Pay attention because this tip is super important. Why? Because YouTube wants you to get as much Watch Time as possible in every single video that you make. For those who've never heard this term before, Watch Time is generally considered the most important metric on YouTube. Basically it is the physical number of minutes and hours your content is watched for by people on YouTube. But why is Watch Time more important than views?

Watch Time: Good for YouTube, Good for Video Creators

Let's take a look at it from this perspective. Views represent clicks, or visits, but they don't tell you for how long somebody is on the YouTube platform or on the mobile app. The more Watch Time YouTube has from its audience, the more ads they can sell to the audience, making more money for YouTube, and more money for the video creator. So it stands to reason that the more Watch Time you can create from your videos, the more YouTube is going to reward you, and share your content with more people. Win win win.

But also bear in mind that you don't have to monetize your content to benefit from this. The search and discovery engine is separate from the monetization engine. Let's do a simple example here. You've got a video with 1,000 views, with an average view duration of one minute. That gives you 1,000 minutes of Watch Time in total. But you've also got a video with 500 views, with five minutes of Watch Time, which gives you a total of 2,500 minutes of Watch Time. Which do you think has the better chance of doing well on YouTube in the long run? Yeah, it's probably video B.

YouTube have stated that when it comes to Watch Time, audience retention is hugely important, but there are a lot of ways to get more Watch Time, and that's what we're gonna explore right now.

Using YouTube Analytics to Confirm Watch Time Stats

Let's look at the numbers first. If you haven't already seen our 

, I recommend you watch that video at some point to help with navigating around these screens more confidently.

With that being said, on the Creator Studio dashboard, click on ‘Analytics’, and then at the top of the graphs, click on the ‘Interest Viewers’ tab. You should now see an average view duration box and if you click on this, it will show you a graph of on average how long your videos are watched for. This is useful from a channel perspective, and as we've already said, more is better.

But this graph doesn't take into account how long each individual video is. So to improve Watch Time, you really want to start by scrutinizing every single second of a single video. To do this, click on the ‘Videos’ link to the left, which lists all of your videos. Then choose a video you want to analyze. Click now on the analytics section, and on the first screen here, you should see this audience retention box.

Now, you can make a video an hour long if you want to, but if nobody's watching it after a single minute, that's going to send some pretty negative signals to YouTube. Audience retention is all about keeping that viewer interested throughout the entirety of your video. Keeping them informed, interested, intrigued, and entertained. And you want to try and get that audience retention to as close to 100% as possible. Generally speaking, that's very difficult to do. So a general benchmark is somewhere around about 50%. And this box will tell you all that, the total length of the video, and the average view duration converted into a percentage.

To really drill down into this data, you can click on the ‘See More’ button, and then watch the video to see where there are peaks and dips in your content. There's always loads of useful stuff you can glean from audience retention graphs, like why Audience increase or decreased at a certain point in the video.

Let's talk about how important video intros are. You are always going to have a sharp drop off in viewership as soon as the video starts. For some viewers, the content is just not going to click, and they will turn off instantly. And then there's gonna be another group of viewers who may stick around more maybe 15 or 30 seconds to try and determine whether this video delivers in some way from the thumbnail and the title. That's why there needs to be some sort of hook or payoff. A way to entice a viewer to invest a few more minutes into the video, and hopefully keep them engaged for the entirety of the video. You can look back at pretty much any video on vidIQ, and you'll see me trying to entertain, inform, or intrigue you in those first 15 seconds before you see the vidIQ splash screen. That is my attempt to get you to watch longer, and I think it works, generally speaking.

On educational videos, creators will give you the final result at the beginning of the video, and then the rest of the video is about how to get there. For compilations or stories, there may be an epic part of the video that's used at the very beginning intro, and you don't actually see that part until maybe four or five minutes into the actual video. It's kind of like teasing a story before you watch the beginning of it. So if you've not tried this before, experiment with a dedicated intro to your video, and try to keep it to 15 seconds or less. Oh, and your branded intro or bumper should be no longer than five seconds.

