The Creator’s guide to YouTube automation; policies, tips, and tools
By Kelsey Johnson May 15, 2024
Creating and growing a YouTube channel is no small thing. Between recording, production, editing, and promotion, it can take seven hours to create just 1-5 minutes of video.
Any part of the YouTube process you can automate will help save you time and grow your channel more quickly.
In this post, we’ll cover ten of the best YouTube automation and AI tools to save you time and help increase your views. All of them are either free or affordable.
- TubeBuddy – optimizes your channels and videos for increased views and subscribers
- VidlQ – automates several tasks including topic ideas, trends, title & tag generation, and more
- AWeber YouTube automation – automates sending emails once a new video is published
- YouTube Studio – automates generating subtitles and chapters for your videos
- Zapier – automation tool which integrates with other popular tools you’re already using
- Headliner – automates creating video overlay’s for a podcast
- Invideo AI – creates videos from ideas
- Pictory – create videos from your script
- Runway – creates lip sync videos and generates videos from video clips, images, and text
- Buffer – automates social media marketing on other platforms where you promote your YouTube videos
If you want to grow your YouTube channel, but don’t want to put in seven hours of work for every minute of video you publish, keep reading!
What is YouTube automation?
YouTube automation is a combination of native and external tools and platforms that can:
1 – Handle repetitive tasks such as publishing.
2 – Optimize your videos for search and feeds.
3 – Create, auto-generate, enhance, and edit videos.
4 – Bulk edit video descriptions, tags, and more.
5 – Automate the marketing and promotions of your YouTube videos and channel, plus collect behavioral data and personalize your marketing efforts.
Automation is the process of using tools to automate actions you’d otherwise do manually (or not at all). YouTube automation can help you get more views and subscribers, make more money, and save tons of time.
Some of YouTube automations include automatically sending emails with your new videos, creating transcriptions, generating SEO-friendly titles and descriptions, promoting videos on social media, and more.
Sometimes when people talk about “YouTube automation,” they’re referring to websites where you can auto-engage in comments, buy views, subscribers, comments, and other types of engagement.
However, auto-engagement, buying subscribers, or paying for views, comments, and other engagement is against YouTube’s terms of service. So we won’t cover any tools that promote those actions in this post.
Is YouTube automation legal?
Yes, automation and AI are “legal” within the YouTube platform, as long as you follow its community guidelines and AI policies. We’ve listed highlights from the platform’s automation and AI policies below 👇
YouTube automation policies
To use automation in a way that abides by content policies, thoroughly review YouTube posting policies before you publish.
Never publish:
- Fake engagement
- Impersonation
- Spam
- Scams
- Deceptive practices
- Excessive posting of affiliate content that violates YouTube’s spam policies
- External links that send users to the above type of content (content that violates their policies).
- Any content that violates YouTube community guidelines
Ok to publish:
- Affiliate content
- Monetized videos created with AI tools
- AI-generated videos (within guidelines)
YouTube AI policies
YouTube encourages the use of generative AI to create videos, as long as users follow its community guidelines and policies on the responsible use of AI-generated content.
Channels and creators must disclose when realistic-type content is AI-generated.
For example, if your AI-generated videos contain representations that might be mistaken for a real person, place, or event — this must be disclosed.
To meet disclosure requirements, transparency tools are provided by YouTube Studio.
- Disclosure labels that appear in the video description.
- In-video labels for content related to sensitive topics such as health, finance, elections, news, etc.
Here’s an example of YouTube’s disclosure label in the description text and in-video.
It is perfectly YouTube-legal to use automation and AI tools to create, enhance, optimize, and promote your YouTube videos. Before you do, though, carefully review YouTube’s Community Guidelines to ensure that your content abides by all of YouTube’s policies.
What are YouTube automation AI tools?
YouTube automation AI tools are tools that incorporate artificial intelligence for smarter, more competitive results.
Nearly all of today’s automation tools incorporate AI for better and quicker results.
How does YouTube automation work?
To use YouTube automation, determine what tasks you need help with and look for tools that can automate those tasks.
Some of the most common automation tasks YouTubers use are:
- Generate videos from text or scripts.
- Turn other content into YouTube videos (such as blog posts and podcasts).
- Optimize your YouTube channel and videos for search and feeds.
- Cross-post YouTube videos to other social media channels.
- Automate email campaigns and collect behavioral data to promote your YouTube channel and videos.
