If you’ve had a YouTube channel for a while, you may have missed the new sidebar link functionality that was added with the site-wide channel layout changes earlier this year. Used properly, you can direct traffic from your YouTube channel to your other social media channels, or even your website. To add these links to your channel, you first need to log into your YouTube account, and click your username in the top right. Select “My Channel” from from the drop-down menu that appears.
In the right sidebar, you should see “About [your user name]’s channel” followed immediately by an Edit button. Click the Edit button and navigate to the section labeled “Add a new link”. Fill in the fields for the links you’d like to display (click the “Add” button if you run out of entry fields). While you can link to your Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ pages using this method, YouTube actually provides the ability to connect those accounts directly with your YouTube account for better interaction and highlighted promotion.
Once you have your links set up, visitors to your channel page will be able to click out of YouTube to the pages you’ve specified. This is a great way to translate some of your video traffic to your website, and keep your social media communities connected with each other for better interaction.