Complete TubeBuddy Review For YouTube

Are you spending too much time managing your YouTube channel, optimizing videos for search, and reaching out to channel subscribers? If so, then you should check out TubeBuddy.

In this article, I’ll go over all of TubeBuddy’s features. I’ll also cover the pros and cons identified by current users.

TubeBuddy is a Chrome extension that’s designed first and foremost to streamline your video marketing efforts. It does that with bulk processing capabilities and productivity features. Beyond that, TubeBuddy also helps with video SEO and offers enhanced analytics. It’s really a comprehensive tool that acts as a one-stop shop for all your YouTube marketing needs. And it resides right there within your Chrome browser. You don’t even need to leave YouTube to use it.

It’s Really a YouTube Extension

As I mentioned in the intro, TubeBuddy is a Chrome extension. In reality, though, it’s a YouTube extension. When you visit Creator Studio with TubeBuddy installed, you’ll notice drop-downs, shortcut links, and advanced analytics tools you hadn’t seen before. Those are your new goodies. They make your life easier and enable you to maximize the visibility of your videos in search. Let’s take a look at what TubeBuddy offers your business.  

TubeBuddy Review: Advanced Video Embedding

By default, YouTube offers limited options for embedding videos and playlists. TubeBuddy extends those options with an advanced embedding feature. Use it to:

• Customize the look and feel of your embedded videos
• Force closed captioning
• Disable play controls
• Loop videos
• Enable JavaScript API

Bonus: you won’t have to go to the video watch page to get the embed code.

Canned Responses

Do you find yourself writing the same response over and over again on YouTube? If so, then you’ll love TubeBuddy’s canned response feature. Use it to give quicker replies to YouTube comments. It’s especially helpful when people ask you the same question repeatedly. TubeBuddy even allows you to add a touch of personalization to your canned responses. For example, you can use shortcodes to include the name of the person you’re replying to in the comment.

TubeBuddy Review: Card Templates

If you’re a veteran YouTube marketer, then you already know about cards. They’re calls to action that you embed directly in your YouTube videos. Sometimes, you might find yourself creating the same set of cards for all new uploads. That’s a productivity killer. Fortunately, TubeBuddy saves you time with card templates. Here’s how it works: when you create cards for a video, TubeBuddy allows you to save them as a card template. Then, when you upload another video later on, you can apply that card template in post-processing. Bingo. Everything looks the same between the videos and you’ve saved some time.

TubeBuddy Review: Comment Filter

Are you having trouble keeping up with all the comments on your videos because you’re getting too many? If so, that’s a good problem to have. Still, it’s a problem. TubeBuddy offers a comment filter feature that enables you to quickly find the kinds of comments you’re looking for. With just a click on a dropdown, you can locate:

• Comments you haven’t replied to
• Comments with reply disabled
• Comments that contain profanity
• Comments that contain questions
• Comments with a positive sentiment
• Comments with a negative sentiment

Plus a variety of other options. The comment filter is a real time-saver if you’re looking to engage with specific types of commenters.

TubeBuddy Review: Multiple Default Upload Profiles

YouTube allows you to create a default upload profile. You can use it to pre-populate the tags, title, category, and other attributes of a new video. The problem is, YouTube only offers one (1) default upload profile. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had multiple profiles for different types of videos? You can have that with TubeBuddy.

Emoji Picker

How would you like to make your video titles stand out with emojis? TubeBuddy makes that easy with an emoji picker. Just click on the familiar emoji icon next to the title field and pick the emoji you want to add. Feel free to add multiple emojis to make your title really stand out.

TubeBuddy Review: End Screen Templates

End screen templates work just like card templates except (obviously) for end screens. If you find that you’re going through the same motions over and over again when you add end screens to your videos, streamline that process with TubeBuddy’s end screen templates.

Notification Commenting

Once upon a time, YouTube let you reply to comments from the notification drop-down bar. Those days are gone. Unless you own TubeBuddy. Just install the Chrome extension, sign up for the service, and you’ll see a “Reply” right below comment notifications. TubeBuddy will also show you a word cloud that highlights the most popular words and phrases used in comments.

Playlist Actions

How would you like to order a playlist based on watch time, subscribers gained, or engagement? TubeBuddy makes that possible. Additionally, the tool gives you the ability to alphabetize or randomize your playlists.

TubeBuddy Review: Publish to Facebook

TubeBuddy lets you simultaneously publish videos to YouTube and Facebook. That’s important because, as you might have noticed, when you share YouTube videos on Facebook, all you’re doing is sharing a link back to YouTube. Facebook doesn’t play YouTube videos natively. But if you use TubeBuddy to publish to Facebook, your video will appear and play in people’s newsfeeds. That’s probably going to generate more engagement than a simple link.

