You have been doing it the wrong way!

If you ask most people what success on YouTube means, you would probably get answers revolving around having millions of subscribers. In reality, many YouTubers never reach such heights, not just because they do not put in enough effort, but mostly because they do not understand or track the right metrics.

YouTube Analytics is an in-built feature on the platform that helps content creators to determine their progress. In other words, whether their channels will perform better or not depends on these numbers. If you plan to start your own channel, you need to understand everything about YouTube metrics.

Here is what you may need to know about YouTube Metrics. Let's get started!

YouTube Metrics

Demographics

The YouTube demographic page on its analytic tool helps you know more about those who have subscribed to your channel. So you will be able to group them based on their age, gender, location, and even the device used to view your content.

This gives YouTubers more insights into their audiences. For instance, you can then tailor your content to be more specific for these people. If more people view your status from a particular place, you can make your videos more relevant to such a place. This step alone will earn you more likes, comments, and subscribers.

Audience retention

After you post a video, you would be able to see the number of subscribers who were attentive throughout the video. So if your views on your videos seem to fade away after a couple of minutes, you might be able to find out what you are doing wrong. For instance, if you make a 20-minute video, you want your audience to watch it completely and not just 3 minutes of the entire video. This way, you would be sure that you are doing the right thing. So how do you do this?

There is an “audience retention” page on your YouTube metrics dashboard. The graph shows you the point in your video where your viewers lost interest and moved on. Clicking on the ‘Relative audience retention and ‘Absolute audience retention’ tabs give you even more insights.

You can increase your success on YouTube through this page since you would not be making the same mistakes. For instance, using CTAs appropriately can earn you more likes and free YouTube subscribers.

Traffic sources

As the number of your subscribers goes up, you would want to find out how people get to know about your videos or channel in the first place. For example, a subscriber might come to your channel because of an ad, while another may come because your video was suggested or they searched for it specifically. 

This is what the “Traffic Sources” pages allow you to do, but it doesn’t just end here. You will also see the data behind your views, watch time, and average view Duration.

To know where you are getting the best quality of views, you have to focus on the average view duration. The source of views with the highest duration should be your priority because it is potentially your largest income stream.

For example, suppose more people discover your channel from a YouTube search. In that case, you can now optimize your videos using several search engine strategies like keyword optimization, the use of attractive thumbnails, and so on.

Playback Locations

YouTube’s “Playback Locations” groups locations into “YouTube channel page,” “YouTube watch page,” and those from embedded links from apps or external websites. They come along with their watch time, views, and average duration of views. So, posting a video from your desktop does not mean your audience has to use a desktop as well.

If you discover that your YouTube channel page gives you maximum views on a video and a much better average duration of views, it means that your subscribers come to your channel to view it. This is great because you can then put in efforts to make your channel more interactive.

But if most of your views come from links from external websites, it means that you have to leverage those platforms to get more users to view your content. Either way, you can increase your chances of success on YouTube with playback locations.

Real-Time report

You can measure the views on your videos the moment they are generated using the real-time report. YouTube’s verified view count takes up to two days before you see it on your dashboard, but the real-time report is immediate. It gives you the figures behind your video engagement from viewers from over the last 48 hours as well as the last hour.

So if you want to leverage your real-time report, you have to learn some hacks to show you other platforms apart from YouTube that your videos have been shared to. You will need a YouTube video ID for this trick.

The ID is an alpha-numeric code allotted to your video. You can find your YouTube ID on each of your videos by opening the video and clicking the “share” button. You will find a section under the “share” button with a URL. The code you see after the last slash in the link is your YouTube video ID. After knowing your ID, you should carry out a basic search using the search query below:

YouTube Video ID -site: YouTube.com

If your video ID is klbnj410, then the search query will look like this:

klbnj410 -site: YouTube.com

When you notice a sudden surge in a particular video from your Real-Time report, you should Google search using this search query type. The results will help you narrow down your focus on the places your video has been shared so that when you visit the places, you can engage the people there and get “free” YouTube subscribers. This YouTube metric helps you find more people who love your videos as you enhance your reputation across different social media platforms.

How to Access YouTube Metrics

You can access YouTube metrics in the following steps:

  • Log in to your account using your YouTube credentials
  • Click on the icon on your profile. It is at the top corner of your page on the right. Enter ‘Creator Studio.’
  • The Creator Studio dashboard would display a menu on the left side showing you the ‘Analytics’ option.
  • Click on ‘Analytics’ to enter the YouTube Analytics dashboard.

Remember that you have the opportunity to export datasets as, either CSV text files or Excel spreadsheets. This is excellent if you want more insights on how to build your YouTube channel all by yourself.

Bottom line

There are many other YouTube metrics on your analytics dashboard, but we have discussed the most important ones vital to your YouTube success. So if you want sustained growth of this video-based platform, you need to understand how the metrics can help you.

To remain relevant on YouTube, always assess your videos with these metrics from time to time. The big players on this platform even have their own analytics team. But if you are still new to YouTube, then these metrics would go a long way in helping you. What do you think? Do let us know!