5. Create or edit channel art
Channel art shows as a banner at the top of your YouTube page. You can use it to brand
your channel's identity and give your page a unique look and feel.
Use the guidelines and examples below to set up your design. Keep in mind that channel art
looks different on desktop, mobile, and TV displays.
Add or change channel art
1. On a computer, sign in to your YouTube account.
2. In the top right menu, select My Channel.
• New channel art: Near the top of the screen, click Add channel art.
• Existing channel art: Hover your cursor over the existing banner until you see the edit
icon .
Click the icon and select Edit channel art.
3. Upload an image or photo from your computer or saved photos. You can also click the
Gallery tab to choose an image from the YouTube photo library.
4. You'll see a preview of how the art will appear across different devices. To make
changes, select Adjust the crop.
5. Click Select.
6. Verification badges on channels
When you see a or verification checkmark next to a YouTube channel's name, it
means that the channel belongs to an established creator or is the official channel of a
brand, business, or organization.
Verification badges don't affect search results for the channel or grant access to additional
features on YouTube.
How to get a verification badge
Eligibility criteria
Once your channel gets 100,000 subscribers, you’re eligible to submit a request to YouTube
for a verification badge. Note that we've made changes to this process over time, so you
may see many types of channels with verification badges on YouTube. Note: If you’re an
advertiser interested in a verification badge, contact your sales manager to learn more.
Keeping your verification
badge
Once you have a verification badge, it'll stay on your channel even if your channel's
subscriber number changes. If you change your channel's name, you can't keep the
verification badge for the renamed channel.
YouTube reserves the right to revoke your verification badge or terminate your channel if
you violate our Community Guidelines or the YouTube Terms of Service.
Manage your channel icon
Your channel icon shows over your channel art banner. It's the icon that displays to other
users for your videos and channel on YouTube watch pages.
The default icon for your channel is the image associated with your Google Account. You
can see this image in the top right corner of the page when you're logged into YouTube and
other Google services. If you want to change this image, you can modify it in your Google
Account settings.
7. Channel icon specs
Use these recommended guidelines when creating a new channel icon. Do not upload
pictures containing celebrities, nudity, artwork, or copyrighted images since this violates
our Community Guidelines.
• JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG file (no animated GIFs)
• 800 X 800 px image (recommended)
• Square or round image that renders at 98 X 98 px
Edit & update channel icon
You can choose to upload a new image, use a still frame from one of your uploaded videos,
or use your default image.
Classic desktop experience
1. Sign in to your YouTube account.
2. On the left, select My Channel.
3. Hover over your existing channel icon in the top left of your channel art banner.
4. Click the edit icon .
5. Click Edit and follow the on-screen instructions to select the new image.
New desktop experience
1. Sign in to your YouTube account.
2. Under your profile photo at the top right, select My Channel.
3. Hover over your existing channel icon in the top left of your channel art banner.
4. Click the edit icon .
5. Click Edit and follow the on-screen instructions to select the new image.
8. Customize channel layout
You can customize the layout of your channel so that viewers see what you want them to
when they get to your page. If you don't customize the layout, all visitors will see your
channel feed.
This is recommended for creators who upload videos regularly. You can add a channel
trailer, suggest content for your subscribers, and organize all your videos and playlists into
sections. Or, for example, you can always show your channel trailer to new visitors.
Before you can customize your layout, you need to turn this feature on:
1. On a computer, sign in to your YouTube account.
2. In the left menu, click My Channel.
3. Under your channel's banner, click the settings icon .
4. Toggle Customize the layout of your channel to on.
5. Click Save.
After you've enabled channel customization, follow the instructions to create a channel
trailer for new visitors and create channel sections to customize the layout on your
channel.
9. Organize content with channel sections
You can organize and promote content that you want to highlight on your channel using
channel sections. A section lets you group videos together in a particular way so that your
audience can make easier decisions about what they want to watch. You can have up to 10
sections on one channel.
