- If you want to grow a successful YouTube channel
over a sustained period of time to get viewers
to constantly flock back to your content,
time and time again, to unlock the "YouTube Algorithm."
There is only one graph, you need to pay attention to.
(finger snapping)
Yes, I'm talking about return viewers again.
This is why.
If you are a return viewer yourself to vidIQ,
you might already be sick and tired
of me talking about this.
But well, you've returned yet again,
so you must still find all of this somewhat interesting.
In a nutshell, this purple line graph
in the YouTube analytics shows you when viewers
who have already watched some of your content,
come back to watch something else on your channel.
Now, obviously, logic dictates,
that when you publish a new video,
a certain number of return viewers
will come back to watch it, which results in a spike.
But as you can see,
not all spikes are created equal.
In very basic terms, this means that you the creator,
failed to meet that return viewers expectations.
There are many reasons why a viewer
may watch one video, (crowd cheering)
but decide not to watch the next.
It could be a different video topic, a bad thumbnail,
or they found better content elsewhere.
So what you need to do, in order to stop this
over a period of time, is to increase audience loyalty.
And you do that, through consistency.
Consistently meeting viewer's expectations.
Which brings us all the way back
to that return viewers graph.
You can use this as a line of audience expectation
or indeed satisfaction.
The higher it goes, the more in tune you are
with your existing audience.
The lower it goes, the less you understand
about your audience's needs.
Now this is to be expected.
You have a lot of figuring out to do
when it comes to understanding your audience.
And it takes time for your audience
to get to know you.
But over time, and we're talking most here,
if you're making data driven decisions,
your good days, and indeed your bad days,
will be way better than what they were before.
So at a channel level, this data,
is really interesting to look at to,
gauge the health of your audience loyalty.
But I also said at the time of the release
of this tool, that it would be really cool
to have this information at a video level.
And now, we have.
It's pretty easy to find on the content page
in the YouTube Studio,
go to the analytics for a video,
and then go to the audience tab,
at which point you will see the new
and return viewers for just that video.
Now, since most of the return views come in the first day,
I'm going to set the time period to the first 24 hours.
And this, quite frankly,
reveals some fascinating data.
First of all, I'm astonished at just
how little new viewers we get when we launch new videos.
We are pretty much relying exclusively
on people returning to our content.
Which means, as I've already said,
for the vidIQ channel, it is absolutely crucial
that we meet viewer's expectations.
I mean, no wonder small channels find it hard
to get discovered on YouTube these days.
When a channel of vidIQ size
is only able to attract 600 new viewers,
to a video with 20,000 total views.
Anyway, let's move on to these 15,000 return viewers.
Who are they?
Well, you can actually get some insight
into this by going back
to the Overview analytic screen
and looking at the traffic sources.
Again, some really interesting stuff here.
The data here is telling me that,
of those 15,000 return viewers,
about a third of them are subscribers
using subscriber tools,
such as the feed and notifications to watch this video.
Now, for you, return viewers, I will admit,
this is a data proven counter argument
to everything I've been saying for the last six months,
about Subscribers being an outdated concept on YouTube.
I'm sorry, I ever doubted you.
I'm sorry, I hurt you.
Will you forgive me?
But hang on, hang on.
We still have a huge number of return viewers
deciding to watch our content based on recommendations.
And this leads us to another critical insight.
If most of your return viewers,
irrespective of whether they are Subscribers,
returned to your content, based of recommendations,
well, that means that your content
is competing against everything else
that YouTube is recommending to that viewer.
(bell bleeps)
All of which means, your video topic,
your video title and your video from now
are absolutely crucial to meeting
that return viewers expectations.
And just in case you didn't know,
vidIQ has a tool in the Video editor page
that lets you compare your title and thumbnail
against other videos that already rank for a search term.
And you can see what your video would look like
on a YouTube homepage and even on a mobile device.
And this is all before you even publish the video.
So if you're asking the question,
does this video meet my viewers expectations?
This tool, can start to answer it
before you even press publish.
Now, if you're still watching at this point,
I'm going to assume that you're a data nerd just like me,
and you found those insights absolutely fascinating.
But that's just one of 900 plus videos
on the vidIQ channel.
