Videoeezy from Tosh Lubek Productions

If you're creating video content on YouTube I hope you are taking full advantage of YouTube’s free marketing tools. Of course they don't call them that. They call those tools Cards and End Screens . If you haven't visited YouTube for a while you may not have heard of either End Screens or Cards. But you probably will have heard of Annotations, or at least seen them on videos. But here's the thing, Annotations are NO MORE. Annotations RIP. As of about May of 2017 YouTube Creators haven't been able to create new annotations, nor can they edit existing annotations (with the exception of removing them from videos). Oh no! Annotations were great, at least for Creators, who sadly seldom used annotations in a subtle way. Nonetheless, annotations were useful for Creators. They were a boon; I could use them to link to my website’s landing page or squeeze page. In fact, I could link to multiple websites, although YouTube didn’t really want anyone to know abo

YouTube Annotations. They are a bit like Marmite, you either love them or you hate them. As a viewer you may think they are ugly and often hide the video you want to watch. But if you are a YouTube creator you will know annotations have been one of your best friends. When introduced by YouTube they helped Creators grow their channels by encouraging fans to subscribe, lead them to other related videos, boost comments, likes and shares, Annotation can even facilitate the sale of merchandise. So if Annotations are so good, why is YouTube doing away with them from Tuesday May 2 nd 2017? The big problem for Annotations is that they are old technology that does not work on mobile. Annotations were introduced in 2008 when our e-lives were firmly tied to desktop computers. Mobile networks were relatively slow and streaming HD videos to your phone was a bizarre notion for most people. Almost ten years later everything has moved on. Desktop viewing has been overtaken by mobile and