YouTube Helps Creators Go Global With Multi-Language Audio Dubbing

Welcome back to repeat readers and hello to new ones! This week, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was named one of the "Top 30 US Partnership Marketing Changemakers" by Hello Partner. Check out the full list here (requires free account registration), which also includes leaders from YouTube, TIME Magazine, Rakuten, NBCUniversal, Impact, CJ, LTK, and more.

In other personal news, I will be a guest interviewee for The Future of Content Marketing, an interview series hosted by Cat Margulis, the founder of the Passion Project, a podcast focused on helping people achieve their goals. The series will feature over 20 industry insiders and experts discussing all things related to content marketing.

My live video interview on the evolution of influencer marketing, how the creator economy impacts content marketing, and more is on Friday, March 3rd, at 12PM EST, but the other sessions kick off Wednesday, March 1st. Sign up here for free access to all the live and recorded interviews, and check out the flyer later in the newsletter.

With all that out of the way, let’s dive in!

Today’s Edition:

• YouTube expands multi-language dubbing to help creators reach new audiences

• LinkedIn gives creators greater control over their profiles and content

• YouTube tests new tools to help creators distribute and measure podcasts

YouTube Expands Multi-Language Dubbing To Help Creators Reach New Audiences

When creators are trying to break through to new audiences, the go-to strategy is typically for them to repurpose and distribute their content to several social media platforms or leverage paid efforts such as ads. However, this strategy does not address a significant barrier to reaching new audiences: language differences. This is particularly relevant on YouTube, which has a global user base that speaks many different languages.

Dubbing Can Be Expensive & Time-Consuming

Some prominent creators like MrBeast have invested in dubbing services to create videos in various languages and then create dedicated multi-language channels. However, this can be expensive and, above all, time-consuming. For each new channel a creator adds, they also need to create additional thumbnails, post those videos, and manage those channels. It also fragments their audiences since viewers are scattered across multiple channels instead of having a central location.

YouTube’s Solution: Multi-Language Audio Dubbing

YouTube is looking to remove some of these barriers with an expanded rollout of a feature that will allow creators to easily add multi-language audio dubs to both new and existing videos, expanding their reach to international audiences. Better yet, this feature is easy to use and free.

When creators upload a video, they can now select the option to add additional audio tracks for over 40 languages. Once added to new video uploads or updated to existing ones, viewers can automatically watch the video in their default language. They can also search for multilingual content through video titles and descriptions, which are also translated.

During the testing phase of the feature, YouTube reports that creators saw over 15% of their watch time come from views in the video's non-primary language. Plus, on average, viewers watched over 2 million hours of dubbed videos daily in January of this year.

Creators Go Global

With somewhere between 13-17% of the world's population speaking English, this feature will be extremely beneficial for creators in the US as they have the potential to reach many more people by making their videos in languages other than English. This added viewership means that creators can expand to global markets, which can lead to increased ad revenue and merchandise sales, more branded content deals with companies that want to reach non-English speakers, and more. It can also help creators with potential burnout. Instead of having to post more videos, making their videos in different languages is an alternative.

Democratizing Content Creation & Consumption

Overall, the solution democratizes content creation and consumption for creators and viewers, which is not only beneficial to them, but also to YouTube, as it opens up opportunities for people of all languages to find and consume videos outside their primary language. This should lead to more watch time and engagement — which is essentially every platform’s goal.

If we think about the impact that closed captions and text translations have had on accessibility and reach, this will have an even bigger impact.

Lookout For Copycats

Currently, YouTube is the only major social platform that offers a solution like this. However, as we typically see, it's a copycat world, so we should expect that at least Meta and TikTok will eventually invest in a similar offering for their video experiences.

LinkedIn Gives Creators Greater Control Over Their Profiles & Content

LinkedIn shared new updates for Activity on profiles. Activity will now show dedicated sections for each content type: Posts, Comments, Videos, Articles, Images, Newsletters, Events, and more. Creators will also be able to choose which type of content they want viewers to see first.

Greater Control & Visibility

The update provides creators with greater control over their profiles and the visibility of their content. With the ability to choose which content type appears first, creators can showcase the content that best represents them and the value they offer on the platform.

This serves as a first impression, allowing profile visitors (who may turn into followers) to preview the type of content they can expect from a particular creator. For instance, someone interested in growing their newsletter may choose to highlight that content type, making it easy for viewers to know they have a newsletter and potentially subscribe.

At the same time, it provides a better viewing experience for audiences, making it easier to discover their preferred content type. Rather than having to sift through a creator's profile, they can simply click on the tab for their desired content type. This is similar to the viewer experience on YouTube, where separate tabs are available on creators' Channel Pages for different content formats.

A Growing Trend

LinkedIn's latest move reflects a growing trend of platforms giving creators more control over their profile presence and the ability to showcase specific content, regardless of when it was published. Other examples of this include Instagram's Pinned Posts and Pinterest's Profile Highlights.

YouTube Tests New Tools To Help Creators Distribute & Measure Podcasts

Along with announcing that podcasts will soon be distributed through YouTube Music, YouTube is currently testing new tools for podcast creators.

New Tools For Podcast Creators

First, it gives creators the ability to create a podcast or set an existing playlist as a podcast with YouTube Studio. For creators that are part of the experiment, they will be able to:

• Upload a podcast through a new Podcast option for Create

• View all of their Podcasts under a new Podcast Tab in the Content Menu

• Mark existing playlists as podcasts through a Set as podcast option

Second, creators will also see new podcast-specific analytics for videos that are marked as podcasts. They will access metrics for performance, audience, and revenue insights for each of their podcasts.