Easier Navigation

The YouTube admin pages offer a lot of functionality, but sometimes you have to click around quite a bit just to get where you want to go. TubeBuddy makes your life easier with a Quick Links menu. It’s a drop-down that appears in the upper, right-hand corner of the Creator Studio. Just click on that drop-down and navigate straight to your videos, analytics, or a variety of other pages.

Quick-Edit Toolbar

Let’s face it: YouTube doesn’t make it easy to edit several videos in a playlist. Usually, you have to go back and forth between the list and individual videos while remembering where you left off. TubeBuddy fixes that problem with a quick-edit toolbar. Just click on the video you want to edit in a list and make the necessary changes. Instead of backing out, though, TubeBuddy displays a notification toolbar on the right-hand side of the screen. It shows the thumbnails of other videos in that same list. Click on one of those thumbnails and you can start editing the corresponding video. It’s that easy.

TubeBuddy Review: Scheduled Publish and Updates

Sometimes, you might want to upload a video but not publish it right now. TubeBuddy’s got you covered there as well. The tool gives you the ability to set a “go live date” for your uploaded videos. Take advantage of that feature to spread out your content over time.

You can also change a video’s title, tags, description, or thumbnail at some point in the future with a scheduled update feature. Finally, you can also schedule a time to “sunset” videos by changing their privacy settings to Private or Unlisted.

Thumbnail Generator

Spending too much time creating thumbnails in Photoshop? Tired of taking screenshots, pasting them into an image editor, and modifying them to get just the right look? TubeBuddy enables you to save and reuse image templates to create a branded, consistent look across all your videos.

Upload Checklist

Have you ever uploaded a video and then realized a day later that you forgot to add info cards? TubeBuddy helps you remember everything you need to to do with a checklist. As you’re entering the basic info for your video, you’ll see an “Upload Checklist” drop-down on the right-hand side of the screen. Just click on that to see all your reminders. You can also check off each item in the list as you complete it.

TubeBuddy Review: Video Topic Planner

Maybe you’re having trouble coming up with new video ideas. Or possibly you keep forgetting about video suggestions from your subscribers. TubeBuddy can fix that problem with its video topic planner feature. Here’s how it works: as you’re browsing through comments, you might see a suggestion for a new video topic. If you like the idea, just click the TubeBuddy icon below and select “Add as Comment Suggestion.” Going forward, you’ll see that suggestion in the “Comment Suggestions” tab of the video topic planner.

Auto Translator

How would you like people all over the world to read your video titles in their native languages? TubeBuddy offers an auto translator that helps with international SEO. Use it to translate titles, descriptions, and even tags into different languages.

TubeBuddy Review: Best-Practice Audit

TubeBuddy includes a best-practice audit that will help you:

• Ensure that your video is set up correctly
• Alert you to broken links in descriptions
• Remind you to add keywords in your titles, tags, and descriptions

Caption Service

According to one study, captions can increase video views by more than 7%. Fortunately, TubeBuddy makes it a snap to add captions via 3PlayMedia. It’s fully integrated so you won’t have to visit a different site. Keep in mind, though: there will be an additional charge incurred.

Insta-Suggest

Sometimes when uploading a video, you don’t always add every tag that you should. That can hurt your reach. TubeBuddy will suggest tags in real-time as you type. Those suggestions will match what people are searching for.

Keyword Rank Tracking

You may already use tools to track your web page ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs). But do you track your keyword ranks in YouTube? With TubeBuddy, you can do that. You can also track keyword ranks for your competitors.

TubeBuddy Review: Opportunity Finder

TubeBuddy also offers actionable insights to help you increase reach. That will cut down on the amount of time you have to research different promotional opportunities.

Search Explorer

How would you like to find some long tail search terms that will help your videos rank higher? If so, TubeBuddy’s got you covered with a search explorer feature. You can also use it to find keywords to target based on volume and level of competition.

Search Rankings

With the search rankings feature, TubeBuddy will show you where your video ranks for all of its tags. It will also show you which tags aren’t helping your video rank so you can remove them. Eventually, TubeBuddy will show you changes in video rank from week to week. That feature is still in the works, though.

TubeBuddy Review: Tag Lists

TubeBuddy enables you to create a centralized list of tags that you can draw from for later use. That will save you time so you don’t have to 1) remember and 2) type tags as you’re uploading a video. You can also say goodbye to your Excel spreadsheets with this feature.

The Tag Sorter

A long time ago, YouTube removed the ability to reorder your tags. Thankfully, TubeBuddy added it back. Use the tag sorter feature to put your most important tags towards the beginning of the list.

Video A/B Test

Yes, you need to split-test videos just like you split-test anything else in digital marketing. TubeBuddy makes that easy with a feature that enables you to A/B test thumbnails, tags, titles, and descriptions.

The Tag Copier

TubeBuddy makes it a snap to copy tags from one video to another. You can even steal tags from your competitors!

