YouTube is rolling out a new way to share your channel’s Community Posts, while it’s also adding new, interactive gifts within live-streams to help encourage creator donations.
First off, on expanded sharing for Community updates. YouTube expanded access to channel-centric Communities to more channels back in June, and now, it’s looking to make it easier for creators to share their text-based updates across more platforms.
YouTube’s channel Communities provide a discussion board-type element to channels, adding another, more social media-aligned way for creators and their fans to interact.
And now, it’s adding social sharing options for your Community updates, so you can easily link back to each specific post.
That could help to promote your YouTube updates, and spark more engagement with your posts.
On another front, YouTube’s also adding new interactive gifts, which can be purchased via its “Jewels” gifting process, which it first announced last year.
Jewels, which can be purchased in the app, can be exchanged for digital stickers, which can then be applied during a live stream, with a percentage of the sticker purchase price then allocated to the streamer.
That can provide a more fun, interactive means to donate to your favorite creators, and now, you’ll have some more options to make your donations stand out.
As per YouTube:
“We’re excited to introduce gift effects, which offer five new interactive options: ‘Cat ears,’ ‘Good job,’ ‘Flower crown,’ ‘Celebrate,’ and ‘Royal crown.’ These character and environment-based effects will display on screen for 8 to 15 seconds when viewers redeem jewels through the gift picker.”
So it’s another way to get the creators’ attention, by providing an interactive overlay in-stream. TikTok already offers similar, and it can provide another means to let fans interact, which can help creators earn more money during a stream.
YouTube says that its new interactive gifts will be marked with a purple sparkle icon in the gift picker in the app, with the updated options being rolled out to all eligible U.S. channels beginning this week.
Finally, YouTube has also confirmed that it’s now experimenting with gift goals for live streams, which it announced last week.
As you can see in these example screens, with gift goals, live creators will be able to set specific targets for donations in a stream, to which they’ll then respond with a “reward” of some kind.
“Gift goals can help you build community by encouraging your viewers to work towards a common mission. Once you reach your goal, you can celebrate with your fans who helped make it happen.”
YouTube says that eligible creators can set a gift goal by tapping the bullseye icon during a live-stream. From there, you can set a target gift amount, then pick a timeframe to achieve that goal.
“Once launched, viewers can participate by tapping the bullseye icon, reading the details, and contributing to the goal. Once you’ve reached your current goal, you can set up another one, but you can’t have two goals running at the same time.”
It could be another way to drive more donations, and spark more interaction during your streams.
YouTube says that it’s experimenting with gift goals on vertical live-streams on mobile in the U.S.
