Grounds to Measure your YouTube Success

Every YouTuber harbors dreams of hitting the one-million-subscribers mark, and while some manage to fulfill theirs, most fail. You’d be right to believe that the failures can be attributed to content creators simply not investing enough time and effort into their YouTube projects; however, you’re not entirely wrong either.

Many talented YouTubers invest their hearts and souls in channels. They don’t receive the attention they deserve because they’re not measuring the right metrics. YouTube Analytics is the platform’s built-in tool designed to assist content creators in comprehending the metrics that determine the success or failure of their channels. If you’re determined to make it big, it’s time to understand the key metrics better.

1. Demographics

Let’s suppose you reach some hundred thousand YouTube subscribers after successfully keeping to your content posting schedule. You want to learn more about the people following you. YouTube Analytics is a tool that allows you to know more about your audience. YouTube Analytics tool includes a Demographics page that will enable you to gain more understanding of your audience by categorizing them according to these criteria:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Geographical geographical
  • The device you use to view your content

Each of the criteria will provide you with data that you can utilize to develop more diversifying content specifically for specific audiences. For instance, if you are a YouTuber in the USA and your content has been a hit with the people of India, It is possible to benefit from your increasing popularity in the second populous country by creating videos about subjects that are of significance for Indian viewers. As a result, you will get an increase in likes, shares, and, more importantly, Subscribers on YouTube.

The Demographics page can also allow you to look through viewers’ information of your content in each country. Select a country and reveal more details like demographics for genders and ages specific to the country.

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2. Traffic sources

The majority of people that view your content views the content in the same manner. While some might learn about your YouTube channel through advertisements or other means, others might discover it in the list of recommended videos or by the YouTube search. You need to understand the way your viewers journey to your content and the “Traffic Sources’ metrics allow you to accomplish this.

Just open simply the Traffic Sources pages on the YouTube Analytics tool. You’ll be able to see various types of sources that brought viewers to your YouTube channel. In addition to the traffic sources, you’ll be able to see statistics like Watch Time, Views, and the average duration of views.

The most striking statistic among the statistics you’ll find on the traffic Sources webpage is the mean duration of a view which tells you how much time people from a certain site are spending watching your videos. The traffic source with the longest average view duration is your most reliable source for quality views, and you must prioritize it above any other source.

As an example, let’s say that your average duration of view is the longest among viewers who come across your content via YouTube search. If that is the scenario, you could take various steps to improve your videos to make them more prominent on YouTube page results for searches. Designing attractive thumbnails and optimizing keywords are a few methods to ensure that your video is most likely to get seen by people who utilize YouTube to search, more so than the other platform options to discover new content.

3. Real-Time Report

The Real-Time report permits you to track the views generated by your video content as they’re developed. In contrast to YouTube’s verified views displayed in your Dashboard (generally after a delay of two days), the Real-Time report offers you stats of how your content has engaged viewers on YouTube over the past two days the last hour.

In order to make the most of your Real-Time report, it is important to be aware of a method to determine the platforms on which your video is being distributed, aside from YouTube. For this method, you will need to know your YouTube video ID, an alpha-numeric code assigned to every video. To locate the YouTube ID for the video you want to share, just open the video, then click the Share button. The area under the button ‘Share’ will open with the URL and the alpha-numeric code appears after the last slash is your YouTube ID.

Once you have your video ID, conduct an easy Google search with the following query:

YouTube Video ID -site:youtube.com

If the ID of your video is Ilsmj420, your search query will appear like:

Ilsmj420 -site:youtube.com

If your Real-Time report indicates an abrupt spike in the number of views for an individual video It’s the perfect time to run a Google search by using this kind of query. Based on the results, you’ll be able to focus on the locations where the video has been published, allowing you to go to those sites and interact with people who aren’t familiar with your content (potential YouTube subscribers). Make use of this method to find more viewers for your videos, and to also boost your reputation and image in various social media networks.

4. Retention of Audience

Let’s discuss two distinct views on a YouTube video you uploaded. The first ran from the first second of your video until the end, while the second one lasted until the 2-minute mark. This isn’t positive news, especially in the case of a 10-minute video. This is the type of data that will aid you in adjusting your next videos.

The best way to find this information is via the page titled “Audience Retention” within YouTube’s YouTube Analytics dashboard. With charts, the page will give an essential insight into the times of your videos manage to hold the attention of viewers to the maximum extent as well as the times when viewers switch to an additional video. Use the tabs ‘Absolute Audience retention and ‘Relative audience retention to find more in-depth details.

After you have gathered the important data that your Audience Retention page can provide you regarding a specific video, you’ll be able to identify the areas you made right and what you did wrong. Even though reversing the wrong actions isn’t an option in a video that you’ve already made, you will not repeat the mistakes you made in your videos in the near future.

For instance, using calls-to-action (CTAs) in a limited amount throughout a video could assist in keeping audiences. When properly placed, CTAs can also increase YouTube likes and subscriptions.

5. Playback Locations

If you’ve uploaded videos in your YouTube channel on your desktop does not mean all your viewers must view videos on YouTube on the desktop. The “Playback” Locations page divides places into three categories: YouTube Watch Page, YouTube channel page, and embedded in other websites and applications. There are also watch times, viewed average time of view, and the three categories.

Suppose a specific video has the most views and average viewing time on the YouTube Channel page. If that is the case, it indicates that most of your actual YouTube subscribers are going to your channel and checking out your content. In this scenario, you must make every effort you can into your YouTube channel to create an engaging experience for your viewers.

But, what if you discover that most views for a particular video are generated by embedded links on external platforms and web sites. In this scenario, you must come up with a way to reach out to viewers on those platforms and encouraging users to go to the YouTube channel. Success across external websites and apps also means that there is potential for you to hook up with different websites in the future to promote each other’s content/products/services.

How do I access YouTube Analytics?

If you’re not sure how to connect to YouTube Analytics, read the next steps:

  • Make use of the YouTube credentials to log in. YouTube credentials to sign in to your YouTube account.
  • Click on the ‘Creator Studio’ that will appear after clicking on the profile icon (top right-hand part of the YouTube page)
  • Within the Creator Studio dashboard, you’ll find a menu on the left side of the screen with the option to ‘Analytics.’
  • Click the ‘Analytics’ option to access YouTube’s Analytics dashboard. YouTube Analytics dashboard

YouTube Analytics offers users an option to export their data in CSV Text files or Excel spreadsheets. This is ideal for those who want to gain a deeper understanding of the operation of your YouTube channel on your own.

Conclusion

While there are many other metrics to look for within the YouTube Analytics dashboard, the five metrics we’ve listed in this post are the most crucial for continued expansion on the world’s biggest social media platform primarily focused on video. To be sure that you can survive and flourish on YouTube for many years to come, you need to be able to evaluate your videos with YouTube Analytics regularly. Most YouTubers who have made it big have their analytics teams, and however, when you’re starting out, YouTube Analytics is more than enough to analyze your data.