Well, I'm not gonna go into every single one of them,
here are some of the other highlights
of what I've discovered so far.
This is an example of a video
that didn't perform very well for the channel,
both the return and new viewers in that first 24 hours
are half of what they usually would be.
This is a learning opportunity.
Upon reflection, I think the thumbnail
lacked a strong and clear message.
And I don't think anyone is passionate enough
to care about the wellbeing of YouTube SEO.
On the other hand, this video performed well above average,
for the channel with more return viewers coming back.
When I first designed the thumbnail,
I thought it was a little too simplistic,
but maybe that, combined with the title
really triggered the target audience
as well as teasing them with the "Try This!" wording.
There's a fear of missing out intrigue here.
What's also interesting,
is that this video had some extra legs
when it came to new viewers
a couple of days after it was published.
I think this is a reflection of a video
performing well enough for YouTube
to start testing it with brand new audiences.
And based off of a performance of a video,
I made this followup piece,
which also turned out to be a strong performer
for the channel.
All of this is clear evidence
that when you make data driven decisions,
you are more able to meet your audience's expectations.
Now, of course, it's not always about return viewers.
Sometimes the intent of a video is very different.
Take this one about copyright, for example.
It's not exactly a sexy topic for a YouTube growth video.
So it didn't get that many views to begin with,
but people always need help with this subjects
and that's where search comes into play.
It's why this video today,
is getting more new viewers than it did on day one.
And it's also why the view curve
is bending up rather than down.
I love it when this happens.
It's very hard to do considering
how competitive evergreen search topics are,
but when you get it right, mmh.
And if you want to see my facial expression,
when I make that noise, mmh.
Now of course,
when it comes to looking at the data
on your videos for your channel,
it's probably gonna differ quite a lot
from the vidIQ channel.
So let me share with you a couple of
weird and wonderful examples of that return viewers metric
from other channels on YouTube.
And yes, for you eagle-eyed viewers,
I am recording this bit out of sequence.
A member of the vidIQ community, JONK
who makes stickman animation,
has been growing pretty rapidly recently
and it's all thanks to a viral video he made about KSI.
Mmh, 300,000 new viewers, very tasty indeed.
But how do you continue to meet the expectations
of these new viewers?
Well, to be honest, that is a very hard thing to do.
At a channel level, JONK's followup content
to the viral success
has brought back some return viewers, but not many.
And that is often the curse of a viral video.
A huge audience discovered your content for one thing
But they're not necessarily loyal
to your channel in any way, shape or form.
In this circumstances you as a creator,
have a very short amount of time
to build that audience loyalty
and start meeting their expectations with future content.
But at the same time, you as a creator
lightly, don't want to be pigeonholed
as a person who just made that one video
and he's trying to milk it for all it's worth.
In JONK's case, he has doubled down on his viral moment
with very successful followed content.
But when he creates new videos
that don't match the video topic of his viral audience,
the views are a lot lower.
But we do have to put this all into perspective
because before JONK's viral moment,
views on his videos were typically in the hundreds
rather than the thousands.
Now, this next channel is a brilliant example
of knowing your exact target audience.
When your videos get twice
as many return viewers as subscribers,
that means viewers aren't relying
on any subscription tools at all.
They are almost subconsciously tuning in
to watch the channels videos,
whenever they are recommended.
And YouTube's recommendation system knows this
as proved by this statistic.
This is the perfect scenario for a creator
to find themselves in, because it means
YouTube knows exactly which viewers
to promote your content to, to guaranty views.
And yes, one day you'll learn a lot more
about that secret channel.
That's what I think is really powerful
about the return viewers metric.
It is tailor-made, bespoke to your channel
and your channel only.
I mean, I knew day to day that the vidIQ channel
gets a lot of views from new viewers
who are finding our content through search.
But what I didn't realize,
is just how many of you are loyal
to the vidIQ content and this community
with the day to day videos that we publish.
Every single one of you contributes to the data.
And through that data, we make our decisions on the channel.
And I think, over the course of 2021,
we started to provide even more value
that is more targeted to you the vidIQ family.
But of course, ultimately
you are the judge of all of us and we answer to you.
Oh, also the codeword for this video.
(bell beeps)