YouTube Analytics is often misunderstood. You don’t have to be an expert to gain a surface-level understanding of how many people are viewing your channel, how many subscribers you have, and other surface-level performance indicators. However, you’ll need to ask different questions to get answers that really matter to an organization.
Key questions include: Am I improving brand metrics? Am I brand perception? Am I getting the best results? When you ask the right questions then you’ll help steer your team and guide your brand towards long-term growth. We’re going to share with you the four Do’s and Dont’s of YouTube Analytics to help get you started.
- Approach analytics with a specific goal in mind
Professionals in social media and marketing are often tasked with maintaining spreadsheets of YouTube KPI analytics. However, these reports usually drop from inbox to inbox with little more than a surface-level evaluation indicating a simple upward or downward trend. The approach that yields a higher ROI is one that has a specific measurable achievable goal in mind.
Don’t send your analytics team a general request, arm them with a goal.
An example of a specific goal is, “we want to increase average view duration by 5% within the next 3 months.” That way they can look for data insights that speak specifically into a strategy that will help achieve the goal.
- Give It Time
YouTube optimization like any other skill takes time and experience to develop. Each platform Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube use different algorithms to determine your ranking, have different audiences, and different optimal posting times. It’s a mistake to think someone can just jump into YouTube and master a strategy, content creation plan, or analytic insights overnight. Give your team a reasonable amount of time to learn what content, keywords, and posting schedule will be most effective to reach our audience.
- Don’t Make Assumptions
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. This means you should be thinking about an international audience. At the very least remember to include captions on every video. Additionally, look at your audience data in YouTube to determine if you should include a secondary caption language. Don’t limit yourself to an English-speaking market based solely on an assumption that it’s the only audience interested in your content. Every view, subscriber, engagement, or comment factors into the algorithm, so think big!
- Content should be Cohesive Not Copied
Many companies don’t have dedicated YouTube specialists, analysts, or strategists solely focused on growing owned channels. Instead, YouTube channels are folded into the Social Media, PR, or Marketing team’s responsibility. As a result, creative content is created specifically for Facebook or Instagram and then is simply copied over to YouTube. However, the ideal video length, optimal image sizes, titles, copy, etc are different on YouTube than on other platforms. Therefore as part of your YouTube content strategy, there should be content created specifically for the YouTube audience. This content should complement your overall social media strategy without being identical to what is shared through other platforms. Subscribers to your channel are then rewarded with exclusive content and have an incentive to return again and again.
We want to partner with your social team to help turn your channel into one that is finely tuned and massively successful. Our digifora team has helped train marketing teams to grow their channels from tens of thousands of subscribers into silver and gold level award-winning channels. Call us today to learn more about our YouTube Optimization services today.