Start Creating Content for Your Small Business with this Youtube Feature (Article)
Have you heard of automatic concepts on YouTube? If not, and you’re using the second largest search engine in the world to share business content, you need to know about this. It could be impacting your content through clicks and views.
Automatic concepts on YouTube are an experimental feature that automatically identifies key terms or ideas mentioned in your video and adds explanations of these concepts to your video description. This feature is designed to enhance the viewer's understanding of your content without them having to leave the video page. For instance, if you were a plumber and you referred to a science term as you were describing a process, YouTube might define this concept for the audience.
You may have noticed a similar “summary” feature on Google generated by AI like this one below that came up when I researched automatic concepts and asked if it was still in beta.
When YouTube first rolled this feature out, it was marketed as something they were implementing for explanation purposes in education videos . YouTube described it as, “…a new, automatic way to identify key concepts covered in academic learning videos and surface more information about these concepts in the form of images and short text snippets in real-time, directly on the video’s watch page. For now, this is being tested on a small set of English-language videos related to educational topics taught in schools (across subjects such as biology, physics and chemistry). The experiment will take place on mobile only, for a limited number of people watching YouTube.”
Why Should I Care? It’s Not That New
As a business content creator, you should take notice of automatic concepts for several reasons:
1. Easy definitions. They help viewers learn more about unfamiliar terms or industry jargon used in your videos, making your content more accessible and valuable. That’s the good news. The part to be leery about is that it assumes YouTube will get it right and summarize your concepts in a way you want it to.
2. Increased engagement. By providing additional context, viewers are more likely to stay on your video longer, potentially improving watch time and engagement metrics.
3. Improved discoverability. The added concepts in your description may help your video appear in more search results, potentially increasing your reach.
4. Time-saving element. This automated feature can save you time by eliminating the need to manually explain every technical term or concept in your video or description. However, it’s still in beta so you can’t rely on it to appear on your video, but you can control whether the feature is on or off (we’ll show you that in a sec). It is on by default.
5. Educational value. If your business creates educational content, this feature can complement your teaching efforts by providing additional information to viewers.
What If I Want to Shut Them On or Off?
To enable automatic concepts for your videos, you can follow these steps in YouTube Studio:
1. Open YouTube Studio and go to the "Content" tab
2. Select the specific video you want to optimize
3. Click on the "Details" tab
4. Scroll down and click on "Show More"
5. Enable/disable the "Allow automatic concepts" checkbox
If you don’t see what’s described above, it's worth noting that this feature is still experimental and may not be available for all videos or creators.
You can try it out on some of your videos to see if it adds value to your content and aligns with your business goals. Keep in mind, in some cases, while handy, it may deter viewers from watching your video. For instance, if your video is a short description of a concept in physics, for instance, and the viewer has access to a summary generated by YouTube, they may not watch your video. We’re seeing the same happen on Google with the AI content summaries keeping people from scrolling down the page if all they wanted was a simple answer to their inquiry.
These are the type of features that are changing search and that content creators and marketers will have to keep in mind when creating content for business.
Christina Metcalf is a writer and women’s speaker who believes in the power of story. She works with small businesses, chambers of commerce, and business professionals who want to make an impression and grow a loyal customer/member base. She is the author of The Glinda Principle, rediscovering the magic within.
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