In this video you're going to learn how to use YouTube analytics to grow your YouTube channel.
And I'm going to walk you through the top 10 reports that you need to focus on if you want to get more
views subscribers and likes and comments on your videos.
So to access your youtube analytics Firstly come up and click on your channel icon in the top right
hand corner and then go ahead and click on creators studio.
Now it's in here that you'll find your analytics reports and they are then in the left hand of the sidebar
here so you can go ahead and click on that just open everything up.
Now it's worth just taking a minute to explain how everything is laid out.
So what we are seeing here is an overview report.
You can see that there are graphical representation here of some of the YouTube reports.
So these are really Overby reports and graphs of all of these reports that are listed here in the sidebar.
And these are the reports that we're going to be digging into to really analyze them and understand
them more.
But you can come into this overview tab just to get a quick overview of the performance of your channel.
It is also worth noting that by default it will be shown for the last 28 days so all of the reports
in analytics are just shown for the last 28 days if you do want to change that.
You can click on this drop 10 in the top right hand corner and click and look at the analytics for the
last 90 days say or the last 365 days.
So I do you think that the last 28 days is a good time frame to be analyzing and perhaps you should
even put a date in the calendar every month to come back and review the last 28 days maybe at the start
of the month review the last month.
But you can take that longer term view if you do want to do that.
Now let us dive into the 10 reports that you really want to focus on in order to understand what is
working on watch you can do to grow.
So the first report that we want to look at is watch time and this is a big one.
This is in fact the most important metric on YouTube that you want to be constantly trying to increase.
Now you can see here this is watch time minutes and really the explanation of this is the total number
of minutes of viewing of your content from your audience.
Now why is that so important as war and why is that really one of the top reports listed out here.
Well it's very simple.
YouTube wants to keep people watching videos on their platform as much as possible.
Why.
Because the more time people are spending watching YouTube the more ads that they can put in front of
them and the more ads that they can sell to advertisers and increase their revenues.
So recently YouTube actually changed watch time as the most important metric in determining whether
they promote your channel or whether they promote your videos.
So it's very important to try and increase the watch time on your channel in order for it to grow.
Now one way you can do that is to start to understand and look at this list and understand where the
watch time is coming from your channel.
Now I can see that 85 percent of percent watched time on this channel is coming from this one single
video.
So what I can do to really understand how to increase my watch time is look at the format of this video.
Look at the length of this video.
Look at the way I've structured it.
Topic of it and really determine could I make more videos like that to increase my watch time.
And that would be a very tangible way that I could grow my channel.
Now looking further down I can see that there are some videos that a very small watch time maybe the
topics are too neige maybe the videos are too short.
And so you really want to look at this report and do more of what is working.
That is the simple mantra for for an analytics person is just do more of what is working.
And that's what you really want to be keeping in mind what ever report you look at and analytics whether
it be here on YouTube on Facebook on Google Analytics.
Just really do more of what is working and you're going to grow your channel.
So that was watch time.
Let us now look at the second report or metric that you want to be focusing on in order to grow your
channel and that is traffic sources.
So coming then into the left side bar here we can click on traffic sources.
Now what we are seeing here are the sources of our traffic and you can always hover your mouse over
any of these keywords here or add words on the analytics reports to get a better explanation.
So really we can see here it's the means through which a viewer found a video.
Now this is extremely important to understand if you want to grow your channel because you need to know
how people are finding your videos for this channel.
I can see that 55 percent are coming through suggested videos.
So that's interesting to know that I'm appearing there in the sidebar and alongside or after other videos
and I can even dig down deeper into this as well to really figure out which of those videos that I'm
mean suggested again so I can see and even click this open here.
Hello.
Whoops sorry for that.
I can see that my video is showing up in the suggested videos here beside this video so maybe I could
create more videos that are similar to this topic or are similar to other videos that this channel has
made so that I can continue to be suggested next to them.
And let's go back and read a look at YouTube search.
So if we click into this report again I can have a look at some of these search terms that people are
actually typing in that are resulting in people watching my video.
So you can see a lot of them here as Hudes Torrijos tutorial for beginners.
Those are the key words that people are typing in to really find that top video on my channel.
So once again I could continue to make videos that really allow people to or or make more videos really
about those keywords that people are typing in and maybe even make them specifically by these exact
keywords that people are typing in.
So a ton of information there about how people are finding my videos and the traffic sources reports
and that type of actionable things that I can do and to really grow my channel.
All right.
That was number two.
Let us move on now to number three.
The audience demographics reports and this is another great one.
So let's come in to the left side by here.
Click on demographics.
We're going to get a ton of interesting information in this report.
And you can have a couple of different options here in terms of how you view these reports.
Personally for me I like the pie chart I think is just the easiest way to understand and I can see very
quickly then that 46 percent of my viewers are watching the videos are between this age bracket of 25
to 30 for.
So this is very interesting to know.
