How to Create a YouTube Brand Account.

The short answer

A YouTube Brand Account is the account behind a channel that runs under a business or other name, so more than one person can own or manage it. To create one, sign in, open your channel list, choose to create a new channel, add a name, Handle and profile picture, and select Create channel.

Why a business channel needs one

On YouTube, a channel is connected either to one person’s Google Account or to a Brand Account. YouTube describes a personal channel as one “that only you can manage”. A channel with a business or other name is one “that can have more than one manager or owner”.

Operations is where that difference bites. A business channel built on one employee’s personal account is, in YouTube’s own terms, a channel only that person can manage. In our view that is a channel the business does not control, and it is the same lesson as what to do when a brand account is hacked: access is easier to plan than to recover.

Personal channel or Brand Account

The two set-ups differ in who can hold the keys:

• Personal channel: tied to your own Google Account, and YouTube says only you can manage it.
• Brand Account channel: several people can manage it from their own Google Accounts, with no shared username or password.
• Scope: Google says a Brand Account can be linked to a YouTube channel but not to other Google services.

For a business, we would always choose the Brand Account. The channel is a company asset, so its ownership should not depend on one person’s login.

Step 1: Sign in with an account the business can stand behind

Choose the Google Account you sign in with carefully.

This matters more than it looks. YouTube’s help pages say that if you delete the primary owner account linked to your channel, the channel will also be deleted. Every Brand Account must have one primary owner.

Our view is that the primary owner should be an account the business manages and will keep, not a personal address someone set up on their first day.

Step 2: Create the channel under the business name

YouTube sets out the steps for a channel with a business or other name:

1. Sign in to YouTube.
2. Go to your channel list.
3. Choose to create a new channel, or pick an existing Brand Account to use.
4. Choose a profile picture, a name and a Handle.
5. Select Create channel. YouTube says this creates a new Brand Account.

Two limits apply. If a Brand Account already has a channel, you cannot create a new one on it. And YouTube notes that if you use YouTube with a supervised experience, you may not be able to create a channel.

Step 3: Use channel permissions to give the team access

Once the channel exists, YouTube’s advice is direct: “You should use channel permissions to manage user access to your channel.” Channel permissions live in YouTube Studio, and YouTube says they allow more detailed levels of access than Brand Account roles.

The roles in channel permissions, as YouTube describes their limits:

• Owner: no limitations, including deleting the channel, but cannot transfer ownership to other users.
• Manager: cannot delete the channel, but can delete draft videos.
• Editor: cannot delete scheduled, live or completed streams.
• Editor (Limited): the same as Editor, without access to revenue data.
• Viewer: cannot go live or end streams, edit stream settings, or chat or moderate chat in Live Control Room.
• Viewer (Limited): the same as Viewer, without access to revenue data.
• Subtitle Editor: access through YouTube Studio on a computer only.

Give each person the lowest role that lets them do their job. In our view, a freelance editor rarely needs revenue data, and an intern rarely needs to delete anything. Mapping roles to the people who actually touch the channel is the kind of work our workflow and operations consulting covers.

Step 4: Invite people in YouTube Studio

YouTube says you must sign in as the primary owner of the Brand Account to opt into channel permissions. Its steps run like this:

1. Go to YouTube Studio, signed in as the primary owner.
2. Open Settings, then Permissions.
3. Select Move Permissions, then Invite.
4. Fill in the email and access level for each person.
5. Select Save. You may be asked to verify your account.

Each person gets an email to accept the invite. YouTube says people you invite can manage the channel on YouTube and in YouTube Studio, on computer and mobile, but not through YouTube’s APIs.

Step 5: Keep a second owner and check access regularly

YouTube recommends having at least one other owner on the Brand Account as well as the primary owner. We treat that as a rule, not a suggestion. One owner is one point of failure.

YouTube also recommends checking permissions regularly to keep the account secure, and warns against unsafe habits like sharing passwords. A short review every quarter is enough for most teams: who still has access, who has left, and whether anyone holds a higher role than their work needs.

If the primary owner has to change, an owner can make themselves primary owner, but only after being an owner for 7 days or more.

Moving an existing channel onto a Brand Account

A business channel that started on someone’s personal account needs moving. YouTube’s help says that if a channel is not connected to a Brand Account, you can change its managers but not its owners. Ownership moves only once the channel sits on a Brand Account.

YouTube’s Move channel option sits under Settings, then Advanced settings. Before you begin, YouTube asks you to check that your Google Account is the primary owner, that the channel is opted out of channel permissions, and that anyone given access through channel permissions has been removed.

Read the warnings before you click. If the account you move the channel to already has a channel, replacing it deletes that channel, and YouTube says its content is deleted for good.

Three mistakes to avoid

• Creating the business channel as a personal channel because it was quicker on the day.
• Sharing one password around the team instead of inviting each person with their own role.
• Leaving a single owner, so one departure or one lost login puts the channel at risk.

In our view, each of these is easy to avoid at set-up and painful to fix later.

How NBK thinks about channel ownership

A YouTube channel is infrastructure. Who owns it, who can publish and who can delete are operating decisions, and they belong in the same place as approvals and reporting.

That is the thinking behind running social media like a system: the channel should keep working when any one person is away, leaves or forgets a password.

Next step

List everyone who can sign in to your YouTube channel today, and what each of them can do. If the answer is one person, or a shared password, fix that first.

If your social process is slowing down good ideas, NBK can help rebuild the workflow behind the content.