YouTube’s looking to provide opportunities for more creators to engage with their channel visitors by expanding access to its Community posts option, which provides another way for creators to interact and share with fans within the app.
As you can see here, the Community tab, currently available to channels with over 1,000 subscribers, enables creators to post various update types, including images, GIFs, polls and even videos, within a dedicated engagement space in their channel feed.
Now, more channels will get access to the same, with YouTube reducing the subscriber requirement to access the tool.
As explained by YouTube:
“Starting October 12 2021, we’re lowering the eligibility for Community posts from channels with 1,000 subscribers to all channels with over 500 subscribers. For channels under 500 subscribers, we are working to bring Community posts to you in the future. Note: It may take up to 1 week to see the option to create Community posts after your channel passes 500 subscribers.”
That will provide more capacity for creators to build community in the app, and while it is a seemingly lesser-used function within the broader YouTube experience, it does provide a whole new engagement opportunity for those looking to share additional updates, garner viewer feedback, and enhance their connection to their audience.
YouTube further notes that it’s been working to improve the Community posts experience over the past few months, by adding in new features like post metrics, multi-image updates and post scheduling.
Really, it’s like a traditional social media feed within your YouTube channel, similar to someone visiting your Facebook Page and seeing all your latest posts, which they can then comment on, and even up and downvote, in the app.
The true value of the option largely relates to your channel size, and what, specifically, you look to post. But it does provide another surface to refer your viewers to, where you can showcase specific elements, promotions, and other post types.
Finally, YouTube also notes that as a result of its expanded access to Community posts, it’s removing the Discussion tab for all channels from October 12th. The Discussion tab served a similar purpose as the Community panel, in enabling creators to post text-based updates for their audience, but with the Community Tab being a more advanced iteration of the same, it’s retiring the Discussion tab to make way for the change.
The only impact here is that the Discussion tab is available to channels with fewer than 1,000 subscribers, so it will reduce access to these additional engagement features for smaller channels. But then again, as YouTube notes, it is looking to expand access to the Community tab further in the near future, so the impacts will be minimal in this respect.
You can read more about YouTube’s Community posting options here.