How to evaluate your YouTube Channel Performance

YouTube Channel Performance

Best practices to evaluate your YouTube Channel Performance. Right now, it seems like everybody wants to be a YouTuber. It’s a desirable career, with fruitful outcomes when performed right. As you upload more and more, it can be challenging to decide whether your efforts are benefiting you, or if you need to try a different strategy.

This is especially true if you only focus on various metrics and ignore perhaps more important ones.

Below, we’ve shared some of the best ways to measure your performance, which will also improve your YouTube analytics.

These are ways to ultimately enhance your current strategies and measure your YouTube performance in much greater detail.

Total Views

Of course, when you upload a video into a YouTube channel, your main focus is on views. However, you want to go a little deeper into the views you have.

Your views total will showcase any notable changes, and correlate them to the content that you upload. Ask yourself, why did one video receive so many more likes than the other?

You shouldn’t just aim for a set amount of views every time. You should always be considering new ways to reach new audiences, and consider what you can do differently.

For instance, did a video that you shared on all your social media platforms gain a considerable amount more views than one which you kept under the radar?

Did you upload a video that contributed to a trending topic? How many views did that video get?

Always look into why your videos got the views that it did. Good or bad. This way, you can contemplate what you can do differently, and what you extend from.

YouTube Channel Subscriber count

Another fundamental way to measure youtube channel performance is through subscribers.

Your subscriber count reflects how many people are physically subscribed to your channel. However, this metric isn’t considered that necessary. The algorithm of YouTube means that you don’t have to subscribe to be recommended specific videos.

Also, just because people are subscribed to your YouTube channel, that doesn’t automatically mean that they will engage or view your videos. Services that provide YouTube real-time analytics can give you an in-depth understanding of what engages your followers.

It shouldn’t be your primary focus. However, encouraging your audience to subscribe to your channel and turn on notifications could benefit you greatly. This way, there is more of a chance that your video will be viewed and shared.

Though subscriber count isn’t the most important thing, it is still a great way to evaluate your performance.

Sidenote: also look at how many people are unsubscribing from your channel, and why this may be the case.

Likes and Dislikes

YouTube is a little different from other platforms as it offers a dislike button. This is quite a daunting feature, but it can help you.

Likes are a great metric to track, as it shows the kind of videos that people love seeing. If your viewer loved the video, they give it a thumbs up.

That being said, YouTube users don’t often like or dislike any videos. It’s incredibly fast-paced, and many viewers don’t interact at all. This is especially true with YouTube’s automatic play feature.

Dislikes are, in some cases, a little more personal. Most people will click dislike if the video is something that they genuinely do not appreciate.

Watching the average likes and dislikes per video is a great way to check out the content your producing is something that your audience wants to watch.

Interaction per video

The above are the primary metrics that you can use to track the progress of your YouTube Channel. These are easy to look at and are great ways to get an essential insight into your performance.

However, after that, you have to dive into metrics that are a little more advanced. Especially if you’re trying to create a complex YouTube strategy. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to track the interactions that each video you upload gets.

It’s these metrics that (most) accurately depict how your audience perceived the video that you uploaded. Remember, interactions can be positive or negative – which is something to consider when tracking interactions.

For instance, your video may receive more interactions than usual, but if they’re negative – it isn’t advantageous to you.

The next step, in regards to interactions, is to consider why they interacted in the way that they did. As with all insights, you should identify the statistics, and then how and why they occurred.

YouTube Channel Performance Traffic sources

This will help you to discover how people are finding your video. It’s a great metric to track, and you can even dig deeper into the specific websites that are bringing traffic to your videos. Many websites will be your efforts.

For instance, sharing your content on social media and your blog will bring in views from those sites. However, in some cases, people will share or backlink to your video – which can be interesting to see when you’re tracking your performance.

Traffic sources are often overlooked by YouTube users, and that can be a big mistake.

Using these metrics helps us to determine what works well for us, and what doesn’t work so well. It also helps us to decide which social media efforts can be improved.

When you track your youtube channel performance, the main goal is to see where improvements can be made by using YouTube real-time analytics.

The main questions you should ask yourself are:

a) How much YouTube search traffic does your video receive?

b) How much traffic do you receive from external websites?

c) How much traffic do you receive from your social media posts?

If external website traffic is high, you may want to consider writing guest articles. If it’s low from social media, you could consider a different strategy.

Of course, this is considered a part of your youtube channel performance.