- Connect all your tools and apps to one main dashboard.
How to get started with YouTube AI automation tools
To get started with YouTube automation:
1 – Identify the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
2 – Choose automations that match your level of experience.
3 – Consider how the pricing fits your budget.
4 – Check out verified reviews on sites like Capterra
Begin by identifying the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks in your workflow. Then browse some of the best automation tools available to find which are the best for you.
The reviews below will give you ideas on what kind of tools to look for and which apps to use.
Are you new to automation and AI? Don’t worry — it’s much easier than it sounds! Choose programs that are ideal for beginners and start with one or two.
Consider your level of video editing experience, plus your budget, when choosing the best automation tools for your needs.
How to make money with YouTube automation
To make money with YouTube automation, create high-quality content tailored to your target audience.
Automation can help improve the quality and efficiency of your videos and marketing campaigns. However, you’ll want to avoid the temptation to push out massive amounts of content.
Keep in mind that publishing tons of content — is something that anyone can do, thanks to AI and automation. So it won’t help your videos or channel stand out to simply produce massive amounts of videos for your niche.
The greatest benefit of automation and AI is that it frees up your time to engage with your audience, get to know them better, and develop ideas for content that they’ll fall in love with.
Then, you can use automation to help you produce, publish, and promote videos more quickly. Using this strategy, the chances of earning income from your channel are greater than ever.
Some of the ways you can earn income from your YouTube channel include:
- Ad revenue
- Affiliate marketing
- Sponsored content
- Product & merchandise sales
- Crowdfunding
The top YouTube automation tools
Below are our favorite YouTube automation tools for creators who want to build, grow, and promote their YouTube channels more quickly and efficiently.
1. TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is probably the best-known tool for YouTubers. It includes a plugin and browser extension with tons of tools that can help you upload, manage, and grow views on your YouTube videos.
What does TubeBuddy automate?
TubeBuddy has tons of useful features, but try these three first. They’re the easiest to implement, and will save you the most time by replacing tasks you’re already doing.
- Automations: Get AI tag suggestions, translate titles and descriptions into other languages, and automatically run YouTube approval checks.
- Bulk actions: Change cards, end screens, descriptions/titles, delete comments, and create thumbnail overlays — in bulk. For example, if you have a new video to promote, you can add a link to it in every video description or card; no need to manually edit each and every video.
- Defaults: Create multiple default profiles, descriptions, and tags for your different topics and choose the one most relevant to the video you’re uploading. (YouTube only allows you one.)
How does this help you?
Most of the tools in TubeBuddy help you save time by offering automatic or bulk actions you’d have to do manually.
You can also use TubeBuddy to grow views by promoting one video across your channel, or you can easily add tag suggestions to make your videos more likely to show in search results and suggested videos.
Reviews
TubeBuddy has a 4.6-star rating on Capterra.
Cost
TubeBuddy has a free plan that offers keyword tools, but it doesn’t include bulk actions, defaults, or limited automations.
TubeBuddy’s paid plans start at $3.75/month.
2. VidIQ
VidIQ helps YouTubers create better content and get more views and subscribers.
What does VidIQ automate?
Based on your YouTube channel and answers to questions VidIQ asks you, it will automatically generate for you:
- Topic ideas, trends, and success stats
- Keyword opportunities
- AI-optimized titles, descriptions, and tags
- Competitor stats
- Monetization reports and tracking
You can also use VidIQ to promote a specific link or topic across all your YouTube descriptions at once.
How does it help you?
VidIQ is valuable because it helps you reduce the time it takes to research good content and keyword ideas for your target audience. We use it for the AWeber YouTube channel, and the information it gives us is well worth its monthly fee.
I especially like the bulk description tool (available on paid plans only). It can help you get a ton of views on new videos without a lot of work.
Reviews
VidIQ has a 4.4-star rating on Capterra.
Cost
VidIQ’s free plan offers limited automation features.
Get more features with their paid plans: starting at $17/month.
3. AWeber YouTube automation
AWeber is an email marketing tool that you can use to easily and automatically promote your new YouTube videos via email.
What does AWeber automate?
AWeber can send emails to your subscribers any time you publish a new video to your YouTube channel. All you have to do is ask your YouTube subscribers to sign up. Once they’re subscribed to your emails, they’ll be notified of your new videos in their inboxes, instead of having to check YouTube all the time.