Why It Matters

These experiments bring native tools for podcasters to designate content as a podcast, distribute their podcast episodes, and measure their performance using podcast-related analytics. Adding these also moves YouTube deeper into podcasting, which it has gradually been doing with recent launches of a dedicated podcast hub and expanded Audio Ads. As the second most popular destination for podcasts, more support for podcasts makes it easier for creators to bring their podcasts to YouTube, encourages more people to use YouTube for their podcast consumption, and ultimately attracts more advertisers to run ads across podcast content.

TikTok is also another social media platform that seems to be diving into podcasts. It has been testing a native podcast feature, where users can listen to the audio of a video via a new 'Podcast' page while the app is in the background.

More News

YouTube Introduces New Metrics For Shorts

YouTube has introduced new metrics for Shorts analytics, including "Shown In Feed" and "Viewed Vs. Swiped Away." The former allows creators to see how many times their Shorts were shown in the Shorts Feed, while the latter lets creators see the percentage of viewers who watched their Shorts versus those who swiped away.

In addition, YouTube is adding new Audience Demographics by content format. Creators can now see audience demographic data such as age, gender, and geography separated by long-form videos, Shorts, or both.

These metrics provide creators with deeper insights into their content. For example, knowing how often viewers watch their Shorts versus moving on to the next one in the feed can indicate how captivating the beginning of their Shorts are. If a creator's videos are consistently being swiped away, it may signal that tweaks are necessary to get viewers to stop and watch their video while scrolling through the feed.

Audience demographics by content format can also provide creators with a better understanding of the type of people who consume their long-form content versus Shorts. Since these formats can be used in different ways and attract different crowds, creators will be able to tell whether one is better for reaching a certain demographic. This data is also helpful for marketers who partner with YouTubers and want to understand which particular content format may be best for reaching their desired audience.

Snapchat Announces New Sound Features For Creators

Snapchat has announced two new audio features for creators. The first is Sound Recommendation for Lenses, which provides creators with recommendations to use when they apply Snapchat Lens. When creators add a Lens to a photo or video, they can tap the Sounds icon to get served with a list of relevant Sounds that complement the lens.

The second feature is Sounds Sync for Camera Roll, which allows creators to create a montage video featuring 4-20 photos/videos from their camera roll that is automatically in rhythm to the beat of audio tracks from the Sounds library.

Music plays an important role in social media today, which is why TikTok, YouTube, Meta, and Pinterest have all made recent investments in this area. Snapchat is no exception. Since launching Sounds on Snapchat in 2020, there have been over 2.7 billion videos created with music, generating over 183 billion views. Both new features should help creators match sounds with their content more easily, so they can choose music that connects with their audiences and speed up the content creation process.

These features come shortly after the platform announced that it now has 750 million monthly active users and is on track to reach 1 billion users in the next few years.

Twitch Rolls Out Channel Tagging For Stream Titles

Twitch rolled out a new feature that allows creators to tag other channels in their stream titles.

Creators can use the @ symbol and start typing the name of the streamer(s) they want to tag when giving their stream a title. Once saved, the tagged streamer's handle will appear in the stream title, and viewers can hover over it to see their bio, social media handles, streaming status, and a follow button. Currently, channels that are tagged in a title will not receive a notification.

Channel tagging is a new collaboration option for Twitch streamers. They can now tag other streamers with whom they may be collaborating, such as playing a game together or just chatting. They can also tag a brand's channel if they are doing a sponsored stream. Besides strengthening collaborations, tagging helps with discovery. Streamers can introduce their audiences to other channels, which helps grow their communities. Given that discovery continues to be a challenge on Twitch, this, along with some of Twitch's upcoming product features, improves the situation.

Tagging features such as this have become quite popular across social media platforms. Last fall, YouTube launched a similar functionality connected to the launch of handles, where creators can tag other YouTube channels in their video titles. Facebook also recently launched Creator Endorsement, which enables creators to send a notification to their followers to follow a creator of their choice. Plus, there is Instagram Collabs, which is the best of these types of features, where accounts can co-author posts. It feels like it’s only a matter of time before TikTok and Pinterest bring similar experiences to their own platforms.

LinkedIn Adds A New “Starred” Option For Inbox

LinkedIn has added a new "Starred" option for its inbox feature. Creators can now mark important conversations in their LinkedIn inbox with a star using a new Star icon that appears next to each message. Once a conversation has been marked as starred, a Star icon will appear next to it in the message list. Creators can also view all messages that have been starred with the "Starred" filter.

This feature is useful for creators who want to keep track of messages that need to be revisited later or that may be valuable. The LinkedIn inbox can become cluttered with networking and economic opportunities, so being able to prioritize important messages can help prevent creators from missing out on such opportunities, especially if they do not have the time to respond immediately or need to take specific action before responding.

The "Starred" option is one of several improvements LinkedIn has made to its messaging feature. It previously introduced the Focused Inbox, which categorizes messages as Focused or Other tabs based on their relevance. These enhancements come as the platform reports that conversations within the app have increased by almost 20% year over year.

However, LinkedIn is not the only social media platform that has been upgrading its messaging functionality. Other major players like TikTok have added more options for Direct Messages, while Instagram has launched Broadcast Channels, a one-to-many messaging tool for creators.

Upcoming Interview (3/3): The Future Of Content Marketing

Sign up here to catch my live interview with Cat Margulis on Friday, March 3rd, 2023, at 12 PM EST.

What I’m Reading

• New fame, age-old exploitation (New York Times)

• With first-ever beauty-college collab, Hally is targeting students (Glossy)

• TikTok owner ByteDance has quietly launched a new app, Lemon8, in the US and UK, and is paying creators to post (Business Insider)