule.
Use a single channel to serve as your brand’s main channel to feature global campaigns. Create supporting local channels for different languages and countries/regions.
Branding
Use your main channel for global content and local channels for events and promotions. Create consistent templates for your video metadata and thumbnails to maintain consistency across your channels.
Engagement
While viewers and subscribers may be split among multiple channels, viewers get a consistent but localized experience. Use the main global channel to drive viewers to your local channels using video metadata, channel descriptions, and featured channel programming.
More frequent uploads on the local channels can help their discoverability in YouTube search.
Management
This channel organization structure requires coordination between global and local teams but lets you customize your brand message for local markets. This strategy requires the most time and effort to maintain.