10. Create a channel trailer for new viewers
You can have a video trailer show to all unsubscribed visitors to your channel. Your
channel trailer is like a movie trailer - use it as a way to offer a preview of your channel's
offerings so viewers will want to subscribe. You can't currently watch channel trailers on
the YouTube mobile apps.
By default, ads won't appear when the trailer is playing on the channel page in the trailer
spot (unless the video you've chosen contains third-party claimed content). This helps keep
the user focused on learning about and subscribing to your channel. If the viewer is already
subscribed to your channel, they'll see a video under "What to Watch Next" instead.
11. Set a channel trailer Before you start:
To set up a channel trailer, you have to first turn on channel
customization for the channel.
1. Upload the video you want to be your channel trailer.
2. Go to the channel you want to manage.
3. Click the For new visitors tab. If you don't see the "For new visitors" tab, follow these
instructions to turn on channel customization for the channel.
4. Click on Channel trailer.
5. Choose the video by selecting its thumbnail or entering its URL.
Note: If the visitor to your channel is already subscribed to your channel, they won't see
your trailer. Instead, they'll see a video under "What to Watch Next." Follow these
instructions to set the featured content you want to show.
Quick tips for creating channel trailers
• Assume the viewer has never heard of you.
• Keep it short.
• Hook your viewers in the first few seconds.
• Show, don’t tell.
• Ask viewers to subscribe in your video and with annotations.
Find out more about how to produce a captivating channel trailer that hooks your viewers
and turns them into subscribers.
Change or remove the channel trailer
1. Go to the channel you want to manage.
2. Hover over your channel name and click the edit icon .
3. Select Change trailer or Remove trailer.
12. Global Audience:
Best practices for localized channels
As your audience continues to grow and your channel reaches global communities
speaking varied languages, it’s common to consider whether it makes sense to separate
content by language into individual, localized channels, or continue to maintain one larger
(global) channel with multiple language content. Brands and advertisers often turn to one
of three models to address their global audiences but ultimately it’s up to you to decide
what works best for your channel and audience.
A. One channel with multiple language content
In this model, brands establish one main channel where content is uploaded in multiple
languages for multiple geographies.
Branding
With one channel to represent your brand presence, your brand and any associated assets
will be consistent across regions. If your audience uses the same terms for search across
languages (ex. a product name) this channel will be highly relevant and easy to discover.
Engagement
Driving your audience to one global channel will consolidate your viewership and channel
subscribers and make it easier for users to find your channel in YouTube search. Once
discovered, it may prove more challenging to engage with your subscribers from across the
world as a single audience since content can be available in varied languages. As such, your
channel’s audience will be fragmented by language, and your channel community will see
posts, comments, and feed updates in many different languages. To help your audience stay
engaged, you might consider adding subtitles and captions to your videos to make your
content more accessible and available to a larger audience. You might also create unique
sections and playlists on your channel for each key market to provide a consolidated
offering by language and drive watch time.
Management
With all of your content in one place, your team can focus all resources on managing this
single channel and make it easier to maintain consistent global branding and tone. Of
course, the actual number of resources needed to manage a channel will depend entirely on
the regularity of uploads planned and the intensity of your individual channel strategy.
Being consistent with uploads, ensuring brand equity and audience management is critical 
to growing a successful channel.
B. Multiple channels each with unique language content
Here brands create multiple channels, each featuring different language and geography
content. This can be very helpful for languages with various alphabets or search terms.
Branding
With a unique channel for each geography or language, brands will have the opportunity to
customize each channel to the local audience and easily incorporate local events and
promotions. If your brand identity varies slightly in different regions, this will allow you to
respect those differences and incorporate them into your channel strategy.
Engagement
While your viewership and subscribers will be split across multiple channels by language
preference, this does allow for you to have focused communications with a specific,
engaged audience. All items on the channel will be targeted to a language specific audience
which may result in an improved user experience. Users may be less likely to get confused
or disengaged because of varying language content once they discover the brand channel in
their preferred language. Don’t forget that you’ll want to specify which language a
particular channel targets since users may see various channels available in search and
typically larger channels trump smaller channels. It will be important to cross-promote
your various language channels amongst each other to help improve discoverability. A
great way to ensure that you’re cross-promoting effectively is to add channels of interest to
the “featured channels” section your channel’s about tab.
