If we’ve got videos on YouTube, we should be paying attention to the viewer analytics. There’s some fantastic information available, better than any other social media site, and it can be very educational.
The analytics data is the second icon when we hover over any video in our channel’s “Your videos” section.
Among the important metrics are click-through rate (in the funnel under ‘reach’); average view duration (under ‘retention’); average percentage viewed (under ‘retention’); and unique viewers (under ‘reach’). These can give you an idea of how well we’ve done with aspects such at the title, the thumbnail, and the video content. They’re also the metrics which YouTube takes into account when working out whether or not to promote our videos more widely. Nearly three-quarters of YouTube views come from users browsing around, or following suggestions.
Don’t forget that we can improve the performance of older videos, by creating a better thumbnail, adding hashtags or writing a better description. If we keep a record of metrics such as the above, we can see if any changes have made a difference.