How to Keep the YouTube Viewer’s Attention with Pattern Interrupts

Because as you well know, the average audience attention span of a YouTube viewer can be pretty short. So how do you fix that? You do something called pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt is a change of pace, tone, and style - think of pattern interrupts as attention reset buttons. You still know what the videos about, but there's something new to look at on the screen

I try to have a pattern interrupt at least once every ten seconds, but other video creators do pattern interrupts every two or three seconds. Now, there is one huge drawback to the video creator when you use pattern interrupts, and that's editing. It adds hours to the process. So try not to go overboard, and start to watch video creators who operate in your space on YouTube with a critical eye to see if they adopt pattern interrupt strategies, and how often they do it. You should start to notice that the best video creators in your space adopt a certain style and tone through pattern interrupts that you should be at least aware of if you're not trying to follow in some way. Also, consider using B-roll in your video to keep the YouTube viewer watching and entertained. And if you’re going to try and cover many topics in a single video, at least tell the viewer in the title or the video intro, or do another dedicated video on that topic. Stay focused, edit ruthlessly.

Don’t Create Long Videos for the Sake of it

The most important currency on YouTube is time. You want as much Watch Time as possible, but your viewer wants to spend their time on YouTube as efficiently as possible. Just because YouTube states that Watch Time is one of its most important ranking factors, doesn't mean you should make longer videos to get more Watch Time. You're pandering too much to an algorithm, and doing a disservice to your audience.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Watch Time is one of YouTube's most important ranking metrics - but what is it and how do you increase Watch Time on your own YouTube videos and Channel?

YouTube Watch Time: The Secret Sauce to More YouTube Views and Subscribers

Welcome to the start of your future. Welcome to a world of self-discovery, creativity, influence, impact, stress (sometimes), fulfillment, and maybe even a career.

It's never too late to start a YouTube channel, but the longer you wait the harder it will be to grow. This video will help guide you through the reasons, the mindset, the strategies and the basic analytics of growing a YouTube channel from absolutely nothing.

 - Should I start a YouTube channel in 2019?

 - How to grow a channel with 0 views and 0 subscribers

 - How to grow your channel with a YouTube strategy

 - How to grow your channel by generating ideas

 - How to grow your channel by understanding analytics

Want to start and grow a YouTube channel in 2019? This is your complete starter guide!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: The Ultimate Guide!

All YouTube Analytics starts with impressions showing your thumbnails and titles. Make sure your impressions to views are always improving with great thumbnails.

You can find the impressions to views click through rate numbers by going to the new studio beta, clicking on the video, click analytics, then click reach users.

You want to aim for YouTube promoting your content for free by getting lots of watch time.

Watch the video above for all the details and 

don't forget to install vidIQ for free now!

Want to grow your channel faster? It's all about impressions to views and watch time.

How to Grow Your Channel Fast By Understanding Analytics!

In this simple tutorial, we show you how and answer some of the questions as to why and why you might not want to delete YouTube videos.

You will see 3 little dots next to your video.

A popup will appear to make sure you want to delete your video. Remember you cannot get these views, watchtime and enagement back if you delete it.

Normally we don't suggest deleting videos as you are going to loose your views, watchtime and social engagement. However if you have duplicate content or copyright material you should consider removing these if you apply for the YouTube partner program.

YouTube is in the process of creating a new Creator Studio for video creators and some of the basic functions have changed, one of them is how to delete a YouTube video.

How to Delete YouTube Videos In The New Creator Studio

Curious which analytics you should be focusing on in the coming months to help grow your channel? Look no further — here are the top 5 analytics to get you more views and subscribers on YouTube in 2019.

Note: In order to follow along you’ll need to access the new YouTube Studio beta. If you’re still on Creator Studio Classic, you'll see a big blue “YOUTUBE STUDIO BETA” link in the top-left-hand corner. Click there and you'll instantly see a radically different analytics page.

The first analytic we want to look at is click-through rate. Put simply, your click-through rate is the number of times somebody clicks on one of your thumbnails or titles from the total number of times it's been seen.

So if three people see your video and one of them chooses to watch it, that’s a click-through rate essentially of 33.3%.

In the YouTube Studio beta, you can see the impressions and click-through rates for the past 28 days by simply navigating to “Analytics” from the dashboard and then clicking on “Reviewers.”

