User guide

11
Punctual Optimization
How do I optimize my videos for the timely nature of sports?
For sports content, timeliness is crucial - in terms of
content creation, publishing, and optimization. Since
sports video content is often event-focused, sports viewers
search for the latest clips, immediate reactions, and
breaking sports news around a particular event. Your
channel needs to be ready to serve this content at the right
time.
Here are four strategies to help you keep up with the
eeting nature of sports content:
1. Timely publishing
2. Metadata
3. Thumbnails
4. Hook Your Audience
Event-based sports videos experience a surge in trac
immediately after an event, and a sudden drop-o a few
days later. Sports videos oriented around larger, more
newsworthy events, such as the World Cup, also see similar
trac patterns; search queries build up in the weeks
leading up to the event, and then decline sharply
thereafter. So, what does this mean for you as a sports
creator?
Timely Publishing
• For one thing, it means that content should be
uploaded as close to an event as possible – even
during the event itself! As soon as something big
happens in the sports world, your audience is
going to be searching for content about it. Be the
channel that oers it to them rst.
• In addition to uploading content quickly,
event-based videos mean that the window to
capture audience from search queries is short.
So, it is even more important that your videos are
optimized - in terms of metadata and thumbnails
- at the time of upload.
Metadata
Optimize your metadata when uploading. Optimizing
metadata after a video has been published, or after
the event has already happened, likely means that
that trac has already been lost and the opportunity
missed.
• Try to anticipate what will be trending based on
what has been popular in the past, and include
similar information.
• You have a very short trac window, so pre-draft
your metadata or create an inventory of tags.
See Playbook Sections:
Metadata, Thumbnails, Captivate Your Audience
Remember that it is a violation of YouTube Terms of Service to use misleading metadata
on your videos.