The stereotypical YouTuber is in their teens or younger, and uses the site as a one-stop-shop for media, spending little time using traditional broadcast media such as TV or radio. In other words, about as far from the typical politician as you can imagine.

Perhaps that’s why YouTube has decided to give governments a helping hand on the service, launching the YouTube for Government page. It offers helpful tips for nation states planning on boosting their profile on the video sharing site, encouraging them to “curate content” and “engage your community”.

The US government is highlighted for praise, with Barack Obama’s web chat with citizens singled out as an example of engagement and the livestreaming of the state of the union address held up as the best way to get a message out, live, to constituents.

It’s not all American: Britain’s House of Lords does get a hat-tip for “organising their videos into easily understandable sections”, while the Greek, Chilean and South Korean governments all get a slap on the back for their “well-organised government channels”.

But while YouTube’s owner, Google, is obviously keen to see governments using the site’s features to their fullest extent – and hopefully moving sideways on to the company’s Google+ social network, which is required to make a YouTube account these days – it hasn’t addressed the most glaring area where governments need help: their content.

Livestreaming speeches and uploading TV appearances is all well and good, but there comes a time in every political YouTube channel when it starts trying to do something different, and someone says the dreaded words “original content”.

Because politicians are many things, but talented media maestros they are not. So, picking up from where Google left off, here are our best tips for politics on YouTube.

If it can be auto-tuned, it will be auto-tuned

YouTube videos are many things: they are direct-to-the-people methods of communication; they are a way of demonstrating that a campaign is “with it”; they are short, snappy messages that can’t be interrupted by an interviewer or picked over by Paxman. But they are also source material for the army of remixers, auto-tuners, and mash-up artists who are to the internet what editorial cartoonists and sketch writers are to newspapers. So be aware that your heartfelt apology will soon become a hit single, and your speech to the Tory party conference will turn into a rap. Accept it and move on; what’s done is done.

The more important the issue, the fewer people will watch it

Sajid Javid’s speech to the Tory party conference touched on issues of race in Britain, and the national economy, in the run up to general election. Barely 10 minutes long, it’s been watched 500 times. A 30-second advert about Labour’s “jobs tax” has 150,000 views. David Cameron joking about having sex with an MPs wife has been viewed by half a million people.

You will never win.

You aren’t the only one putting videos of yourself on YouTube

You control your channel, and the videos you upload … and that’s about it. If someone searches for Ed Miliband’s name, they might get his conference speech, from the official Labour channel … or they might get him robotically answering every question with the same answer, over and over, until even the interviewer sounds bored.

When it’s on the internet, it’s on the internet for ever

Remember 2007? Remember the first iPhone, the Playstation 3, and The Fray? Remember David Cameron visiting some pigs at a farm?

What? You don’t remember the last one? Luckily for you, Webcameron existed. Part of the Conservatives attempt to paint David Cameron as a friendly man of the people, and remove some of the stain of the Howard years, the video series took viewers inside Call-Me-Dave’s home life, and around the campaign trail – including his visit to Occombe Farm in Devon.

Seven years on, not all of Webcameron is still available. You won’t find it by visiting the Conservative’s YouTube page, where the videos are unlisted; and you’ll be hard pressed to find it on their own website, which (after a storm ensued when it tried to remove an archive in 2013) directs browsers to the British Library for older pages, which doesn’t store video.

But if you know where to look, the videos are still dotted around the place. Just as “hug a husky” and “hug a hoodie” will never quite disappear, so too will David Cameron down on the farm be an enduring part of our collective memory.

You aren’t above the law

Look, everyone infringes copyright. But if you’re a politician, it’s probably best not to be obvious about it. Make sure the music you’ve used is actually cleared with its composers, or else you could end up having to post a videotaped apology to David Byrne.

Yes, that actually happened: US Republican Charlie Crist was sued by the Talking Heads frontman for using Road to Nowhere in an ad for Crist’s Senate campaign.

Never read the comments

Never read the comments. Just don’t. Ever. Look: PewDiePie is probably the most famous man on YouTube. The 24-year-old Swede has had his videos, of himself playing horror and action video games, viewed over 6.2bn times, and made a tidy amount of cash from it in the process.

He turned off comments in September, because the community is just too much of a cesspit.

Learn from PewDiePie. Never read the comments.