You can also go to different cards in the YouTube analytics and look at a breakdown of click-through rates. So if I click on Top Videos, for example, it will list the click-through rate for individual videos as well.

Now if you’re wondering why you should care about your click-through rate, here are three key reasons:

Every single analytic from your YouTube channel trickles down from click-through rate. People have to actually click on your thumbnail to watch your content before you can gain traction with other analytics such as watchtime, subscribers, comments, and all the rest of that good stuff.

Viewers judge videos by their thumbnails just as readers judge books by their covers, so it's really important to have a good first impression. Your click-through rate represents intrigue — of topic, thumbnail or title. For example, recently we covered the subscriber rate of PewDiePie vs. T-Series. Because it was a very intriguing topic at the time, and we used very targeted keywords and colorful thumbnails, our click-through rate for that particular topic went through the roof.

An important to remember about click-through rate is it’s not an exact science. I often hear people say between 2% and 10% is a “good” click-through rate, but I think it’s better to focus simply on improving your click-through rate.

Click-through rates vary from video topic to video topic, and it's heavily influenced by where you are simply in the order of suggested videos and search pages. If you're at the top of a search page, you can have a terrible thumbnail but a high click-through rate simply because of the prime real estate.

Don't get too caught up comparing your click-through rate versus somebody else's. Look at your click-through rate, and aim to improve it one or two percentage points over 2019 — that will bring in a significant number of views.

Channel analytics can give you some insight into average view duration, but a more accurate approach is look at audience retention on individual videos.

To do this, click “Videos” along the left-hand nav. Click on the video that you want to investigate and you’ll see audience retention.

Mouse over the graph and you'll see the audience retention at a specific point in the video, or click on a point and then press play. Doing so will allow you to see the audience retention alongside the video in real-time, giving you clues to investigate drops and spikes in retention.

And if you’re thinking that watchtime is the ultimate analytic king on YouTube and not audience retention, consider that YouTube tends to favor content with more than 50% audience retention. So whether your videos are two minutes long, four minutes long or six minutes long, aim first to make your content better to improve audience retention, and then start to think about making longer videos if that's what you want to do with your content to get more watchtime.

Each individual video has likes and dislikes, and 

 has a funky little tool that turns these metrics into a Likes to Dislikes Ratio.

But what if you want this for your entire channel?

Well they do in the form of YouTube recommended content. When viewers watch your content and enjoy it, they generally watch for longer, and YouTube loves this.

When YouTube loves your content, they want to share it with more people. That means putting it on the homepage, Browse Features and the suggested videos on watch pages — and the more you can push this line into the orange, the more YouTube is doing all the hard work for you.

Rather than people having to search to find your content or find it through the subscription feeds, they're finding it in random places because YouTube wants to share your content with a wider audience.

So how do you manipulate this magic formula to get it to work for you? Engaging thumbnails, intriguing titles — which are then clicked onto — increased watchtime on your content and, as we mentioned, getting above 50% with your audience retention.

For example, take a look at vidIQ’s September analytics below. Notice the 2.5 million impressions, 27.8% of which came from YouTube recommending our content.

Now take a look at vidIQ’s analytics for October when the T-Series vs. PewDiePie subscriber rates was in full flow.

Look at the radical change here: 17 million impressions, and YouTube was recommending our content way more, especially on homepages.

We were feeding YouTube exactly what they wanted and so they responded by sharing it with a much wider audience.

I may be missing something here in the new analytics dashboard, but I can't find a good way to show subscribers gained from videos, so we're going old school here.

Navigate to Creator Studio Classic, click on “Subscribers” and then “YouTube watch page”. This will show you all the videos that are converting viewers into subscribers.

Since there is no analytic that tracks trust, tracking subscribers gained is the next best thing. Think about it, why else would someone subscribe to your channel unless they trust you — trust you to entertain, educate or emotionally impact you.

People who subscribe to your channel from a video watch page usually do it because they’ve experienced a light bulb moment — something that instinctively and instantly drives them to click that button.

 you can look at subs gained a lot quicker than through YouTube analytics through the subs gained column on our channel audit.