TubeBuddy Review: Description Promotion

On YouTube, “internal linking” means linking to your own videos in the descriptions of other videos. TubeBuddy makes that easy with a description promotion feature. In fact, you can use TubeBuddy to add a video link to multiple other video descriptions at once. That way, you won’t have to manually add the same link over and over again.

Featured Video Promotion

TubeBuddy makes it easy to add featured videos en masse as well. If you’re unfamiliar with featured videos, they’re in-screen links to related videos that appear at the end of YouTube videos.

Pick a Winner

Maybe you’re running a contest where you randomly pick a winner from the commenters. If so, TubeBuddy offers a feature that will randomly pick that winner for you. You can also use the tool to access the social profiles of a commenter.

TubeBuddy Review: Share Tracker

Ever have trouble remembering which social media channels you’ve shared a video to? If so, then TubeBuddy has a feature you’ll love. Share tracker will show you which social networks have seen your video link.

 

Brand Alerts

TubeBuddy enables you to monitor YouTube for new videos, channels, and playlists that include content about your brand. Use this feature to get a read on sentiment about your company.

Channel Access

TubeBuddy allows you to grant other people access to your account. That’s helpful if you want to make it easy for a client to review analytics.

Channel Backup

It’s always a great idea to have redundancy in high-tech. Fortunately, TubeBuddy has backup feature. It will give you peace of mind by storing all your video metadata off of YouTube.

TubeBuddy Review: Channel Valuation

At the end of the day, it all comes down to dollars and cents. TubeBuddy uses SocialBluebook.com to tell you how much you should charge for a dedicated video or a shout-out. You can also use TubeBuddy to see if your channel value is rising or falling.

Channelytics

TubeBuddy integrates with StatFire to give you in-depth analytics on your YouTube channel.

Competitor Scorecard

How would you like to see how your channel stacks up against the competition? TubeBuddy offers a competitor scorecard that will compare your channel with another channel in terms of views, engagement, subscribers, and uploads. It will produce a report that you can print or export to Excel.

Competitor Upload Alerts

TubeBuddy will alert you every time a competitor uploads a new video. You can choose to be notified with an email, a text message, or within TubeBuddy.

TubeBuddy Review: Demonetization Audit

It seems like YouTube is always looking for reasons to demonetize content. That’s why TubeBuddy’s demonetization audit is so valuable. Use it to find words in your titles, tags, and description that could cause you to lose revenue.

Export Comments

TubeBuddy enables you to export comments to a CSV file.

Health Report

TubeBuddy’s health report will show you what’s working and what isn’t on your channel. It also offers analytics including demographic info, watch time stats, and search traffic.

Language Analysis

TubeBuddy will show you a breakdown of the languages spoken by your channel’s audience. Use that data to determine how to optimize your titles, tags, and descriptions for international reach.

TubeBuddy Review: Real-Time Sub Counts

Use TubeBuddy to get real-time channel subscriber counts. The tool will also show you if you’re gaining or losing subscribers.

Social Monitor

Who’s talking about your videos? And where? TubeBuddy shows you the various social channels where people are chatting about your productions.

Videolytics

TubeBuddy shows you advanced insights into any video. That includes videos you didn’t create! You can also use videolytics to compare analytics between two videos.

Bulk Processing Tools

TubeBuddy improves your productivity with several bulk processing features:

• Bulk copy cards – offers a consistent card look across all videos with minimal effort.
• Bulk copy end screen – copies end screen elements so you don’t have to manually add them to each video.
• Bulk delete cards – eliminates all or some of your cards with just a few clicks.
• Bulk delete end screens – automates the process of removing end screens.
• Bulk edit – finds, replaces, appends, or removes text in titles and descriptions across your entire channel.
• Bulk thumbnail overlays – adds an overlay to some or all of your video thumbnails.
• Bulk update cards – automates the process of updating cards
• Bulk update end screens – automates the process of updating end screens
• Bulk update playlists – updates privacy, filtering, and ordering across multiple playlists
• Demonetization double-check – locates demonetized videos on your channel

TubeBuddy Review: The Pros and Cons

No tool is perfect. TubeBuddy isn’t an exception to that rule. Although TubeBuddy offers a wide variety of features that will interest all video marketers, it’s also got some limitations. Here are the tool’s pros and cons, as related by users around cyberspace. First, the pros:

• A comprehensive tool with a rich feature set
• Easy to use, limited learning curve
• Enables you to spy on competitors
• A free option with plenty of features
• Reasonably priced

Now, the cons:

• Only works on one channel (you have to buy a separate subscription for another channel)
• Advanced features (such as bulk editing) aren’t available in basic plans
• Customer service is lacking
• No Android app available

Wrapping It Up

Just do it. If you’re into YouTube marketing, TubeBuddy is almost indispensable. It will save you time, increase your reach, and boost your bottom line. Even if you still aren’t sold on it, just start with the free service. You’ll have limited options, but you’ll see what TubeBuddy can do for your business without spending one dime.