How to Connect Your Old YouTube Channel and New Google+ Page

I had the pleasure of meeting some Google employees at a conference a few weeks ago. They told me one of the biggest issues they hear about from small businesses, and Internet marketing companies alike, is the disconnect between new Google+ business pages and old YouTube channels. But there’s a simple fix. Let me explain. Say your company, Texas Pizza for the purposes of this example, started a YouTube channel several years ago (long before G+ ever existed). There’s a good chance the person who created that YouTube account may have also started a dummy Gmail account to do so – something like texaspizzarules@gmail.com. That worked fine and dandy for a long time. Then Google created Google+. And then Google created business pages for Google+. And then Google started bringing those Google+ identities to YouTube, as well. In other words, Google wants your Google+ business page and YouTube channels to communicate with each other – to have the same identity. Problem is many small businesses started those Google+ business pages with different email addresses, or they may have hired an Internet marketing company to create a Google+ page for them. So the identities don’t match up. To illustrate this, let’s say Texas Pizza hired me to handle social media a year ago. I created Texas Pizza’s Google+ page at that time. Texas Pizza also gave me access to the texaspizzarules@gmail.com account so I can manage the YouTube channel. So here’s how you can link the two. First things first, you’ll want to go ahead and create a Google+ profile (not a page) for the Gmail account you use to log in and access the YouTube channel. This will automatically make that profile the manager of the YouTube channel, as well. Step 1: Create a G+ profile for the email associated with the business YouTube channel Next, whoever runs the company’s Google+ business page needs to add that newly created account as an admin to the G+ business page. Step 2: Make the newly created profile a manager on the G+ business page Now that the same profile is a manager of both the YouTube channel and the official G+ business page, that profile will now have an option (in the YouTube advanced settings) to link the two. Step 3: Connect the G+ business page and YouTube channel After you’ve connected the two, any admin of the G+ business page should notice the YouTube channel now showing up in the YouTube Channel Switcher. This means the official G+ business page and YouTube channel are now connected. Step 4: Check the YouTube Channel SwitcherOnce all that is completed and good to go, you can get rid of the (dummy) profile you created for this process. Be really careful here to make sure you’re deleting the correct thing. This five-step process is definitely worth it to have the business page and YouTube channel connected. Questions? Let me know or contact Leadhub SEO and social media information