I want to make sure that if my ideal customer is that age bracket that they are in fact the people who
are watching most of my videos if they weren't and it was say much older demographic Well maybe I could
say hey that's interesting I could do two things one is refocus my videos back towards my ideal customers
or I could say hey it's pretty interesting that this age group is more interested in the topic than
I thought they would be.
Maybe I could create some specific videos that talk to them that address their particular needs around
this particular topic or product or service et cetera.
Now as well as age range.
Another very interesting thing to look at is gender.
So you can click across look at the gender.
And again I can see that there is a heavy skewed towards males in my audience 74 percent and that's
pretty spot on.
What I would imagine it would be that age bracket and males.
But again you want to just be making sure that the gender and the age munity matches up with who you
think your ideal customer is.
So the audience demographic reports huge amount of information there.
Again 3D.
Understand your audience and make sure that you're on target with your videos.
Now another thing that we can look at would be leaving these demographic reports and this is really
the fourth metric or report you want to look at is your geographical impact.
So it still in this demographics tab We come then to more we can click on we can click on geography
here and this is a great report because it shows us really the countries of our viewers that I can see
for example here that 31 percent are coming or viewing from the U.S. and I can even see their at their
mail as well which is pretty interesting for me to see.
My ideal customer would probably be in this country as a top one.
Some businesses they don't really care about where their viewers are coming from but other businesses
like local businesses or e-commerce businesses might be paying particular attention to this because
if you're an e-commerce business you're getting a lot of viewers from say India you don't ship products
there.
Well that will give you an indication OK maybe we should set it up so it's easy for people to get products
shipped there or maybe we should even think about how come we address our products or services to the
needs of those people who are viewing from that particular audience so once again once you delve further
into these geographic reports you can see a whole host of information really including even more current
What states in the U.S. people are viewing from.
And this is actually handy in terms of deciding what time should you post your videos.
You really want to post them so they're hitting that big audience.
So usually I try and post them actually 9:00 a.m..
San Francisco time.
That helps me to make sure that I'm maybe posting on a lot of my viewers are going to be online or at
least it's lunchtime or it's in the working day essentially so the geographic reports report them for
huge amount of information there.
You can use to grow your channel.
Let's move on now to the fifth report or metric that you want to focus on and that is play back locations
right below the demographics here can click into that.
Now this is an interesting one again and it determines and really shows you where your videos are being
viewed.
So I can see here again can hold a little mouse over here.
This is it shows me that 99 percent of my videos are being viewed on the YouTube's individual video
page on YouTube dot com or the app.
So that's not a big surprise for me.
I haven't done a lot of promotion outside of YouTube sharing videos on my web site etc. but some channels
might they embed their videos on their blog posts and they get a lot of views from there.
If that's the case just continue to do that if that is working for you or you could think that OK well
we're getting a lot of views from the web site but hardly any views from YouTube itself.
So we really need to optimize for that YouTube search engine as an example so playback locations it's
important to come in and understand that and make sure that it sounds that it should be or what.
Could you continue doing to keep growing your channel.
Let's move on right now to the sixth report.
Audience retention and it is up here in the left sidebar once again.
This is a huge one this is a really really important thing to come in and study quite a lot.
Now I can see that the average duration for my videos is six minutes and 15 seconds.
And if we scroll down here I can see which videos get the most amount of audience retention.
So I can see my top video really gets the most amount of view duration and if I click in this is where
it really starts to get interesting now.
So I can see the video here and I can see actual timeline as well aware the dropoff is that is the big
thing.
I can see that after 25.
Let's say after a minute about half of the audience who started watching this video are no longer watching
this video and this is not unusual.
You can see it's a it's a really sharp drop off which is hard to kind of internal or you know take in
the first time you see to say oh my god there everybody is clicking out after less than a minute.
But that's not unusual.
A lot of people click into Web sites and they click out straight away.
The balance rate as it's known is usually 50 percent or higher.
So this is not unusual but you do want to try and reduce this as much as possible because we remember
the more that you retain your audience the more minutes that they are going to watch which increases
your watch time which will help your channel and videos rank.
So what are some of the strategies that you can use to retain your audience.
Well one great thing to do is to kind of do a video that is a like a list the top 10 things I know from
watching videos myself.
I want to see what number 10 was or I wanted to make sure I tick off snow with 789 was etc..
So I'm doing a kind of A-list video like that the top 10.
They did extremely well.
They got a lot of attention because people want to follow through and watch all the way to the end.
Another thing that you can do as well is laughter seeing this and more entertainment style videos on
YouTube people show a clip of something exciting That's coming up later on in the video.
And that encourages people to retain and keep watching.
Another great strategy as well as if you're doing some type of design video is to show the design to
the stars and say By the end of this video you will have created this design and then get into it.
And that really hooks them in.
So you're looking for that hook and it is important to really have a look at which videos are retaining
your or which videos retaining your audience.
Now something to note actually I just did this by accident.
But once you select a video it will automatically show you every single report.