You can also set up daily, weekly, and monthly emails with new videos, in case your upload schedule is sporadic.
Note: AWeber offers other email tools and automations for small businesses like automatically adding new customers to your email list, sending abandoned cart emails, and more.
How does it help you?
Most YouTube videos reach less than 15% of the people who are subscribed to the channels those videos were published to. This limited “organic reach” means that even if you have a lot of subscribers, your videos aren’t reaching most of those people.
Sending an automated notification email to your subscribers gets around all that.
There’s another benefit to these notifications, too. Because of the way YouTube’s algorithm works, if it sees you have an engaged audience, it will show your videos to more people. Sending an email notification is a way to get your audience engaged. It’s enough of a signal to influence YouTube’s algorithm in your favor.
Those early views also encourage the YouTube algorithm to rank you higher for searches and suggestions.
And the best part? You’re starting to build an audience that’s not controlled by YouTube. No one can take your email subscribers away from you.
Reviews
AWeber has a 4.4-star rating on Capterra.
Cost
AWeber’s free plan includes one YouTube email automation and up to 500 email subscribers.
Paid plans start as low as $12.50/month and include YouTube automations and anything over 500 subscribers.
4. YouTube Studio
It may seem weird to have the official YouTube Studio on this list of best YouTube automation tools, but it’s worth pointing out what you can automate without any extra software.
YouTube Studio lets you upload, manage, and get analytics on your YouTube videos. But there are a few built-in automations that can save you a ton of time.
What does YouTube Studio automate?
In YouTube Studio you can automatically generate subtitles and chapters for your videos. Subtitles increase accessibility since people can watch your videos without sound. Chapters allow people to jump directly to the section of your video that they need. That can be particularly useful for demos or longer videos.
YouTube also automatically gives you real-time stats on your videos. Monitor them to see what types of videos are ranking, getting new versus returning traffic, how long people are watching on average, and more.
How does it help you?
Since you must use YouTube Studio to manage your YouTube channel anyway, it’s worth your time to see which features they offer that save you time. YouTube wants your channel to grow — so pay attention to the information and accessibility they offer to grow views, subscribers, and engagement.
Reviews
YouTube has a 4.8-star rating on Capterra.
Cost
YouTube Studio is free.
5. Zapier
Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect thousands of separate apps and create automations. It works using “triggers” and “actions.”
What does Zapier automate?
Everything you create in Zapier is an automation, which means you can set up hundreds of automations that directly relate to your business. For example, you could post a message in Slack every time you publish a new video.
Here are two types of Zapier automations that are useful for every YouTuber:
1. When you publish a YouTube video, create new posts on all your social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
2. When you publish a YouTube video, create a new post on your blog.
How does it help you?
Growing your YouTube channel doesn’t just come down to SEO and ranking for suggestions. It’s important to get your new videos in front of your audience — wherever they are. Without spending any extra time, you can automatically notify people on all your channels when you’ve published a new video.
Reviews
Zapier has a 4.7-star rating on Capterra.
Cost
Zapier offers a free plan that includes up to 100 tasks/month
Zapier’s paid plans start at $19.99/month, billed annually.
6. Headliner
Headliner is a tool specifically designed for podcasters who want to make their podcast content available on YouTube without a ton of extra work.
What does Headliner automate?
By simply plugging your podcast RSS feed into this tool, you can create an engaging video overlay to make your podcast more interesting to watch on YouTube.
Headliner offers templates and pulls elements from your RSS feed to offer you a ready-made video automatically.
How does it help you?
With 2.7 billion monthly active users, YouTube is an important place to showcase your podcast. But many people don’t have the time, resources, or video experience to turn their podcast into a video. Capture the YouTube audience by creating a video from your podcast using Headliner in minutes.
Reviews
Headliner has a 4.5-star rating on Capterra.
Cost
Headliner offers a free plan with limited templates and video time.
Paid plans start at $7.99/month.
7. Invideo AI
Invideo AI is a YouTube editor that uses AI to speed and automate the video creation process.
What does Invideo AI automate?
Invideo AI lets creators automate the video production process with tools that cab:
- Generate videos from text.
- Create video scripts with AI.
- Use a voice generator to narrate videos.
How does Invideo AI help you?
Invideo AI can help speed the production of your YouTube videos by using AI and automation to turn your ideas into high-quality videos.
