Mastering YouTube Description Formatting: How to Bold Text, Add Social Media Links & Optimize Your Content

Hi YouTube creators.
This is a video
that is going to show you how to do
some formatting
in your YouTube descriptions.
So as a graphic designer,
I long for text separation.
Clear divisions between types of content.
Size changes, font changes.
And so it’s very prohibitive
to be in social media,
especially something like a YouTube,
video description
and not have this type of options
available.
So this is me doing, a deep dive to see
what are the ways
that you can still segment your content,
be able to have viewers
do a quick read, link to other things,
know the priorities of your video
and what you’re writing about.
So let’s get started.
So first, roughly, this is a very recent
video that I am just testing out.
What are the ways I can get, bold fonts.
the ways and the rabbit hole
I went down is using Unicode.
And so what that does is
it takes your regular font
which is made up of letters,
and it uses a Unicode character
to make that letter look like that
letter, but maybe with a style to it.
However, it is not an actual letter,
it is a encoded character.
Therefore, a screen reader is going to say
the name of what that Unicode is.
And it may even skip over it.
So it makes it very not accessible.
So although
you will see if you see fancy fonts
and maybe a Instagram post or on Facebook,
this is how they’re doing it.
And you can also do it in YouTube,
which we can get to in a different video,
which I can link to below.
But for this video, I want to show you
the best case, that you can do.
The best practice is simply
to use bold fonts in your description.
So this is how we’re going to do it.
If we go into edit video.
You will see that I am using the Asterisk.
So how you get your asterisk is shift
and the number eight on your keyboard.
The syntax needs to be your word
or your phrase, wrapped by an asterisk
in the beginning and the end.
No space, no other symbol next to it.
And what
this does if we look at our details.
Is it makes video summary bold.
So another way that you can separate
areas is
you can type in each letter in capitals.
This uppercase view
also helps you separate.
You can see that technique happening here.
You can also copy and paste in emojis.
So perhaps that’s a video camera icon.
Painter’s palette a chain link icon.
All kind of icons that you can use.
And I’ve even started to collect ones
that I think are most useful,
on a blog post about this topic.
So maybe it’s the fire,
maybe it’s the pointing finger,
maybe it’s a checkbox,
maybe it’s an arrow.
A nice thick arrow is really great
for drawing attention to certain areas.
So maybe we would go up and,
For each of our bullets,
maybe we would use this arrow.
And say save.
And now when we refresh
and I’m going to turn off my audio there.
We will see there’s arrows.
All right.
So the next thing, is adding in lines.
So you can add lines by holding down shift
and your underscore.
You can also use just the dash.
And that will give you a dash line
with just tiny lines between it.
So if you want a solid line
you need to hold down shift in your dash
or minus sign
if you want it to be slightly dotted.
You can use just the minus sign
without shift.
You can also do things like this
where there’s spaces
between your dashes or maybe a bullet
to draw attention to the beginning.
So in this case, maybe
you do that, right?
So you can
bring in some variation,
even in your lines,
and you could end your line with
perhaps another bullet if you want it.
Or none.
All right,
so that’s another option we have.
So the next part is about bringing
in your social media links.
This is where it gets,
a little bit tricky
about syntax,
because you’re relying on YouTube script
to grab the link that you paste in,
and then to reformat it
so that it has the icon before it
and becomes a link.
And you want these links to work.
So we have a few that
just show up as blue hyperlinks,
and I’m going to show you
how you can change between a blue
hyperlink
and the actual more formatted view.
That includes the icons.
All right.
So let’s look at Twitter or at first.
So I’m going to show you a diagram
that I started on.
So basically remember that websites
have Http tips before them.
They can also have the subdomain of W.
And all of our social media sites
do not require the.
But you can use that.
And the difference
when we’re using it on YouTube,
you can see here,
when I plugged in the fully
qualified URL for x.com,
the icons did not show up.
So then I thought,
what if I try twitter.com?
And that did work.
