Your YouTube Analytics are a secret weapon that can help you grow your channel at warp
speed, but they can also look extremely overwhelming.
Which ones do you actually need to care about in order to grow?
Well, your YouTube Analytics can help you track metrics on things like which videos
are getting the most clicks and therefore driving the most views on your channel, which
videos are getting the most watch time and therefore giving you a boost of authority
inside of the algorithm, exactly where YouTube viewers are clicking off of your video and
losing interest, which videos are growing your channel the most, where your viewers
are coming from and how to attract more, and the best time to publish your videos.
I'm sharing all of these analytics and exactly how to track them for your channel so you
can start growing way faster than before in this video.
Give me a like.
Hit that like button if you're excited to dive into this and start seeing the success
on your own channel.
Really important, just a quick note before we dive into this, if you aren't looking at
your data and your analytics on YouTube, you're not going to grow nearly as quickly as you
could if you started diving into it.
Don't say you're not a numbers person because I'm the queen of saying that, but even I can
look at these and understand exactly what they mean and exactly which levers to pull
and what to do to make sure that I'm capitalizing on the analytics to grow my channel a lot
faster.
All right.
The first thing that we're going to look at is which of your videos are getting the most
clicks and therefore driving the most views.
Now, if you're a beginner on YouTube, this analytic is so important.
Why?
Well, because views and subscribers and watch time are all great metrics.
We're going to talk about them.
They're super, super important.
But if someone isn't actually clicking on your video, they're not actually watching
it.
Therefore, you can't get watch time, you can't get viewers, and you can't get subscribers.
As a new YouTuber, as a beginner on this platform, your CTR, click through rate, is vital.
Let's dive in.
As a beginner on YouTube, this is probably the most important thing that you need to
know and the most important analytic to watch because it's really telling you how many people
are seeing your video show up and clicking on it because you can't really get views,
you can't get any of the other analytics until someone actually clicks on the videos.
That's a combination of your title of your video and your description of the video, your
first couple of lines, but most importantly, your thumbnail.
You really want to pay attention to this.
In order to find it, you want to go up to the top right on your channel, click on YouTube
Studio beta.
We'll go into the new studio Beta because actually recently I've started to love it.
I know this'll be what we're all using moving forward.
You would go into first and foremost videos.
Once you get into YouTube Studio beta, you go into videos, and then you go into video
analytics.
You'd click on one of these specific videos.
Let's say it's How To Post YouTube Videos To Instagram.
I'd click on that.
Then in the top bar here, it's going to start on overview, but where you want to go to is
reach viewers.
This is your impressions click through rate or your CTR.
This really tells you, okay, per impression shown, so let's say it's 400,000, this is
the percentage of people who are clicking through to actually watch the video.
The percentage on YouTube that's standard.
What YouTube says for a CTR is between two to 10%, so you want to keep it as high as
possible, close to 10% as possible or above.
4.9%, 5% is actually quite good.
This is telling me that this thumbnail works, and part of the reason that we've changed
our thumbnail strategy recently is that we really started to notice that this design
and layout was working really well for us, and our CTR was going up and up and up.
We're constantly testing thumbnails because truly it is the first impression.
It is the way you get people to actually watch your content.
Paying close attention to what kind of thumbnails get the highest CTR and then making thumbnails
more like that moving forward is a really important factor, especially as a beginner
on YouTube.
The next analytic we're going to look at is watch time, which videos are getting the most
watch time and therefore giving you authority inside of the algorithm.
A really important thing to understand here is clicks used to be king on YouTube, but
as the algorithm has changed, as it's developed and with so many new creators on YouTube,
they had to figure out what was the real metric that actually mattered.
Watch time is truly king and this is the best way to measure it.
Next thing we're going to look at is the watch time like I mentioned.
If you go to analytics in YouTube Studio beta, which is just on the left hand side here,
and you want to scroll down into your top videos.
You want to click on this and it is really interesting to see the analytics that are
weighted here because it tells you a lot about what YouTube values.
You can see it gives you impressions click through rate, so the CTR as we just talked
about, the views, the average view duration, and the watch time of your top performing
videos.
Now, what's really interesting about this is that I have videos with less views, but
they have a lot of watch time on them because they're a little bit longer videos.
They're outperforming videos with more views.