Metrics by Country

This is when it starts to get a little more interesting. When you evaluate the geographical location of your viewers and subscribers; and monitor how those individuals interact with your videos. This can be especially beneficial to brands that run different campaigns in different locations.

If you upload different videos for different countries, you can reflect on how well these differences work. It can help you to understand your market easier, and make necessary changes.

Another use for this metric is that you can identify which countries are interacting the best with your content – which you can then target more in the future. This is specifically beneficial for those that are trying to create a career from YouTube.

You can also track how many subscribers you gained or lost per country, alongside the positive and negative interactions you had in these locations. From this, you can decipher any cultural differences and issues that you need to face.

It would be extremely beneficial to you to spend a little bit more time understanding all the correlations between these metrics. I will be sure to help you with future campaigns and videos.

It may not be what people consider when tracking metrics, but it’s certainly something you shouldn’t ignore.

Playback locations

Have you heard about playback locations? This metric covers, “Where are people watching your videos?”

Potential playback locations can be on external apps or Facebook. Discovering these opens you up to opportunities regarding partnerships and unique places to embed your videos.

It’s always much more accessible to reach out to people that are already using your videos, in comparison to those who may not know anything about you.

Again, it’s a necessary metric if you’re trying to make a career out of your YouTube passion. Often, the people using your videos are journalists, bloggers, or website owners.

They may love your product or are fans of your content. Either way, they will be likely to use your videos in the future and would be much more open to a paid partnership or sponsorship deals.

YouTube Channel Play Rate

Play rate is defined as the percentage of page visitors who clicked play and began watching your video.

The play rate metric is a great way to measure how successful it is at enticing visitors to watch your video. This can be determined by the thumbnail picture, the headline, or the topic. If you’re aiming for a certain percentage of your target audience to physically click the play button, this is absolutely the metric to look out for.

If your play rate metric is a little low, and you’re looking for ways to increase this performance, below are a few suggestions to increase the pay rate:

Increase the size of your video embed on a website. A tiny little video isn’t enticing at all.
Choose a more eye-catching thumbnail. Include relevant products or people, as this can help massively.
Change the copy on the video
Move your video to different pages on your website. Make sure it’s relevant, and there’s no reason why people wouldn’t want to click on it.

Of course, it’s not all about the attractiveness or the video; sometimes, the content will determine the play rate. For instance, a video that broadly appears to everyone in your target audience will likely have a higher play rate than a high niche, supplemental video.

It’s just a fact – not all videos have equal play rates.

Social Sharing Metric

Social media plays such a huge role in our lives now, which is precisely why the social sharing metric is so important. Chances are, you’ll probably be highly familiar with this metric. Social sharing refers to how much people are sharing your video across their social channels.

Many YouTube users don’t believe this means much. However, social sharing ultimately creates more views on your video and increases the reach of your content.

It’s also a great measure of just how appealing your video is to your target audience. If they’re sharing it with their peers, it is a great video for them.

As you’ll know, the more people share your video with others, the greater the awareness this brings to your business or brand.

If your goal, when creating videos it to reach the broadest possible audience, social sharing is one of the best ways to measure your performance. Asking your viewers to share your content, make it easy to be shared, and create something topical and emotional will help with this.

Don’t just pay attention to the number of shares or retweets. It’s also essential that you track the comments, and how positive or negative these are.

YouTube Channel Performance CTR

One more metric that should be considered is the Click-through rate (CTR).

This useful metric will help you track the performance of your YouTube videos. This metric will show how successful your video is at encouraging viewers to take action.

Try placing your call to action at different places in the video, and make sure they are highly relevant to the content which is in your video.

Calls-to-action is a pretty complex component of a good CTR. Consider writing your own if you’re versed or getting the best writing help from online services.

Conclusion

These metrics and tactics will help you track your performance. These metrics will help you measure the success of your video content, but there are tonnes of others that you can dive into.

Remember, every video is unique, and depending on your brand and goals, your metrics will mean something entirely different for you than another YouTuber.

Tracking your performance will help you make necessary improvements, and find out the best ways to reach new audiences, and elevate your videos.

Above all, remember to always learn from these metrics. Regardless of if they’re good or bad.

Author’s bio.

Daniela McVicker is a blogger with rich experience in writing about UX design, content planning, and digital marketing. Currently, she is the chief contributor at RatedbyStudents she helps individuals and organizations improve their web content writing, design, and planning skills. Her posts are always packed with examples and actionable content that readers can put straight into the action.