So my trick is if you cannot
get your x.com icon
to show up in your YouTube description,
the trick is switch out
Xcom for twitter.com
and the script will work
and you will get your icon.
All right.
So if we look here, you can see my test.
All right.
So next we go to Facebook.
And on Facebook there are a few tricks.
So first off you do want
and I’m going to bring it up here.
You do want the full facebook.com.
But whether you have ww.w or not
does not matter.
And you can’t use the shortened
URL of fiverr.com
even though you can get to Facebook
that way it will not add your logo
in your YouTube description.
So the next catch is how you put your ID.
So if you look here.
On my Facebook, links,
I can have designer to full stack width
or without the app symbol
in the beginning,
and all four of those instances
will indeed work the way we want.
The only one that will not work
is the one that has the profile
that PHP with the question mark,
and then my actual ID number.
It will only grab it
if you actually have a name defined.
So if you have a new account with
Facebook, you may not have done this yet.
So I’m going to quickly show you
because mine is in that scenario.
I’m brand new.
All right.
So what you would do
you have your name, but
you are going to need to go into settings.
Once you get to settings
you’re going to go to page.
Set up.
And then you’re going to click
on the first option name.
And you need to select a username.
So when you created your new page
you picked a name,
but your URL still had that PHP
and an automatically assigned ID number.
When you click username and edit,
then you could go in
and pick your text username.
It often you want it to match as closely
as possible with your page name.
And once you have that assigned,
you will see that your URL
for your page.
Will change from that php id to your URL.
All right.
So if you’re running into you
only have this then you need to go ahead
and do those page settings
so that you can get your
your URL name.
All right.
So Instagram works very easily.
And let’s look at that
because what I want
you to see is in Facebook,
if you use the app symbol,
it still works.
Okay.
So here we have the app symbol.
If I click this URL it shows up
facebook.com designer to full stack.
No symbol there.
If I click this one,
this was with and without the,
you know, at symbol.
If I click this one with the app symbol,
it still shows it to me, right?
The app symbol does not break my URL.
That is not the
same for every social media platform.
So if I show you the art and bricks,
it does not have an app symbol here
and it redirects.
It went to Instagram, but if the app
symbol is visible here and I click,
it says, sorry,
this page isn’t available, right?
So Instagram
cannot have the symbol in the URL.
So do keep that in mind that it
the system for YouTube
could show you your link.
It could highlight it
and it could still be a broken link.
So you do want to go back and make sure
that you have the syntax right.
And the link works.
All right.
So which social media platforms
show you icons?
I assume this is something
that’s changing regularly,
but what I can tell you is that in Google,
my business and social media profiles
Google users Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,
Instagram,
LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.
Therefore those definitely work
when you load them
in with the right syntax
into your YouTube description.
Other ones are
discord and there might be other ones.
But those are
the ones that you can be really sure
do show up.
All right.
So the other thing with YouTube is,
when you start.
So if I.
Paste
in my YouTube channel,
it gives me a pop up.
And when I click and select it,
it turns it into this grayed out.
Hey, this is going to your channel.
Any time you do that app sign like that
it is looking for other,
channels and people on YouTube.
So you could accidentally create
a YouTube link
next to, let’s say Instagram
or next to Facebook.
So you do want to be careful
about that as well.
All right.
Another tip for if you had default
content like your boilerplate about me.
And here my socials,
I am going to copy them from here.
And if you click to
your channel so you would say your channel
Let’s just say you go into your videos.
So we want to go into
your channel content.
And we’re actually going to click
to settings.
And then in settings
you’re going to select Upload Defaults.
And in your description
you’re going to paste.
So what this is going to do is default add
into your description
the styling that we have.
Our Asterix being our bold font
and then our links to social.
You can also select things like by default
my Fi,
my videos are going to be public
and you can say save.
All right.
So now this adds the let’s see
these
this whole section by default already
built into each of my descriptions.
So that will make it a lot quicker.
And less copying and pasting.
All right.
So I hope that all of this helps
you with your YouTube descriptions.
And I will link to other resources.
And, happy video creating.