That's why it's really important to understand on YouTube, in today's world, watch time trumps
everything.
Keeping people on your video, keeping people on the platform means more to YouTube than
anything else.
It's going to help you get a better ranking in the algorithm and get more authority in
the algorithm if you can keep people on your video longer, which is why scripting and everything
else is so important.
I have a whole video on how to script your videos for high retention, which we can link
to.
It'll be in the description below, but that's why watch time is so important.
If watch time is really important, one quick little trick that you can do is when you're
looking for a topic to create a video on, you want to basically take a look at the top
performing videos, so the videos that are showing up first, second, third, fourth, fifth.
See how long they are.
This first video is two minutes, 55 seconds.
This one's 14 minutes, 12 minutes, 17 minutes, 12 minutes.
It's all showing up in the bottom right here.
What's interesting here is that this video is two minutes and 55 seconds.
It's one year old.
This video is 14 minutes I believe, almost 15 minutes, and it is five months old, but
this video is gaining traction on this top performing video and soon will be outranking
it.
Why?
Because it's longer and it's accumulating more watch time on the platform.
I'm not saying you need to make an hour long video every time you make a video, but there
is something to be said for creating media content, meaning that it is value packed and
it is as long as it needs to be to give the points that you need to give and to provide
the information, the entertainment, the inspiration that people are looking for from that video.
That's why a really quick trick is to go and look at the topic you want to cover, look
at the top five ranking videos, see how long they are, watch them all.
I do this with all my videos.
Watch them all and be like, okay, how can I make it better?
How can I make it a tab longer so I can accumulate watch time faster so then I can outrank the
top performing videos?
Because you can see that this video is going to basically rack up watch time over four
times faster than this video will because this is three minutes.
This video is close to 15 minutes.
Basically if someone watches this entire video, it's 4X-ing the amount of watch time that
this video is ever going to get with one view, if that makes sense.
Longer videos are not a bad thing as long as they're not just fluff and filler, and
you make sure that they're still value packed and that they're efficient and that they're
packed with great content.
This next analytic is so important to figuring out how to structure your content better so
you can just keep improving with every single video.
This is all about learning where are people clicking off of your video?
Where are they losing interest?
Is there a common theme that comes up as to why or where they're losing interest?
Figure out how to find this out.
The next analytic to pay attention to is retention, so where are people clicking off of your individual
videos?
This tells you a lot about your content and how you can continuously improve it.
You want to basically go to analytics again and then you want to click on interest viewers
in the top bar here.
Again, it's going to show you things like watch time, top videos by end screen, which
is also really important to notice.
This tells you a lot about your behavior and the way you're formatting your content.
End screen elements that are top performing and what you should include more of, top playlists,
top cards.
But what we really want to pay attention to is let's say it's something like watch time.
Let's click on this video and you want to click on the individual videos.
You can also do this by clicking on video on the left hand side in YouTube Studio beta.
But in this case, I'm just going to go here.
What I want to do is once you click on the video, it's going to give you your audio audience
retention.
You want to click on this and it will tell you basically exactly where in the videos
you're seeing drop-off and what the graph looks like.
This is actually fairly standard as far as the graph goes for a video on YouTube because
you're seeing that it's pretty steady throughout.
Like yes, there's drop-off, but it's pretty stead.
Then you see right here is where I actually tell people where to go and I give them a
call to action, and this is when you see a more dramatic drop-off.
You also are pretty much always going to see a dramatic drop-off right at the beginning.
It's just human nature.
If someone's watching on their phone or they're busy and they're kind of watching while doing
other things, they just drop off or click on something else.
But if you can keep it fairly steady throughout, then you're doing a great job.
I always say anything above 40% is actually quite good for watch time, but obviously the
higher the better.
In this case it's 46%.
The other interesting things to note here is where where it's peaking on the graph is
actually where people have gone back and rewatched a part of the video.
What you can do is you can click on this exact part and up here it's going to show you exactly
what you said or what you did in this part.
What this does is it tells you, okay, maybe that's a concept that I can do a whole other
video on, so it can inform your content moving forward.
But more than anything, you just want to pay attention to where the dramatic drop-offs
are, if there are any, and use that to your advantage when you're formulating your content.