Management
With your channel content spread across multiple regions/languages, each local channel
will need to allocate resources to manage the channel on an ongoing basis. Whether your
channels follow a predefined framework or rely on local teams to manage, you’ll want to be
sure your brand can devote enough resources to launch and maintain each channel with a
regular upload and engagement schedule.
C. One global channel and supporting local channels
With a single channel to serve as the main brand hub to feature global campaigns in the
main brand language and territory and supporting local channels targeting different
languages and regions, brands can foster a larger global presence while still connecting to
their local regions with specific content.
Branding
With this distribution of channel content, you can still showcase consistent global branding
in your hub channel while using the various local channels to feature local events and
promotions. It may be helpful to adopt templates for your video metadata and video
thumbnails to help maintain brand consistency across your various channels.
Engagement
With so many channels, viewership and subscribers will be segmented across multiple
channels but users are able to find the relevant content for their specific language and
receive a consistent experience when viewing content and engaging with the channel
community. It will be important to use the main global channel to help drive viewers to
your local channels using video metadata, channel descriptions, and featured channel
programming. Depending on upload frequency, more frequent uploads on the local
channels may result in those channels receiving a more prominent placement in search.
Management
This channel organization structure requires coordination between global and local teams
but allows for flexibility when it comes to customizing the brand message for local markets
or featuring local campaigns. This may be the most resource-intensive channel
organization structure as you will need to dedicate time to both a larger global channel and
several local channels but the actual number of resources will depend on the regularity of
uploads and engagement strategies implemented on each channel.
13. Opt in to channel recommendations
You can opt in to have your YouTube channel listed on other channels that your potential
viewers might be watching. This section is called "Related channels" and you can see it on
the right side of channel pages while using YouTube on a computer.
Channel recommendations are created based on:
• What channels are watched by the same users
• Whether the videos are about similar topics
• Whether the channels are suitable for the same audience
You can't control what channels appear in the “Related channels” section on your own
channel, but you can opt out to remove the section completely.
14. Turn your channel recommendation on or off
1. Sign in to your YouTube channel.
2. In the top right, click your account icon > Creator Studio.
3. In the left menu, select Channel > Advanced.
4. Under "Channel recommendations," opt in or out:
• To opt in: Select "Allow my channel to appear in other channels' recommendations."
This allows your channel to appear in "Related channels" sections across YouTube.
• To opt out: Select "Do not allow my channel to appear in other channels' recommendations." This
removes the entire "Related channels" section from your channel page.
15. YouTube - How to add weblinks to your channel Web links may include:
• A link to your social profiles (Twitter, Facebook...)
• Your email address.
• A link to your website or blog.
Here's how to get started:
• Sign-in to your YouTube channel.
• Click on the Menu button > My Channel.
• Go to the About tab and click on +Links.
• Enter your email address in the first field:
• To add a link to your blog or website, scroll to the CUSTOM LINKS section and click on
the Add button:
• To add a link to a social profile, scroll to the SOCIAL LINKS section and click on the Add
button. Use the drop menu to select the service of your choice and paste the URL of your
social profile in the adjacent field:
16. How to close a YouTube channel?
• First log-in to your YouTube account.
• Click on the small avatar located top-right > Settings
• In the Overview section, just under your Username, click on the Advanced button
• Click on the "Delete channel" button and follow the procedure.
17. Connecting a YouTube channel to your social
accounts
This allows YouTube to share you public activity (new video upload, likes..) on your
social channels.
The procedure is as follows:
• Sign-in to your YouTube channel
.
• Go to YouTube Settings > Account Settings > Connected accounts:
To connect to a Facebook page or profile:
• Click on the Connect button.
• Enter your Facebook credentials and click on Log in