YouTube’s statistics and analytic tool, and other social media metrics tools can help you learn a lot about the results your videos are getting, but knowing what to do with the information when you get it can be confusing to use in order to optimize your efforts. While this stands true for all of your online activity, YouTube is one of the trickier ones because videos are still a newer aspect of many businesses online marketing efforts.
The most important metric to keep an eye on is how many people are viewing each YouTube video. While the dream is to have a viral video that reaches a million views in one day, the majority of them will receive a more modest viewing and continue to be viewed over time. The more people that watch your YouTube video on a daily basis, the more the popularity will go up in YouTube and the better exposure you will get for it.
The next thing to check is to see the ratings your YouTube video is getting. If you are getting more likes that dislikes, that is a good thing. However, if your video is getting disliked at a high percentage, you might want to take it down before people start getting a bad taste in their mouth about your business. Usually checking through the comments will let you know why people don’t like it and you can make corrections and try again with a better video.
You’ll also want to find out if viewers are watching your video all the way through, or if there is a common drop off point where people stop watching it. The ideal goal is to have the greatest number of people viewing your video(s) all the way through the end and are left wanting more. If this isn’t happy, find out why by questioning if the video is too long, too boring, hard to follow, or what other problem is going on that people get tired of it. Correcting these problems by editing the video, or taking it down and creating a new one will give you a more powerful YouTube presence.
These are the three most important metrics to keep track of for YouTube performance. Checking to see where your video has been shared to, how people are finding it and if other websites are embedding it is also important to find out. Finally, make sure and engage with those that take the time to leave comments. Adjusting your videos using metrics is the best way to assure the best performance at YouTube.