Do you need to make your outro a little less obvious so people aren't clicking off as soon
as you say goodbye or just tighten it up.
Make your intro a little bit shorter.
Was there something you said right in the middle where you saw a huge dip?
What did you say and maybe don't say that moving forward.
This retention graph is really important to formulating amazing content on YouTube and
using your videos to help you create better content with each video moving forward.
That's how you read the audience retention graph.
Next analytic is which videos are actually growing your channel the most.
Did you know that you can see which videos are getting subscribers and also which videos
are losing subscribers on your channel?
Okay.
Let's get into it.
To figure out which videos are growing your channel the fastest, the easiest way to do
this is to figure out what your most popular content is because it's continuously getting
views and therefore reaching more people and bringing them to your channel.
The best thing to do is just go to your channel and go to videos and click on sort by, and
you want to click by most popular.
You can see what your most popular videos are because these are videos that if you make
more of these, you know you're going to reach an even bigger audience because you're already
dominating for these keywords and these topics inside the algorithm.
This is super easy to do.
The other thing you can do is go to competitor channels, which I've talked about in the past.
Go to their channels, do the same thing.
Go to their videos tab right here and click on most popular and you'll see which videos
are killing it with their audiences.
They have a similar audience to you.
You know that if you make content on a similar topic, your audience is going to be interested
as well, and you're also going to reach an audience that would be interested in that
topic.
That's a really easy way to grow your channel a little bit faster is by capitalizing on
content.
I always talk about this, capitalize on content that is working.
The other thing you can do here to figure out what's growing your channel the fastest
is in YouTube Studio beta, when you go here, the really interesting thing is this little
scorecard that it has now, it'll tell you with each new video how it's doing.
This video I knew was not going to perform extremely well on my channel just because
it's different kinds of content.
As you guys know, on Fridays we're doing videos that are different and we're experimenting,
and so this video did not perform as well.
When you actually go to the video analytics, here's what's really cool about this.
This is like a velocity chart, and I talk a lot about velocity.
It's how many views you get in the first 24 hours, the first week, the first month.
It'll tell you in this little gray zone right here, it's the average performance for your
channel.
This is what we should be seeing for each video moving forward based on past performance
of videos.
This video is in the blue line here and it's performing under average.
But if I look at this video, which is if you can also find these individual analytics by
going to videos in the analytics tab and then clicking on an individual video.
Let's say it's this video, which is Instagram Story Hacks for 2019.
You can see that this one's actually performing above average.
The gray zone is average.
This is performing well above average as far as velocity and the amount of views that it's
got gotten since I published it on July 2nd.
The other cool thing to look at here is this will tell you which videos are growing your
channel.
This one got a surplus of 404 subscribers to subscribe to my channel after people watched
this video.
Now, this video minus 53, so 53 people unsubscribed.
I'm cool with it.
I know this is going to happen as we experiment with content on the channel and that's what
this is all about, so we can show you guys what's happening with these different types
of content and how it's affecting my channel.
This is a really, really valuable analytic to take a look at on a regular basis to see
which videos are getting the most velocity, the most views, and which ones are growing
your subscriber base the fastest.
Because if they are, you want to make more content like that.
Do you even know where your viewers are coming from?
That's next.
Really important to understand two things, traffic sources and also your demographics.
Where in the world are people watching from because that could inform a lot of the decisions
that you make on your channel and also when is the best time to actually publish your
video so you get max engagement, velocity and views.
If you want more information like this, you can definitely check out bossyoutubestrategy.com.
It is our free masterclass on 100X-ing your subscriber base and doubling your revenue
with YouTube in the next year.
Make sure you check that out at the link below.
But let's dive into this really, really important analytic, which is where are your viewers
even coming from?
Because once you can figure that out, you can actually attract more of them.
What you want to do is go into your analytics, again, in YouTube Studio beta and you want
to go into reach viewers.
When I say where your viewer is coming from, this is really a two part thing.
The first part is you want to look at traffic source types.
Where are they coming from for the most part when it comes to traffic sources.
I'm very well aware that YouTube search and suggested are always going to be the top options,
but it's cool to see browse features as well because that means that YouTube is basically
showing my content on the home scree.
Then obviously also if you're a subscriber, you're seeing it on your home page as well.
