How to Add Annotations on YouTube Videos

YouTube Clickable Annotations are powerful free tools that can help you get more subscribers, increase engagement, grow your audience and encourage viewers to take certain actions like clicking over to your website.

CLICK HERE to learn more about how YouTube Annotations can help you grow your channel.

In this video I will show you how to add clickable annotations to your YouTube video. I included other information in this blog post to provide references and resources.

Adding Clickable Annotations to YouTube Videos

Here’s one way to access YouTube annotations:

1. Go to your channel Video Manager.
2. Next to the video you wish to edit, click the down arrow to the right of the Edit button and select Annotations.
3. Click the Add annotation button on the right.
4. Click Apply changes when you’ve finished creating your annotations.

There are five different types of YouTube annotations to choose from (in the video I focus on Note and Spotlight):

• Speech bubble: for creating pop-up speech bubbles with text.
• Spotlight: for highlighting areas in a video; when the user moves the mouse over these areas the text you enter will appear. Typically used for YouTube Endcards.
• Note: for creating pop-up boxes containing text.
• Title: for creating a text overlay to title your video.
• Label: for creating a label to call out and name a specific part of your video.

About Associated Websites and YouTube Annotations

You can add a clickable annotation link to your associated website. I did not cover this in the video. YouTube does a great job of explaining it. Click here to visit the YouTube Associated Websites FAQ page.

Are you using clickable YouTube annotations on your videos ? What type of results are you getting and what are your most commonly used annotation types?