- How do you get more views on your YouTube videos?
Well, you publish them at the right time for your audience
and it just so happens that both YouTube
and VidIQ have tools that can help you.
Let's do this.
- [Narrator] VidIQ.
- [Female] VidIQ.
- [Man] Vidiq.com.
(upbeat music)
- To access this brand new YouTube tool
from most YouTube screens, click on your profile image
in the top right-hand corner and then click
on the YouTube Studio link.
From the Studio dashboard screen,
click on the analytics link from the left-hand navigation
bar and then from the main analytics screen,
click on the audience tab at the top.
Below the graphs on this screen, there will be a panel
labeled when your viewers are on YouTube.
Now, to be clear, this isn't specifically
about your viewers watching just your content.
It's when viewers who watch your content are
on YouTube watching any video.
Think of it from this point of view.
There may be somebody at home, sat on a sofa,
watching Friends because they're a huge fan of sitcoms.
Chances are, they're probably gonna enjoy
The Big Bang Theory as well, so programming logic suggests
that The Big Bang Theory should come on straight
after Friends or at the same time.
If you know when your audience is on YouTube watching videos
you can schedule your videos to be published at that time.
In this visual representation, the deeper the color shade,
the higher volume of viewers there are.
For example, many of our viewers are on YouTube
at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time Wednesday mornings
while a lot less viewers are online
at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday evening.
Hello everyone, I'm Rob, and welcome back to VidIQ,
the creator-obsessed YouTube tool, channel,
and learning academy that educates you
on your YouTube journey.
Make sure to subscribe
and let us help you grow your channel.
So you might call this YouTube's best time to post tool,
but you know what?
Us here at VidIQ have been doing
something similar for years.
To access it, click the videos section
on the left-hand navigation bar in the Creator Studio
and then go to the edit details page for any video.
On the right-hand side of this first screen,
you will see this best time to post tool from VidIQ.
This tool will show you when your audience is most active
on YouTube, giving you three-hour windows
for when you may want to publish your content.
You can click through all the days of the week
and see an overall weekly view too.
Now, the way we do this is
through analyzing your subscriber activity.
To see this in action, click the VidIQ extension button
in your browser and then click on subscriber insights.
This shows you the other channels your subscribers
are subscribing to and which videos
they really enjoy watching.
Since we know subscribers tend to watch your content
for longer, this can be a more reliable data source,
albeit from a smaller sample size.
The logic is fairly straightforward.
You set up your hotdog stand at lunchtime outside the office
because people are hungry.
You don't go there at 3:00 a.m. in the morning
because there's gonna be no one there to buy your hotdogs.
When you know there are more people online
who enjoy your content, that's when you should publish it
with a few little things to consider.
YouTube state themselves that the publish time is not known
to directly affect the long-term performance of videos
and this can certainly be true of search-based content
that needs time to establish itself
before momentum really starts to kick in.
I wouldn't be surprised
if this very video follows a similar trajectory.
Secondly, depending on the content, sometimes YouTube
and your audience are not going
to wait for your best time to post.
For example, if Apple announced their latest iPhone
or Marvel released a trailer for their latest Avenger movie
at 4:00 p.m. on a Monday, are you going
to wait until 7:00 a.m. the following day
to add your voice to the conversation?
Chances are, the YouTube audience has already got its fill
from an alternative source by then.
Also consider exactly when you publish your video
because you might want to miss the on-the-hour
and half-hour peak times.
This is your average day in the world
of YouTube notifications.
At the top and bottom of every hour,
loads of creators publish their videos
and loads of notifications get sent out to subscribers.
Do you want to compete with these
or publish your content a few minutes before
or after these peak spikes of traffic?
Also, treat your videos a little like stocks.
You don't want to invest when their value is at its peak
because there's only one direction that can go.
You want to get involved when the velocity
is starting to ramp up.
So if your potential audience's peak time on YouTube is noon
then maybe you want to publish your video at nine, ten,
or 11:00 a.m. os that your video is at the top
of subscription list, it's now manifested itself
in browse features, and may be appearing in a suggested list
because it's a brand new video just
as your audience is starting to come onto YouTube,
and finally, when you upload your video to YouTube,
remember that it takes time to prepare it and process it.
You've got titles, descriptions, tags, thumbnails,
end cards, info cards, all of that stuff to consider,
and if it's a 4K video, you want it to look the best
it can do when people first watch it.
So give yourself one or two hours
before you actually unleash it on your audience.
Thank you very much for watching and enjoy the rest
of your video-making day.