Hey, I'm Melissa, and I'm a partner manager at YouTube
so I get to work with YouTube Creators every day
to help them with their channels
to talk through different ways to grow their audience.
The goal of Channel Checkup is to show you how to analyse your own channel
by taking you step-by-step through a typical meeting with a partner manager.
Today, I'm here with YouTube creator Laura Kampf.
We're going to be diving in to Laura's channel
to find out what's going well
what can be improved, and to answer some of her questions.
First, can you tell us a little bit more about your channel and how it's going?
Sure, so, my name's Laura Kampf, I'm a Creator from Cologne, Germany
and I make videos about building things.
I build very different things
sometimes it's bicycles, sometimes it's furniture
and I try to upload every week.
Actually, that's one of the very first things
that I noticed on your channel
and that you do really well.
I think what's so important about a consistent upload schedule
is that people can come to anticipate when you're going to post
and therefore watch the video when you upload it.
I agree, I think it's just as much a ritual for me
as it should be for the viewer, or as I want it to be for the viewer.
Absolutely, I think you hit the nail on the head here.
You tap into people's lives, right?
You become part of their routines.
Kind of like anticipating a new episode from your favourite TV show.
Exactly, yeah.
One of the most important parts of having your YouTube channel
is making sure your channel page is well branded
and that's simply because this is the page
where people go to discover more of your content
and also understand your brand
who are you, and what kind of videos do you make?
Tell me a little bit more about
how you decided to create your banner, for example.
Do you think that accurately describes who you are?
No, honestly not.
I think my banner is super outdated and I should definitely work on this.
I think it is a nice image, and there is some dynamics to it
but it's not communicating who I am at all.
I think it's the wrong strategy to be honest.
Yeah, I think it's a fine line between artsy
but also telling
- and conveying what your actual message is. - Exactly.
Some best practices for having a channel banner are
making sure you have an upload schedule
including a photo of yourself
or maybe even having some sort of guiding text
that talks about the type of content you cover
or maybe even the items that you're building.
Exactly, I think the banner should probably have my face
and should be a lot cleaner, and then maybe 'New videos every Sunday'
instead of 'New videos every week'.
I will change that when I get home!
Alright! I think one thing, too, to keep in mind
is that any time you're making channel art, to make sure you look at it on a mobile phone
and if that image is legible and clear on a smaller device
likely it obviously will be on a desktop too.
OK, cool.
Now, when we think about viewers finding your content
and deciding whether or not they want to watch
thumbnails are the most important strategy you can employ.
That's one of my favourite things about your channel
you have your logo on every single one of your thumbnails
which ideally makes it easy for someone to identify that it belongs to your channel.
Well, when I started my channel, I wanted to make a name for myself
and I wanted people to recognise my videos from other videos.
You work so hard on making these really beautifully edited videos
that you want to make sure people don't gloss over it simply because
- you skimped out on the thumbnail. - Yeah.
They're definitely really important.
Yeah, it's kind of the business card of my video, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
One of my favourite parts about your channel
is that you have plenty of playlists.
You cover all the different types of content you offer
vlogs, building things, different events that you attend.
One thing that you can do
is actually create a section for each one of the playlists that you have.
Like we see here for 'Uploads', and also here for 'Popular uploads'
what you can do is create a section for every single playlist you have
to better showcase the diversity of content that you make
and also make it easily accessible for somebody to click and watch more.
Ah, that makes sense.
Tell me a little bit more about
how you approach titling and adding descriptions to your video.
For me, the challenge is always to find a title
that's not only appealing to a broad audience
but also appealing to people who build themselves
and there's a difference.
So that's always the trick for me to find a balance between these two worlds.
I think one thing I might start thinking about as well
when you're creating a title for a video
put something that you would type in
in order to find a particular video on makers or builders.
Yeah.
Another good exercise to practice is if there are certain words or certain phrases
that don't quite make it in the title
you can put that in the first two or three sentences of the description.
That's another great way to make sure
you're capitalising on those searchable terms.
