Are you wondering how to analyze the reach of your YouTube videos?
YouTube’s video statistics and analytics tools help you measure results of your videos.
Why measure your YouTube marketing efforts using these tools?
These tools give you the analytical know-how to help create improved branded content to more effectively get your videos:
- Discovered in organic search in both Google and YouTube results
- Watched by the largest and most relevant audience possible
- Shared across social networks, email and embedded on other websites
To improve results with your future content, dive into your YouTube Insights in the following ways.
The public statistics found below any YouTube video.
#1: Follow the Number of Views Over Time
The most important metric to determine the success of your videos is how many views the video has over time, obviously because the point of your videos is for people to watch them.
YouTube Insights presents this metric at the bottom right of every video to give users and the uploader of the video a sense of its popularity.
At the bottom right of any video is the amount of views that video has. Click the bar graph icon to view more statistics.
Use this metric to determine what type of content resonates best with your audience.
See what your average number of views is per video to get a clear understanding of what video content does well to help guide your content creation in the future.
Video views are the foundation of analyzing your YouTube strategy. Keep this in mind as the main determinant of each individual video’s success.
#2: Check Ratings to See What Resonates with Your Audience
Below any YouTube video you can see both the amount of views it has, as well as the likes, dislikes and one website where the video was embedded.
Your video ratings are another metric that illustrates direct viewer feedback. If you look at the bottom right-hand corner of any of your videos, where the video views are displayed, you’ll see the number of likes or dislikes the video has amassed over time.
For a more in-depth view of these ratings, you simply need to click on the bar graph you see there.
This dashboard allows you to see the total views of a video, the increase of ratings, comments and favorites overtime.
Here you can compare likes, dislikes, comments and favorites of this video from its publication up until the present day.
Together with the total number of views of your video, you can use this information to determine what video content your audience likes and what content they don’t like.
This level of feedback is often a greater indication of engagement than just the views of your videos, because the ratings require more action from your YouTube audience than simply watching your content. Use these free insights from YouTube as a way of mapping out what type of content to continue to produce in the future.
This feedback in the form of likes and dislikes greatly helps your search rankings, as YouTube takes these factors into account when deciding where to rank your videos in the search results. Glenn Gabe explores the other factors that make up YouTube’s search algorithm more extensively.
#3: Research Significant Discovery Events
A clear understanding of how traffic was driven to your YouTube videos is essential for you to learn how to drive relevant viewers to your new videos in the future. Access this info by clicking on the same bar graph icon at the bottom right of most YouTube videos.
This shows you the significant discovery events; in other words, the noteworthy referral sources of viewers to a video.
Learning where traffic to your videos is coming from is a vital way to prepare for the release of future videos. This report lists your significant sources of traffic.
Listed in chronological order are the most significant sources of traffic to your YouTube video. This includes referrals from other websites, social networks, views on mobile and the websites where the video was embedded.
This listing excludes other sources of traffic that didn’t draw as many views as the top referrals, allowing you to analyze the statistically significant sources of views.
This data gives you actionable insights into which marketing channels drive traffic to your videos over others and allows you to focus your efforts. If one source of traffic draws more than another, then adjust your video promotion strategy accordingly.
It’s also highly beneficial to take note of which websites embed your videos naturally. Embedding a video is the process of copying and pasting a YouTube video to be viewed on a website without having to view it in YouTube.
Take note of the websites that embed your YouTube videos and reach out to them. Alert them when you launch a new video on your YouTube channel so they can share your new video as well.
#4: Analyze Your Audience Demographics
To delve into your video statistics even further, click on the view more statistics button to get more extensive analytics about your video. Getting a deeper grasp of your audience demographics will help with future content creation in terms of making it as relevant as possible for the age, gender and geographical location of your viewership.
Directly below the video view counter is the view more statistics button, click this to get deeper insights into the traffic driven to your video
Look into each of your videos audience to really understand who's watching and eventually draw some conclusions as to why they're watching.
Compare the viewer demographics of your videos for deeper insights into the growth of your audience over time and ideas on how to segment your audience based on the content of your video.
A video created with the intent of reaching a specific demographic should be monitored to ensure it’s reaching the right demographics and therefore, relevant viewers. This data can help you make informed decisions for future content creation and marketing strategies.
#5: Monitor Viewer Drop-Off
It’s important to understand engagement on a deeper level and audience retention is a vital tie-in. Audience retention is how long your viewers watched your YouTube video. This can vary due to many factors including the video’s length, content, quality and more.
As you play through your video, see in real time when visitors stop watching.
Examine audience retention metrics to understand where your viewers stopped watching your video. This aspect of YouTube insights is very beneficial because it allows you to watch your video while viewing where viewers stopped watching all at the same time.
This troubleshooting tool will help you discover weaknesses in your video content and help you prevent the same issues in the future.
For instance, if all of your viewers appear to stop watching your video halfway through, try to understand why. Was the video too long for the subject? Was the content irrelevant to viewers? Is the video itself poorly made or just plain boring?
Ask these questions if there are any surprising places where viewers simply stop watching your content. If you’re in need of direction, look to Wistia for four ways to keep viewers engaged in an online video.
#6: Track Traffic Sources
Fairly similar to the significant discovery events section of YouTube Insights, the Traffic Sources section gives your brand an in-depth look at each traffic source based on groupings by channel.
Segment by referrals from just YouTube, outside of YouTube, via mobile apps and from direct traffic.
Segment your traffic sources by the channels that are most relevant to your viewership.
Segmentation allows your brand to fully analyze a traffic source of interest for promotion of other video content in the future. You can break down each segment on a granular level. For instance, viewing video referrals from YouTube allows you to see the title of each video that drove traffic to the video you’re currently analyzing.
These insights will help you determine whether traffic from YouTube search or YouTube suggested videos is more important to your video promotion strategy.
Analyzing referrals from YouTube is a key way of understanding how to drive similar traffic in the future.
#7: Take Note of Sharing Statistics
Having one of your YouTube videos go viral is a dream come true, bringing digital fame to the video’s content and your brand. One of the main ways a video goes viral is through sharing on social media channels. So be sure to use the sharing report in your video analytics to identify which of your videos is shared the most.
The sharing report under engagement reports tells you who shared your video through email, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ using the Share button found below every YouTube video.
From this data you can try to figure out why certain videos are more popular on social media channels than others and take this into account for future videos.
Using annotations throughout your videos is one way to encourage sharing across other social networks.
If you want to encourage sharing of your YouTube videos, add social media calls to action in your videos. Check out the calls to action regularly included by Expert Village in their videos.
Use YouTube annotations to drive viewers to perform a particular action, such as sharing on Facebook or Twitter.
#8: Encourage Subscriber Engagement
Lastly, monitor the growth of your subscriber base to understand the overall reach of your YouTube content and the continued interest your viewers have in future videos. Use the subscriber report to get a better sense of the subscribers you lost or gained on a video-by-video basis.
Again, utilizing calls to action in the form of annotations can go a long way towards gaining subscribers. Use this report to test the use of annotations to see if your channel’s subscriber rate rose or fell as a result.
Subscribers are important to the reach of your YouTube channel, look to this report to measure your subscriber growth per video.
The more subscribers, the more people who have the potential to see your channel’s video content on their subscriptions stream on the YouTube homepage. Monitor this report on a video-by-video basis to identify any trends in the rise or fall of subscribers.
How are you using YouTube Insights to measure your video strategy? How important is measurement to your overall digital presence? What have you found that works for creating and promoting your YouTube content? Share your feedback in the comments section below!