If you click on “View More”, you can see all of the videos that are driving viewers to turn into subscribers. It's almost like your trust column.

We also have click-through rate, audience retention, YouTube recommended content, and subscribers gained.

We said earlier that gaining subscribers through your videos is like building trust with your audience. Gaining comments, likes and dislikes through your videos is building engagement — another really important facet of YouTube.

Strictly speaking, YouTube doesn't track engagement rate, but the vidIQ channel audit tool does. Use it to see which videos are generating conversation or whether they're polarizing in terms of how many people react to it with likes versus dislikes.

Astonishingly here, we have one video with 68% engagement rate, but that's because we were having a little bit of fun with YouTube premieres.

In terms of engagement rates, we also want to look at the finer points as well. If we scroll down the channel audit page, we can look at how often the end screens are clicked on — you know, those boxes right at the end of videos.

As a final thought on engagement, don’t forget the Community tab if you have access to it.

Use it to ask your audience what video you should make next, collect general feedback or start a conversation. You might be surprised by the response. In fact, we’ve found that some of our posts are getting more feedback from the videos themselves.

All of these analytics are super important, but if you don’t actually do something with them then you’re missing the point. Remember: Doing the same thing over and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.

Our challenge to you is simple: Act on the data you’re getting from YouTube and 

 and good luck in growing your channel in 2019!

Video creators have access to A TON of analytics, but which ones should you prioritize to get more views and subscribers? Dive into the top 5 vidIQ-approved analytics and grow your YouTube channel fast.

How to Get More Views and Subscribers with YouTube Analytics

To kick off 2019, we've got 10 practical resolutions to help you get more views, more subscribers and ultimately grow your channel.

The YouTube channel banner is essentially an advertising billboard for your channel. Ensure it demonstrates to visitors:

What you do on your channel Why you do it Why you’re the person to do it (authority and passion)

Your YouTube channel banner should be consistent with the branding, colour and design of the video thumbnails. And don’t forget to make sure it’s mobile friendly, so the edges don’t get cut off.

2. Write a compelling channel description

The channel description in the YouTube About section is what visitors will read when they search and find your channel. Think about writing your channel description as if you were writing a tweet of 140 characters — people have very short attention spans, so it should be clear and concise.

Keep in mind, too, that when people first visit your channel, chances are they’re more interested in what’s in it for them. Avoid self-indulgent biographies and instead focus on what your channel can do for your audience. A simple way to check yourself is to search how many times “you” or “your” appears in the channel description. Take a peek at the example below from vidIQ’s About page:

Bonus points for applying the same principles to your video descriptions, too. Your audience can always read the first couple of lines, so make them count.

3. Develop and apply consistent design to everything

A proper style guide will ensure consistency across your entire channel and all the elements within it. Define your fonts, colors, logos and brand images, and keep them all in one place to apply to your channel art, thumbnails, video intros and even the lower thirds, like this one:

4. Make your channel welcoming to visitors

Think of your channel as the front room of your home or your place of business and you as the gracious host.

An effective way to create a welcoming channel to new visitors is to include a dedicated channel trailer or use a high-converting video as your channel trailer, sure to increase your subscriber count.

You should also consider creating a playlist that shows off your best content and use it to introduce your audience to your channel. Putting the most recent uploads playlist near the top will let your visitors know your channel is still active and posting on a consistent basis.

5. Engage your audience as much as possible

One of the mistakes many video creators make is to ask questions at the end of a video. By that time you've lost a significant portion of your audience — just take a look at your audience retention to see for yourself.

Asking your visitors a question at the beginning, the middle and the end of a video — maybe even including a voting poll as well — really will help keep your audience engaged along with the content.

On the bottom right corner of your video is your branding watermark, and it's a call to action for viewers to subscribe to your channel. In order for it to achieve its objective, it should say exactly what it does.

Rather than using your channel logo, instead use something that invites viewers to subscribe to your channel.

In the example above from the vidIQ channel, you’ll see a very simple ‘SUBSCRIBE’ button. Once we switched to this graphic, our click rate on this button increased more than 500% almost instantly, which you can see in the graph below.

, or for more information on how to create your own and set it up on YouTube watch our video,

 How to Add a YouTube Subscribe Button that Gets Results in 2018!

