When you're first starting out a YouTube channel, there are a lot of questions that run through your mind. And one of these questions will include the name of your channel. Listen in - YouTube Producer Nate Woodbury will be giving out some tips you may want to consider when thinking of your channel name.

Have you ever asked the question what should my YouTube name be? Obviously this would be for someone who's just getting into YouTube. Just starting their own channel. We're going to give you some advice and some tips right now. -So, you probably watched another one of our episodes and learned the value of YouTube. The power of what you can do. So I think, "Okay, what should the name be? How should I name this channel?" -Yeah. -There's 3 different categories that I have broken this down. And you can name it after your company. If you've got a business or something. You could call it the name of your business. You could you know, use your personal name. You could call it the Scott Christopher channel. -Which I do on this channel right here. Scott Christopher channel. Because I don't really have a... I mean I have a business but I'm... It's weird. I'm a complicated case. Let's go to the third thing. _The third option would be to have it be a topic-based channel. Maybe it's a science channel so you call it all things science. You know, something like that. -Oh, so create the title around the theme itself. Got you, yeah. That's good. -So and there's pros and cons of both. A lot of this audience that's watching this video are businesses that are wanting to market their services. And the temptation might be to name your channel after your business. And that's actually the one that I'm going to least recommend. Because YouTube is a place where you can really build a following. And if you... If you want people to follow you, they're more likely going to follow you as a person than to follow your company. -Hmm. Interesting.-Thing about the channels that you're subscribed to. Do you follow any companies? -Probably not. now that you mention it. Yeah. -I don't think that I do. -It depends on the company name. If the company name sounds like a catchy clever thematic YouTube channel then great. But you're right. Most of them are just named something, somewhat staid and boring. Yeah. -Let's think of a company that I might follow... -Even Microsoft, for example. I mean, would you follow Microsoft on YouTube? Of course for Mac users. But we would probably. It said... If it was the apples channel. -Okay, so there's one. I do follow SpaceX. -That's a company. I follow SpaceX because I like to watch their live broadcasts of their rocket launches. So, that is an example of one where you know, if the channel was called Elon Musk, I might subscribe more to that channel. If it was actually him and I was  following him. -Yeah, that's true. But... So there's kind of a difference there. -But we know with like you see we're talking to entrepreneurs. Probably a lot of small business owners as well. And again, I think maybe the actual name of their company might not jump off the screen at people. But if it does happen to be clever and cool and SpaceX sounds like what you're looking at. -Let's go through each of these three types and talk about the advantages and disadvantages. Let's start first with naming it after your company or business. A big disadvantage that I see is that people are going to assume that you're  going to be promoting to them. -Right, yeah. -I mean you could be vlogging, you could be a how-to without any sales pitch at all. But if they see the logo, you know, as the icon of the channel, they see, "Oh, this is the whatever." -Metropolitan life insurance, whatever. -Yeah, exactly. -Why do I want to watch videos on in life channels? -I have a question about money or about something. But it's like from... "Oh, it's this is from a life insurance company." -Right. -I'm probably not going to continue watching it. -That's true. -Right? So, what are... That's a disadvantage. What's an advantage of a company? -Well again, you know, the top of mind awareness of a good company name. And especially if the company name itself evokes kind of a sense of what you have consultants... -I have a good example. GoPro. The GoPro YouTube channel. Yeah, we know that they market their cameras but if we've seen a lot of their videos and they're not commercials, right? We know... So there is a right way of doing branded channel. -And there are larger organizations like them that also have a political bent or some other platform that people are familiar with and they go... Well, if I go see the Nike thing, you know, they do a lot of inspirational stuff. And just it's about athletes. Even their commercials don't really shove any... They don't do any price an item. There's no shoes. You never see the Nike shoe on sale at Kmart 79. It's not about that. It's about you know, just a cool invigorating commercial. And so I think there are some advantages in that way. -I mean you'll notice that the examples that we can think of that are doing it well are big big brands that have invested a lot in their name and in their brand. But if you think about you know, just a small business owner or a solopreneur that names that after their business that nobody knows. -Bob's cars. Yeah. Whatever. I mean, we're not going to go look at that. Unless... I guess if we're looking for cars, that might actually be pretty useful. But... -Well if I wanted to know how to... How to