Then there's external traffic sources, so this means when I'm doing my distribution
for my videos, which is so important, which of those platforms is actually giving me the
most traffic on YouTube.
Facebook, YouTube, SunnyLenarduzzi.com, which is actually meaning that when I send out an
email blast, I'm getting a lot of traffic from that email blast to my YouTube videos.
This is telling you, okay, if these things are giving you the most traffic from external
sources, you want to double down on them.
You want to basically see the breakdown and be like, okay, where is most of my channel
traffic coming from, or even for specific videos, which is something you can do, and
basically take that information and go, okay, I need to send out more traffic from Instagram
let's say or Twitter.
This is a really cool thing to see because then you can see where your viewers are actually
coming to your channel and watching your videos.
Now the other thing here is, I've talked about this in other videos, but it's really important
to note that this option for your traffic source is on YouTube.
Where are they coming from and how can you use this to your advantage?
If they are coming from let's say suggested videos, which suggested videos or driving
them there.
Because if you can figure that out, then you can make more content like that on your channel
because it's already bringing in viewers and viewers are already subscribing to your channel
because of it.
Just double down there.
Instagram Story Hacks for Creators, that's another video, so I'm getting suggested traffic
to my video from this channel.
A lot of these are going to be my own videos, which is great.
How to Get 10K Instagram Followers, this is from somebody else.
I'm getting suggested traffic.
I don't have a video on how to get 10K Instagram followers.
That's a good topic for me.
It's a great way to like do your content research as well by looking at this analytic in your
channel.
Then for YouTube search, this is really, really vital because it tells you how people are
landing on your channel and it gives you content ideas.
How to make a YouTube video?
I just recently made a video on this topic because I realized it's one of the most top
searched terms when people actually discover me and find my channel, so I better make a
video on it so I can capture that traffic.
This is a really great way to find new video content to create for your channel.
You can see that a lot of people are coming to my channel for the things that I make videos
on because I'm constantly paying attention to this personal branding, making YouTube
videos, Instagram story hacks, specific type of camera.
These are just good to know.
Now the other thing you can look at is you can actually see video analytics specifically.
The other tab that you want to go to is this one that we just showed you is under reach
viewers.
If you go to reach viewers, you're going to see these traffic sources, which is really
important.
The other thing you want to pay attention to is clicking on build an audience.
You can do this under this tab as well.
You can go to build an audience, and this is for your overall channel, and it's telling
you where people are actually watching in the world and what gender they are and also
the age ranges that are most popular.
You can do this for specific videos.
All these analytics I just discussed, you can do them for specific videos as well, which
is really important to see.
Let's take a look at this specific video.
You can see the breakdown of the countries and everything, but what's really cool for
your channels, if you're trying to figure out when to actually post your content, I
do think that you kind of inform that decision.
You create an effect by posting the same time every week, which is what we do, but it is
good to know where people are watching from so that you can cater to those time zones
if you can, especially as a newer channel.
You can see here United States is one of my top traffic sources or geographies.
Geographic regions that's looking at the channel.
Then if I break it down by clicking on it to actual cities, it'll tell me which time
zones most of my viewers are coming from, which again is a very good thing to know when
you're making content.
Because if you're posting at like 1:00 AM and your audience is up at a different time
and they're sleeping at that time when you're posting, you're not going to see the same
type of velocity and therefore you're not going to get as many views in the long run.
That's all the analytics that you want to take a look out as far as where your viewers
are coming from and how you can capture more of them and grow your channel even faster.
If you really want to dive into this and get serious about YouTube and turning it into
a real profitable business for you, make sure that you register for our Boss YouTube Strategy
Masterclass.
It's a free one hour training.
You check it out at the link below to register.
I want to say a big thanks to our comment of the week.
I check out all your comments.
I really appreciate it, and you guys give me the best content ideas.
Keep them coming because I use them to create videos just like this actually.
Thank you so much.
If you enjoyed this video, you know what to do.
Take a screenshot, share it out on your Insta Stories or on Instagram, and tag me @SunnyLenarduzzi,
and let me know what is the metric that you're most excited to start tracking on your channel
to grow even faster.
You can comment below with that as well.
If you haven't liked this video yet, give it a thumbs up and make sure to subscribe
for new videos every single Tuesday and Friday.
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.