YouTube community posts: how posts work now

Posts are short updates on your channel: text, images, GIFs, polls, quizzes or a shared video. YouTube says they can give you more reach and more engagement with your audience. Older guides call them community posts on the Community tab; YouTube's help pages now call them posts, on the Posts tab.

For a small business, posts are the cheapest way to stay visible on YouTube between videos. A poll or a photo takes minutes, and the replies tell you what your audience wants to see next.

Don't confuse posts with Communities, a separate feature for spaces shared only with your subscribers. Posts are public by default and can reach people who don't subscribe yet, because YouTube may show them on viewers' homepages.

Sources: YouTube Help: Learn about posts, checked 14 October 2026; YouTube Help: Create a post, checked 14 October 2026

YouTube lists the Posts tab as a standard feature, available once you create a channel, as long as it has no active Community Guidelines strikes. YouTube's current help pages don't give a subscriber minimum. The exceptions:

• Channels set as made for kids: the Posts tab is only visible to the creator, and you can't create new posts.
• Supervised accounts can't use posts.
• YouTube says posts aren't currently available in Germany.
• Access can change with your channel role.
• If the Posts tab is missing entirely, check the channel's audience setting first: a made-for-kids setting is the most common cause.
• Each channel has a limit on posts per 24 hours; if you see limit reached, try again a day later.

Sources: YouTube Help: Learn about feature access for YouTube Creators, checked 14 October 2026; YouTube Help: Learn about posts, checked 14 October 2026; YouTube Help: Create a post, checked 14 October 2026

To share a playlist, paste its link into the text box. Read the post once more before you select Post: write it the way you'd talk to a regular customer, short and specific, with one clear question or next step.

1. Sign in to YouTube on a computer, on the channel you want to post as.
2. At the top of the page, select Create, then Create post.
3. Type your text, or choose the video, poll, quiz or image icon at the bottom.
4. Select Post.

Source: YouTube Help: Create a post, checked 14 October 2026

Scheduling lets you line up a week of posts in one sitting. It suits posts that support a video: a poll two days before it comes out, then a reminder on the day. The steps:

1. Create the post as above, but don't select Post yet.
2. Click the down arrow next to Post and select Schedule post.
3. Choose the date, time and time zone.
4. Select Schedule.

Source: YouTube Help: Create a post, checked 14 October 2026

YouTube's help pages differ by device on which post types text can be combined with, so check the options shown in the post box. For images, a square picture follows YouTube's 1:1 suggestion and avoids awkward cropping in feeds.

Source: YouTube Help: Create a post, checked 14 October 2026

Posts can expire. An expired post moves to the Archived section of the Posts tab, which only you can see. Because image posts can show in the Shorts feed, a clear image with little text tends to read well at that size.

• On your channel's Posts tab, and in the Posts shelf on your channel's Home tab.
• On viewers' homepages and in their Subscriptions feed.
• In the Shorts feed, for image posts.
• As a notification, for some subscribers.

Source: YouTube Help: Learn about posts, checked 14 October 2026

Posts work best between videos, to keep the channel active and learn what people want next. They take minutes to make, so they suit a small team that can't film every week. Some ideas:

• A poll asking which question your next video should answer.
• A photo of work in progress, with a line on what's coming.
• A reminder about a scheduled Premiere or live stream.
• A quiz on a common customer misunderstanding, with the explanation, which you can write in up to 500 characters.
• A link to an older video that's relevant again this week.
• Behind-the-scenes photos of the people who serve customers, which build trust before anyone visits.

Posts on the Posts tab are made in YouTube itself. Zolyp, which publishes this guide, publishes to YouTube as one of 9 platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Business, X, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Threads). It creates video uploads and Shorts with titles and descriptions written for search, can set a custom thumbnail on a standard video, and schedules them with the posts on your other networks. You approve the week before anything goes live.