Invideo AI Reviews
Invideo has a 4.6 rating on Capterra.
Invideo AI Cost
Free plan available.
Paid plans from $20/month.
8. Pictory AI
Pictory AI helps beginners quickly create engaging YouTube videos.
What does Pictory automate?
Pictory quickly creates videos from your script, adding AI narrations, matching video footage, and background music.
Some of the things you can do with Pictory:
- Turn blog articles into videos
- Turn standard videos into branded social media clips
- Create videos from a script
- Add captions
- Collaborate with your team
How does Pictory help you?
Pictory lets you quickly whip out professional YouTube videos, even if you have no previous experience editing videos. Simply paste your video script and the app provides you with music and footage options.
Pictory Reviews
Pictory has a 4.8 rating on Capterra.
Pictory Pricing
Free trial available.
Paid plans from $19/month.
9. Runway
Runway is a comprehensive video production program that allows you to produce synthesized and custom-generated videos.
Its newly-released Runway Gen 2, the company’s research, moves the app one step closer to its goal of building multimodal AI systems.
What does Runway automate?
Runway Gen 2 lets you auto-generate realistic and closeup videos as well as animations. Some of its most popular features include:
- Text to video: Create videos from text prompts
- Video to video: Use video clips to apply styles to new videos
- Motion brush: Turn images into moving videos
- Lip Sync videos: Record live or upload audio
- Generative audio: Create a custom voice for your video
- Styles: Choose from a range of styles, such as Impressionist, Cinematic, Anime, and others, to add personality to your videos.
How does Runway help you?
Runway speeds and enhances video production by allowing you to auto-generate high-quality videos from text, images, or video clips. Its focus is on helping you produce videos that are exceptionally unique and creative.
Runway reviews
Runway Gen 2 is newly released and has only one rating (a 4.0-star) on Capterra.
Runway pricing
Free version.
Paid versions from $12/month.
10. Buffer
Buffer is a social media management platform that can help you promote your YouTube videos on other social media platforms.
What does Buffer automate?
With Buffer you can automate:
- Scheduling and publishing of YouTube Shorts
- Sharing YouTube videos to TikTok and Reels
- Scheduling and publication of YouTube promotions on other platforms, including:
- TikTok
How does Buffer help you?
Buffer lets you automate the scheduling and publication of YouTube Shorts. It can also help you promote all your YouTube videos across other social media channels.
Its AI assistant also generates feedback as you’re creating posts to help you create more engaging content.
Additionally, Buffers is a fantastic, user-friendly social media management platform that makes social media marketing (across all channels) easier and more efficient.
Buffer Reviews
Buffer has a 4.5-star rating on Capterra.
Buffer Cost
Free plan available.
Paid plans from $6/month.
YouTube Automation Tools Comparison Table
| Automation Tool | Used For | Video Production Experience Required? |
| TubeBuddy | Upload & manage videos, optimize for search and feeds, test thumbnails, keywords, and video titles | Experience is helpful but not necessary |
| VidIQ | Comprehensive keyword research & management, performance predictions, discover opportunities for growth | Experience is helpful but not necessary |
| AWeber | Marketing automation to promote new videos on autopilot; automated email marketing and landing pages | Ideal for beginners |
| YouTube Studio | Post, edit, engage with audience, earn income, grow channel, manage YouTube Presence | No experience required |
| Zapier | Connect and automate all of your apps for enhanced automation and efficiency | Experience is helpful but not necessary |
| Headliner | Turn podcasts into YouTube videos with auto-generated overlays | No experience required |
| InVideo | Generate videos and faceless videos from ideas or text. | Ideal for beginners |
| Pictory AI | Generate videos from your script, URL, and blog posts. Creates YouTube Shorts from text, URL, and media. | Ideal for beginners |
| Runway | Lip sync videos, images turned into video, video from video, animations, and more. | Experience is helpful but not necessary |
| Buffer | Automate the promotions of your YouTube videos on other social media channels | No experience required |
Want to grow your YouTube views, optimize your videos, and save time? We challenge you to get an automation set up today! Let us know how you improved your YouTube channel in the comments below 👇.
Getting started with YouTube automation
Ready to get started with AI and automation — but not sure where to begin?
AWeber email marketing platform was designed for beginners, yet has full-feature automations that allow you to grow as you go. Start promoting your YouTube videos and channel with AWeber email marketing today!
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