The title, description and tags of a kids song video

The song is finished, the scenes are cut, and now there are three empty fields. Most people fill them last, in a hurry, and write the video's diary instead of its label.

The listing text has exactly two readers. A parent holding a phone, deciding in about two seconds whether this is the right thing to hand over. And a search box, which reads plain words and nothing else.

A child reads none of it. That single fact removes most of the temptation, because charm in a title is spent on the wrong audience.

The title: the thing, then the who

A working title for a rhyme has two halves. The first names what the song is, in the words a parent would actually type. The second names who it is for.

<what the song is> - <who it is for>

Weak:   Pip's Big Adventure (Original Song!!) | Bluebird Ep. 4
Better: Sleepy bluebird lullaby - a bedtime song for toddlers

The weak one is a diary entry. It assumes the reader knows who Pip is, cares that the song is original, and is counting episodes. Nobody arriving cold knows any of that.

• •Put the searchable words first, because a phone cuts the title off
• •Say the subject in ordinary language: bedtime, counting, colours, farm animals
• •Name the age band if the song has one: toddlers, preschool, two year olds
• •Keep the mascot name, but never make it the first word
• •One idea per title, and no episode numbers before the words

Read your title out loud as if you were asking someone else to find it for you. If you would not say it that way, do not type it that way.

The description: two lines, then the detail

Only the first two lines are visible before someone taps to expand, and almost nobody taps. Treat everything after line two as reference material rather than persuasion.

1. 01

   Lines one and two

   What happens in the song, in one sentence, plus who it suits. No welcome, no channel history, no request to subscribe before the reader knows what this is.

2. 02

   The middle

   The useful specifics: length, what it teaches or names, the number of verses, whether it repeats enough to sing along. This is where a parent decides it fits the car journey.

3. 03

   The lyrics

   Paste the words in full. Parents search lyric lines, older siblings read along, and it costs you nothing to include them.

4. 04

   The last line

   One pointer to where more of the same lives. One link, not five.

Write it once as a template and change four details per video. A description you rewrite from scratch every time is a description you eventually stop writing.

The tags: disambiguation, not wishes

Tags are the most misunderstood field. They are not a place to ask for an audience. They are there to remove doubt about what the video is, especially when the title is short.

A useful set of ten to fifteen tags falls into three bands, and each band answers a different question.

• •Subject: bedtime song, counting song, farm animal sounds, colours for kids
• •Format: nursery rhyme, lullaby, sing along, animated kids song
• •Audience: songs for toddlers, preschool songs, songs for two year olds

Two habits to drop. Stuffing thirty near-identical phrases adds nothing a search box can use. And putting another channel's name or a famous song title in your tags is a trademark problem, not a shortcut.

What a finished set looks like

Here is the listing text for a counting rhyme about sheep on a hillside, written the way the three rules ask for.

Title:
Count the sheep to ten - a bedtime counting song for toddlers

Description:
One small lamb counts ten sheep across the hill before the light goes.
Best for ages two to four, at bedtime or in the car.

Eight short verses, one number each, with a chorus that repeats every
second verse so a child can join in by the third. About two minutes.

Lyrics:
One sheep, two sheep, up on the hill...

More bedtime rhymes live on <your channel>.

Tags:
counting song, bedtime song, nursery rhymes, songs for toddlers,
preschool songs, count to ten, sing along, lullaby, sheep song for kids,
songs for two year olds, animated kids song, calm songs for children

Nothing there is clever. It says what the thing is, who it is for, and how long it lasts, in the order those questions get asked.

Write it before you publish, not after

The listing text is easiest to write while the song is still in your head, because that is when you can still say in one sentence what happens in it.

Every Blue Flower kit arrives with its listing text already written this way: a title, a description and a tag set built from the song we wrote for you. It is the last field in the kit and the last five minutes of the job.