YouTube Lowers Community Minimum Criteria To 500 Subscribers

YouTube lowered the minimum criteria for Community posts. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - YouTube has lowered the eligibility criteria for community posts, which will give more creators access to tools to better connect with their audience.

Previously, YouTube channels had to have at least 1,000 subscribers before they could publish community posts.

Starting October 12, that threshold was reduced to 500 subscribers. YouTube says it will give access to millions of creators again.

Posts are on the channel's Community tab, but are also visible on the subscriber's home page. You may experience this if you spend time browsing the YouTube recommendations feed.

Community posts are an effective tool for keeping viewers engaged between videos.

The internet moves so fast that a YouTube channel may go unnoticed if it doesn't upload new content every day or every week.

For most content creators, it's impossible to produce multiple videos. However, they are more likely to be able to keep up with the rapid publishing of community posts.

This post is also a great promotional tool for content creators to enhance their next video or live stream. With the ability to add rich media and interactive polls, there are several ways community posts can be used to create stronger audience connections.

Note that it may take up to 1 week to see the option to create a community post once the channel crosses 500 subscribers.

YouTube is working on bringing this feature to channels with less than 500 subscribers in the future.

Tips for Using Community Posts

The community tab is an opportunity for YouTube channels to create and publish content in ways other than uploading videos.

If you'll be able to have access to community posts starting October 12, you may not know what they're used for.

The key is not to think about it too much, or at least not more than you think about Facebook posts, for example.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Polls: Running polls on community posts allows you to get ideas about what your audience cares about, which can inspire ideas for new content creation.

Sharing: You can use community posts to share content from other creators or old videos in your archive that can be encouraging.

Multimedia: You can add photos, videos and GIFs to community posts to keep viewers entertained. Just like the types of posts you create for sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Updates: Notify your viewers of important channel updates without creating a whole video.

For more ideas, check out community posts from other channels and see what works for them.

Deleting the Discussion Tab

When YouTube introduced the Community tab, it was meant to replace the Discussion tab.

Now that more creators have access to community posts, YouTube is moving forward with its plan to remove the Discussion tab as it is now deprecated.

The Discussion tab is an old feature that allows content creators to post text updates to viewers. The Community tab allows for text updates and more, with the ability to add images, GIFs, polls, and videos.

YouTube will remove the Discussion tab for all channels on October 12, 2021. Until then, creators will still be able to access it from the channel page on desktop.