So, a really great way to help navigate the viewer's journey
is by employing a feature called 'end screens'.
It's usually something that's reserved towards the end of the video.
You can create a clickable asset that says 'Subscribe'
you can create one that says 'Watch another video'
or you can even link to playlists.
How do you like to use end screens?
I try to link to playlists
if that's applicable
and I also try to offer a subscription.
So these are the two things I always do.
I think playlists is always better
because there's a bigger chance that people, you know, get hooked on my content
and watch the next video, and the next video and that's what I want.
Also, if I'm doing a video on a series
of course I'm going to link to the other videos of the series.
So, given that a lot of your older videos still get a lot of views
one great tip you can use is putting end screens on those videos as well.
Yeah.
That ensures any time somebody lands on any one of your videos
they can go and find another one really easily.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense
that's something, for some reason, I never consider: changing old videos.
- Absolutely. - But I will do that.
Another thing to keep in mind is there are really cool features in Analytics
that a lot of people don't know about.
One of the number one things that I look at
is obviously your 'Overview' report.
This is usually the first thing that you're brought to.
I personally like to look at the last 90 days.
because I think this is a good amount of time
and a good amount of data to look at.
Yeah.
'Watch time' is one of the single most important metrics for YouTube
because it indicates whether somebody has even engaged with your content.
So, what do you think these spikes mean?
That's hopefully when I uploaded the video.
Right, right, you're absolutely right.
That would be ideal, right?
That every time you post, somebody watches the video.
And so one easy way that you can check this
is actually by comparing it with your 'Videos published'.
Oh, I've never seen that!
But generally, if we see that there are spikes aligned with these orange bars here
then we know that people are generally leaned in.
One thing that you can do is actually select the 'Multi-line chart'.
So if we're to click on that
we're now able to identify the specific videos
that caused these particular spikes.
So, we know that this spike came all from the 'Super Fast Drill Powered Boat Motor'
which is one of your most recent videos
and is performing extremely well.
This also kind of begs the question
"How can we look specifically at that video's analytics?"
and that would lead me to 'Audience retention'.
How long are people actually watching?
Oh yeah, that's interesting.
We can actually click on that video and see the retention report for that video.
I would say there are three major things.
One is when the line dips.
This would indicate that whatever's happening at a given moment
isn't compelling for the viewer, so they're actually leaving the video.
I would say the second thing too is
the majority of the video
is a relatively flat line.
This would indicate that
people are compelled by the content they're seeing
and they're staying to watch.
In the very end we see a bump right here.
That would indicate to me that the content is so compelling
people are actually deciding to watch it over and over again.
My problem with analytics is
it's not really good for me to focus on numbers so much.
Then I start to question my decisions
and I get super insecure.
But I still notice that there's a lot of information in there
that might be helpful for my content.
You are definitely not alone in this.
There are a lot of folks out there
who are just completely overwhelmed by the amount of information that we have here.
That's actually why we created YouTube Studio.
It's a really user-friendly, easy way to get tidbits of information
without going down this rabbit hole.
Oh OK, so it tells me right away if the video is performing well or not so well.
That's great.
This is exactly what I need.
I just need a little bit of reassurance
and the numbers that tell me, "It's all fine, you're doing well, you can go create now."
That's perfect.
Well, I hope this was helpful, were there any main takeaways?
Yeah, absolutely, there are tons of things.
So, the first thing is I'm going to change the channel banner
make it a bit cleaner
maybe make it say 'every Sunday'
and not 'every week', to build a little bit more routine.
Also, going back to older videos
checking the end screens.
I think that's also a very good tip.
Then I will update the sections
and implement my playlists.
And also, you helped me with my fear of the analytics.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, of course!
Now that Laura was able to figure out some concrete action items for her channel
we want to hear from all of you.
Let us know in the comments what you learned
and want to implement on your own channel.
And if you're interested in how channels get partner managers
check out this resource.
Be sure to subscribe and check out more awesome videos
on the YouTube Creators channel.
Bye!