Add a YouTube Subscribe Button to Your Site: How and Why to Do It

For companies that promote, market, or sell with online video (and that should be just about every one of them by this point), having a channel on YouTube is essential. But it's not enough to simply load videos into YouTube; brands also need to keep up to date with what YouTube is doing.

Consider the small but exciting announcement YouTube made this week: You can now add a Subscribe button to your website. This means fans and customers no longer have to visit your YouTube channel page to subscribe to your video feed; they can subscribe from any page with a button.

This announcement fits in perfectly with YouTube's recent move to give a fresh look to channel pages. The video giant is placing an emphasis on driving subscriptions, since that's the most effective way to grow channel views.

Adding a button is beautifully simple. All you need to do is add the code below to your site:

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<div data-channel="Your Channel Name Here">
</div>

Make it a part of every page on your site.

If you want to customize the look of the button, YouTube has a few options for you. Visit this YouTube developers page to learn how to add a branding icon next to your button. By the way, standard channels get a red subscribe button, while paid channels get a green button.

Before you race off and add the button, you should know that YouTube has put a few rules in place. For one, you can't offer prizes or rewards of any kind to entice people to click Subscribe. Hey, this isn't Facebook. Also, buttons need to be fully visible, and you can't use the button to track subscribers' online activity. We don't know what the punishment is, but we're sure it's unwise to make YouTube angry.

With this news, YouTube offers a simple and essential way to grow online views. Brands with YouTube channels should make adding a button to their site a priority.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net