Monitoring Data and Optimizing Performance in this New Age of YouTube
It’s been a year since Google has pulled the plug on the connection between YouTube and its analytics service, Google Analytics. This happened without much information going around about it and it caught all users of the platform off-guard. People then had to get used to a whole new software YouTube Creator Studio and get to know its ins and outs. This turned out to be a lot of hassle and saw performance of various channels on the site drop.
Since then, Google has been pushing YouTube to be the premiere platform for creators as well as businesses. This can be seen from the various and continuous updates it has been rolling out for the Creator Studio. While it is good that it is bringing about a platform to be the premiere space for video content, the change was too sudden and jarring and many users of the service felt a sense of whiplash.
Giving below are some tick and tips you can use to better analyze your channel’s audience and use various tools in YouTube’s very own analytical platform.
KPIs that you should be tracking
The basics of any data analysis is the usage and tracking of Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. Here are some that you should pay close attention to:
1. Demographic
This is one of the most basic data someone could collect on YouTube. Collecting data on where your viewers watch the video from, their age range, most active hours on the service, and what other channels they watch.
With this data you can create great localized content that would please your viewers, and make them want to watch more of your videos. Or even adding in subtitles that are hyperlocal to your audience could be a great first step.
2. Source of Traffic
This is a great metric to get hold of as it tells you where people are finding your videos from. It could be from a suggestion, or even from a site-wide search. Or even off-site sources like social media sites could be a great source from where your videos are available from.
Knowing where your viewers come from can help you to optimize your content to help increase the flow of viewers from the same source.
3. Subscribers
This would be one of the most metric that you will be tracking on this service. This is so because it tells you about the people that have opted in to watch your videos, as well as the ones that you plan to post in the future.
This data can help you decide on the content that you should be posting on your channel, as well as the interaction that this causes within this community that you have created.
Basics of collecting and analyzing your channel data
Now that you know which metrics you should be looking at, the next step would be to analyze the data that you have collected and make the necessary changes to reflect the end goal. Some simple methods to do this are:
1. Check the YouTube Creator Studio analytics
This is the most basic of all things to do when you wish to analyze the data you have collected. This service compiles all the data that you have collected and helps you make sense of it. This then helps you to personalize your content to better fit your audience and the locations that they view it from.
2. Make links in content description trackable
This is another method to help you collect even more data. With more data on the way, you can better analyze your audience and what they are doing before and after watching your videos. This too then will help you create better content suited to that audience that you wish to reach out to.
3. Invest in social media listening platforms
This is one of the easiest ways that can help increase the performance of your channel. Social media, today, is the most prevalent of all forms of communication and knowing what people are talking about your content could be a great help in refining your content according to the feedback from the data collected.
Finally, monitoring your channel data does not have to be a confusing prospect. With the steps mentioned above you will be well on your way to mastering and honing your craft on Internet’s largest video streaming platform
