15 YouTube tools You Need to Start Using in 2022

When it comes to starting a YouTube channel, there’s a lot to think about. From mastering YouTube SEO and understanding YouTube analytics to figuring out how to find your style and how to grow your YouTube channel, it can all feel very overwhelming, right? Fortunately, you’re not alone on this journey. YouTube has spawned a whole ecosystem of very useful, practical tools that can help assist you on this journey. These YouTube tools can be legitimate game-changers for your channel.

Below, we’ve laid out everything from the best YouTube analytic tool to YouTube channel management suites, as well as options that can help you figure out how to make a YouTube thumbnail. In 2022, these are the essential YouTube tools we think you should be utilizing.

The best YouTube tools for analytics

When it comes to finding the best YouTube analytics tool, you’ve got plenty of options. In my opinion, here are the top 3 that I use day in, day out:

YouTube Studio

Yep! When it comes to analytics, you can’t beat YouTube’s very own (and free!) YouTube Studio. It’s one of the best tools for YouTube, especially when it comes to analytics. You can dive deep into overall channel analytics, as well as the performance for each video, including all-important statistics such as watch time, retention, click-through rate and plenty more.

TubeBuddy

You’ll see TubeBuddy crop up a few more times in this list. It’s hands down one of the best YouTube tools out there and covers just about every aspect you can think of. In terms of analytics, you’ll find both the ‘Videolytics’ and ‘Channelytics’ options very useful. ‘Videolytics’ provides data on everything from ratings, engagement across social media, views and comments, while ‘Channelytics’ offers you 30 days of data on views and subscribers, as well as stats, health reports and retention analysis. Very, very useful.

VidIQ

image by VidIQ (CC BY-SA 4.0)

VidIQ does a similar job to TubeBuddy with real-time overview of all your channel’s stats, a range of competitor analysis tools, comparisons between different videos and plenty more. All of it is designed to help you get a much more informed and deeper understanding of your channel. With this knowledge, you’re able to build accordingly, increasing watch-time, retention, subscribers and views.

The best YouTube marketing tools

If you’re looking for the best YouTube marketing tools, you might be a little overwhelmed. There are plenty of options out there, and a vast majority of them all do a fantastic job. Ultimately, it depends on what and how you’re looking to market. Here are a few of my favorites:

Sendible

Sendible is a marketing tool that helps you cross-promote your YouTube videos on other social media platforms. It has a ‘brand monitoring’ feature that allows you to gather all of the posts and Tweets about your videos. That’s pretty useful if you want to keep your finger on the pulse with real-time feedback. You can also respond to comments here, which keeps the conversation flowing and increases engagement. Furthermore, Sendible allows you to track and analyze the performance of your videos across other platforms, giving you insights into what has performed well in terms of engagement.

Bitly

Bitly has one simple job, but it does it well. Naturally, we all want to promote our YouTube videos across social media, right? The annoying thing is that when you share a YouTube link, it’s sometimes really long and messy. Bitly solves this problem by shortening your links. Easy.

HashtagForLikes

Hashtags are a must if you’re looking to market your YouTube videos and help people find them more effectively. HashtagForLikes is a trending hashtag research tool that allows you to find the best, most effective hashtags for your YouTube video. So whether you’re looking to add tags for your YouTube upload or looking at relevant hashtags for a post on Instagram, Twitter or TikTok, HashtagForLikes has you covered.

Best SEO tools for YouTube

SEO is the key to figuring out how to be successful on YouTube. The tools below will enable you to dig deep and really understand what you need to do to level up your channel SEO and experience real growth.

TubeBuddy

There’s not a lot that TubeBuddy can’t do. You’ll find a ton of in-depth SEO tools, including a handy keyword research tool. One of my favorite options is the ability to create multiple different thumbnails and then run an A/B test to track the performance of each. You can run these same tests on titles, descriptions and tags, too, allowing you to really hone in on what’s working best.

VidIQ

VidIQ is another all-rounder that offers so much in one package. Similar to TubeBuddy, it gives you a suite of comprehensive, in-depth keyword tools. I like the ‘Inline Keyword’ tool that allows you to see the tags competitors are using on different search results. You can then copy these tags and use them on your own video, as well as helping to generate new ideas. In addition, there are trend alerts, SEO scorecards, and so much more.