So if you can see now that this retention report is just showing for this particular video if I want
to see it again across all the videos I can just D-cell like that and then I'll see it for my channel
again.
Let's move on though and move on to the seventh report to look at in order to grow your YouTube channel
and that is subscribers.
Subscribers is down here in the left side.
Once again I can see that over the last 28 days I've gained 262 subscribers and lost 35 subscribers
so not a lot of growth there happening on the channel I can see where the subscriptions are happening
on the watch page that's on the page that people are watching the videos on.
And really what I could do by looking at these analytics now is maybe encourage people more in my videos
to subscribe.
I could say at the end of a video that call to action to subscribe so you can be notified when the next
helpful video comes out just even reminding people some scribe can really help gain or increase your
subscribers fast and rumor.
Why do you want subscribers.
Because subscribers watch more of your videos the normal viewers so they increase that watch time.
They also get notified when you put a video out.
So that helps build up those initial views and watch time that YouTube then picks up on and might start
promoting your video.
And essentially they have take shown an interest in your channeling product to your service and really
raise their hand and say I'm interested.
Really I'm a potential customer because they've subscribed to your channel so you do always want to
be growing your subscribers and they probably notice a lot of you Cheevers channels talking about that
because it is such an important metric and a sign to you that your child is interesting engaging and
that they should help promote.
OK so let's move on to the 8th report that we want to look at.
We're getting towards the end now and that is social shares.
So if we come down to sharing here we can really see a report here of the number of shares that our
channel or videos have gotten total over the last 28 days so I can see here it's 152.
And again for this particular channel this is something that I could probably improve on.
I can see that the top video once again is getting most of the shares 80 percent.
But if it come down into sharing service I can really see where these shares are happening and actually
copy to clipboard here interestingly enough is is how most people are sharing my video.
So they're actually copying the link most likely on a phone and then pasting it into Watts up or setting
up a message and telling other people to check it out.
That's actually pretty interesting for me to see that a lot of people are sharing via mobile.
Now what that could tell me is maybe I should encourage people in my videos to do that.
I could say hey you know share this video with your friends who watz up or on your phone.
I could even myself share my videos more at across the social media like Facebook or Twitter which I
haven't been doing.
And so that could help me get more watch time subscribers that way.
So as well as encouraging my audience to share this report and tell me that I need to share more of
my videos as well and moving on to number nine.
We're almost at the end now and the next report you look out to grow your channel is comments so right
above here.
Let's have a look at the comments.
Now we can see that there has been 31 comments over the last 28 days across these videos and again this
is just like subscribers.
It really shows that people are engaging with your channel.
If people are engaging with your channel or they're even commenting on your channel they're more likely
to become subscribers.
They're more likely to become subscribers and more likely to become customers so it's kind of one rung
down on that engagement's factor.
Another cool thing about Commines is that once people Commins on your video open this up maybe you can
you can come to YouTube to show you guys are one cool thing about cons is if people come below you can
actually get a good look at their profile.
For example here so I can see people's names who they kind of are what they look like.
If I click in to them I can see what videos they've like what subscriptions that they have.
So this gives me a great insight into who my audience is rather than just looking at the numbers and
the demographics which can be a bit hard to visualize Sometimes the comments are a great way just to
get a clear picture of who your audience are.
So that's why you can also encourage people to comment below.
Tell us what their favorite part of the video was.
Did they have any questions that they want you to to answer in a future video.
It's a great way just to increase those comments to get a better insight into who your audience are
and what they want and also to give that engagement signal to YouTube.
Now let's look at the final report that you can look out in order to grow your YouTube channel.
And that is the likes and dislikes.
So coming up here again we can look at this and very similar to comments and sharing subscribers.
This is just a great signal that you can send to YouTube that your videos are engaging and you can encourage
your audience to do that as well.
You can say that you know like the video below or a thumbs up if you like the video and found it helpful.
And you can see and measure that and really look at which of the videos are performing the best.
Now you can have a look at maybe your top video and say OK did I ask people to like and that is that
why it's getting so much likes or is it just because it's the most viewed you could publish a new video
and include that call to action to like the video and ultimately see did that work.
How many lives did that actually get versus a video where you put no lights at all.
And in fact if you wanted to try and sum up all of these especially likes Commins subscribers and sharing
a great kind of call to action phrase that you can use at the end of a video is something like this.
You know if you like the video please give it a thumbs up.
Comment below if you've any questions or any suggestions for future videos.
Subscribe so you get notified when the next helpful video is out.
Feel free to share this video with any of your friends if you think it will be helpful.
So you can see that you can include a lot of calls of actions that are really at the end of every video
to help drive all of these metrics.
Show YouTube that your channel has been engaged that will help then your video to be promoted in the
search engine and suggestive videos ready to grow your channel.
So now it's your turn.
Come into the creators studio and analyze these ten reports for yourself so you can get great ideas
and insights about how to grow your YouTube channel.