This week on the Magnet Minute, I talk about using analytics on YouTube to improve video content.
If you’ve posted videos in the past, then you might know the value (and I’d say necessity) in studying analytics from your previous posts before you begin the creative process for all future videos. Studying that data can help to determine how effective your messages have been and can also suggest ways to improve upon those as needed.
Here are four key areas to analyze on YouTube:
Audience Retention
This graph shows the exact times when people stopped watching your videos. This will help you discover weaknesses in your videos or will inform you of ideal length. If you consistently lose the bulk of your audience halfway through a video, you’ll need to place your most important content in the first half.
Playback locations
This feature tells you how much of your audience views your content on mobile devices — through an embedded player, or on your YouTube channel.
Demographics
This page breaks down your viewership by age group and gender. If you have a specific target audience in mind, and it turns out that those individuals are not watching your videos, you may have to improve your content or find other ways to get it in front of those individuals. Or who knows? You may discover a potentially new customer-base watching your content. Then you’ll be able to target them more deeply as well.
Click-through rate on annotations
YouTube annotations are links or spotlights you can add to videos in an effort to provide extra information. They are used to direct people to other videos or to gain channel subscribers. Measuring whether they get closed or clicked-through can help determine if their positioning and/or how many to include.
We all need feedback in order to improve our efforts, and YouTube’s analytics provide valuable insight into ways to achieve stronger results with your video content.
Any thoughts on the video? Let us know in the comments.