Tubics

A great alternative for YouTube SEO is Tubics. While not quite as in-depth as TubeBuddy or VidIQ, it offers a similar package of keyword and tag suggestions, competitor analysis and A/B testing. Worth taking a look at.

Keyword Tool

Using autocomplete, Keyword Tool is a very simple yet effective SEO tool that allows you to nail the most valuable and important keywords. It’s very quick and easy.

SEMrush

Marketed as an all-in-one digital marketing toolkit, SEMrush is exactly that. It gives you an array of keyword research tools alongside rank tracking, link building and competitor analysis.

Ahrefs

A direct competitor to SEMrush, Ahrefs is another all-in-one SEO toolkit. When you search for a keyword, you’ll instantly receive a stream of in-depth data metrics including local and global search volumes, clicks, click-through rates, search volume and plenty more.

Best editing tools for YouTube

When it comes to editing tools for YouTube, you’re currently a little strapped for options. We hope that will change in the near future. For now, here’s what you’ve got:

YouTube Editor

The YouTube Studio Editor isn’t ideal, but it’s the only real option out there at this moment in time. If you want to make changes to a video after it’s been uploaded, this is the tool for you. Whether you’re changing the keywords in the description, adding a new video tag or updating the end screen, it’s all relatively simple and straightforward. It’s a shame there are limits that don’t allow you to replace the video while keeping the video stats (see Vimeo) or even the ability of just splicing in an extra clip, but you can at least remove and replace music tracks and cut out certain sections of your video.

Best YouTube channel management tools

When you become a content creator and monetize YouTube, managing your channel is essential. There are plenty of great YouTube management tools out there to do this. Here are 3 I like to use:

YouTube Studio

What’s not to love? It’s free and built straight into YouTube. You come here whenever you want to upload a video, make edits or changes to your video or channel, respond to comments, check copyright claims, change monetization options…you name it. YouTube Studio is the ultimate tool for YouTube channel management.

AgoraPulse

AgoraPulse is particularly great for managing comments and engagement. It allows you to respond to all of your comments from multiple channels in one easy-to-manage space. I appreciate being able to link it up to a CRM tool as well, allowing me to see whether I’ve interacted with a user beforehand.

If you’re trying to respond to multiple comments, you can also save common replies and post them within a few clicks.

Additionally, AgoraPulse allows you to work with other users. For example, if your channel is particularly big, you can assign them particular rules to help share the load.

PocketTube

PocketTube is another one of those simple but highly effective YouTube management tools. I use it a lot for organizing my YouTube subscriptions into groups. It allows me to follow and watch relevant YouTube videos from my competitors and other creatives within my chosen niche. It’s available both as a browser extension and a mobile app, meaning you can take it anywhere.

Best design tools for YouTube

We’ve mentioned the importance of YouTube thumbnails plenty of times here on the blog. Given what these two tools mentioned below do, you could argue they’re effectively YouTube marketing tools.

Canva

Canva is your one-stop-shop for creating highly effective, attention-grabbing YouTube thumbnails. Whether you’re starting from scratch or want to use one of their many templates, Canva offers you a thumbnail creation experience that’s much quicker and easier than jumping into powerful software such as Adobe Photoshop.

Snappa

A direct competitor of Canva is Snappa. Again, it’s all about you being able to create a top-notch YouTube thumbnail very easily. They’ve got plenty of templates specifically tailored to various YouTube niches and it takes mere minutes to get up to scratch with their design tools. Well worth checking out.

Wrapping up

So, that’s your list of the 15 best tools for YouTube that can really change the game for video creators on YouTube in 2022. You’ll notice that some tools, such as TubeBuddy and VidIQ, are multi-faceted, covering you on everything from YouTube analytics to channel management. Meanwhile, you’ve got much smaller, niche tools such as Bitly and Keyword Tool that have one job but do it well.

When you combine all of these YouTube management tools together, you have a juggernaut of information at your disposal. We guarantee that if you use these tools appropriately, you’ll see growth on your channel over the course of 2022!