refill my radiator. I don't know. if you don't know how to refill your radiator, you probably don't know how to handle a computer, yeah. -Okay. So let's go to topic based. What are some advantages and disadvantages of a topic-based channel? One that I follow is called Veritasium. It's a science-based channel. Oh, there's another one. Another science one called smarter every day. The advantage is you know what's coming. You know what future videos are going to be about. You know what the archives are going to be about. If it's... There's another one that I think of. Physics... Physics Gal or Physics Girl. You know that her videos are going to be generally about physics and science. And so... I think of a teacher that wants to show videos. Or there's another one. There's King of Random. Or there's Studio C. You know, it's sketch comedy. So, you know what to expect when you go to those those channels. I think those are some advantages. Can you think of any other advantages? I think of one disadvantage. -I think the advantages you're saying are right on. I mean which is just that... And also, I think the other advantage might even be search engine... I mean, if you have... If you've titled your channel right because of its theme, it may be something people are looking for already. And then your channel comes right up. -Yeah. So, one disadvantage is I've seen a lot of YouTubers that have topic-based channels like that that want to create other types of videos. That they end up creating different channels. They feel like, "Well, I can't really vlog on this channel because this channel is..." So, there's a channel called What's Inside? And as you can guess, they cut things open and find out what's inside. So they'll say, "What's inside an iPhone...? This is a 6s." So, they've cut it open and see what's inside. Then if they want to go on a family vacation and vlog about it, they can't really put it on the what's inside because they're not showing what's inside anything. So they did. They created a separate... They call it What's Inside Family. So they... Now, they can just do family adventures. Don't mock them, they're my friends. -I'm not mocking. -I know. They're really okay. They're really fun. But even Veritassium. He created Veritasium2 or you can just vlog and do stuff that's that's just more chatty and conversational. -Do your friends watch these? I don't think What's Inside People... Even if they are your friends. -Dan, you watch these. -I can't imagine. You already knows how to do.He doesn't need your help. Look at him, he's got a million viewers. -Already got a YouTube. He doesn't need a watch this episode. -That YouTube Army. -So I guess... I guess we can tease. Okay. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of a person channel or channel named after you? The advantages are huge. People... People want to follow people. So if you're a person and... -I doggone it you better be. Because we need to count you as a viewer. So if you're a person with a name, people want to follow you more than a thing, a topic, a theme or an organization. It's just... It's more of a personal connection there. And it's more exciting. Especially if the person has some name notoriety too. If their name says something. You know what I mean? Like, we've heard of this guy or this girl. -Yeah. Well... So think of... Think about Casey Neistat. His channel's name Casey Neistat. He recently... The latest series on his show is called 3-6-8. But think if he would have had that title from the beginning and if that's what I named his channel. 3-6-8. Maybe that would have become a popular channel. I think it would have been harder to do so. But less people would know him by name. I mean a lot of people in the YouTube world know who Casey Neistat is because he kind of created his own vlogging style that everyone else copies. And... -Well, plus by using just his name, he isn't limiting himself at all. Like the What's Inside People, for example, had to make What's Inside Family. Casey Neistat, can be anything. Even if we're associating him with a certain kind of vlog, really, the title of his vlog is just a name. So therefore, he can put all kinds of things under that one umbrella If he wants to. His brand. -Now I know, a lot of our viewers here also watching this video on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is... It is a different animal because you don't create a name for your channel. It is tied to a person. -Mm-hmm. -So, in this case, it plays most specifically. Obviously, you're watching this channel on Nate Woodbury. Because it's linked to my profile, my account. -That's a good point, yeah. It's all about name on LinkedIn. -So, hopefully you found this video helpful. And hopefully, that gave you some guidance on what you should name your channel. Kind of leaning towards the name. But sometimes you might want to go towards the topic. And in rare cases, go after the company. So, I have a couple questions for you to leave in the comments. One, are there more categories than the 3... Do you think I covered it all? Or something I'm missing? And then I want to know what are you going to name your YouTube channel. Obviously, I know what your LinkedIn is going to be because it's a name. But what... Comment below what are you going to name your YouTube channel. -Or what have you named your YouTube channel? Especially if it's a whacky one. -If it's a whacky one, what are you going to change it to? -Or not. -We'll see you tomorrow.