7. Reference your own related YouTube content

Did you notice what we did in that last resolution? We referenced our own related content to encourage the audience to stick around in the vidIQ YouTube universe.

Always plug your own content and directly reference it on screen. And remember, the more stupidly overenthusiastic, the better.

You work is not finished when you press publish. If your audience is taking the time to comment on your videos, respect their time and energy by replying to every single one.

If you get too many comments, block off an hour a day in your calendar for responding. You could even pin the best comments to your videos, or pin your own comments to continue the conversation in the comments section, like we’ve done in the example below.

If replying to every comment feels overwhelming, remind yourself that the comments section is where connections begin, which could evolve into collaborations, brand deals, friendships and more.

The YouTube Community tab is available to all channels with over 1,000 subscribers and can be a huge engagement opportunity if you know how to use it right. In fact, you’ll often find that a well-crafted question or voting poll gets as much engagement, if not more, than your videos.

For more information on how to use it, check out our dedicated video, 

How To Build a YouTube Audience Through The Community Tab!

This last resolution sounds really easy, but believe me, when you're programmed to say canned phrases like “That’s it for this one,” or “Hope you enjoyed the video,” or “Thanks for watching,” at the end of every single video, it can be a hard habit to drop.

As soon as you say things like that, the audience knows that the content has effectively finished and they leave the video in droves. Take a peek at your audience retention — you’ll likely see an immediate drop.

For your next video, I want to challenge you to scrap the canned phrases and instead promote related content or just do a hard finish.

What’s your number one YouTube resolution for 2019? Let us know on 

Whether you’re a fan of New Year’s resolutions or not, there’s always room for improvement when it comes to growing your YouTube channel.

How to Get More Views and Subscribers FAST on YouTube

The upload process can be a daunting process. You've got thumbnails, titles, tags, hashtags, cards, endscreens, translations, description and a whole lot more to consider.

Every day we all watch videos and think, well this video is missing this or that, no wonder it isn't doing well. We've come up with a list of 15 video upload tips to follow to help your YouTube video off to a flying start.

The upload process can be a daunting process in this video we show you how to properly upload videos to YouTube.

How to Properly Upload Videos to YouTube

How do you get your first 100 subscribers? We've got more than 10 tips and suggestions to help you get there. Getting started on YouTube and grinding up to 100 subscribers can feel like the hardest hurdle to overcome. Where do you start with so much to think about? We've come up with some awesome suggestions to help kick-start your channel and think more like a YouTuber and less like someone chucking videos randomly onto the internet!

Getting started on YouTube and grinding up to 100 subscribers can feel like the hardest hurdle to overcome.

How to Get 100 YouTube Subscribers FAST: Creator Tips for Success

Here are 10 ways to reach the largest audience with the most impact:

Promote in the first 24 hours to get velocity or what we like to call View Per Hour

Share a playlist link, not a video link so that people can watch more of your videos

Share on other social media platforms like Linkedin and Facebook groups

Upload videos to Facebook directly using our vidIQ tool

Use your email list to push your YouTube channel

Use Incase you missed it posts on social platforms to remind people to watch

You've made a great YouTube video, now you need to share it.

10 Awesome Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos for FREE

So you can monetize your content. That's a question being asked by many video creators. So here's 10 practical tips you can start using today to help grow your channel!

Be visual and exciting when asking people to subscribe

Use the branding watermark using a red subscribe button

Put the subscribe button in the endscreen

When sharing your channel use the auto subscribe URL

Pin a subscribe link to the top of your comments

Add vaule to other channels to increase your audience

Make sure your channel page is optimized with a great banner, trailer and sections

How to get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube so you can monetize your content: that's a question being asked by many video creators. So here are 10 practical tips you can start using today to help grow your channel!

How to Get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube: Creator Tips

This video breaks down how to get 4000 hours of watch time on YouTube:

Breakdown this into 20,000 minutes a month

Accpet that it takes a long time to grow on YouTube

Use the vidIQ real time stats bar to see how your doing

You now need 4000 hours of watch time and 1000 subscribers to qualify for monetization on YouTube.

Posts Written By Carla Marshall