Recreating YouTube Success by Understanding Analytics: TubeTalk Episode 158

Understanding your YouTube analytics is the first to step to creating content that drives views and subscriber growth. In this episode of TubeTalk we discuss Audience Retention, how to end your video, and why buying views is a really, really terrible idea.

Many YouTubers have had that one successful video that has outperformed all others, and a deep-dive into your analytics can uncover the secrets to your most-viewed content. In this episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast, we show you what metrics to look out for, what you should be focusing on, and how you can replicate success across your channel.

We’re joined by Dane Golden, CEO of HEY.com, and he’s all about helping businesses get more value from their video marketing efforts. Dane is the founder of the TubeTalk podcast, and he's also been a vidIQ user since Day 1. He’s also a proud vidIQ affiliate! Click on the link above or download the TubeTalk podcast from the following:

If you have followed all the best practices for creating a great video, like giving it a great title and a compelling thumbnail, it should perform as well as any other you have uploaded. But we all know that’s not the case - some videos underperform and it pays to understand exactly why. In this podcast we take a look at:

  • Understanding Audience Retention
  • The value of Relative Audience Retention
  • Optimizing Thumbnails for a good click through rate
  • Using the right language to end your video
  • How to stop losing subscribers
  • Leveraging traffic sources for views & content ideas
  • Why buying YouTube views is a really, really terrible idea

Understanding Audience Retention for YouTube Success

Just one of the topics covered in this TubeTalk podcast is Audience Retention. Dane confirms that a good way to look at the audience retention metric is to ask “how fast do people want to leave this video?" because in many videos it's very fast! He divides audience retention into three parts:

The intro and hook: How well does your intro and hook correspond with what you're doing in the thumbnail and title? If there is a disconnect between what you’ve promised and what you actually deliver your audience retention can drop very fast. For instance, if your thumbnail and title promises a video about ice cream but you actually focus on pizza your audience is not going to stick around (or come back).

The middle part: This really is the bulk of the video where you should be engaging your viewers after the initial premise, keeping them interested and continuing to add value.

The end part (including the endscreen): Did you convince your viewers to stay to the very end? Getting them to click on your end screen can really improve not just the ranking of that video, but the channel overall. You want to keep them watching as long as possible, and convince them to convince them to click and watch another video. If you can get them to watch to the end and get them to watch your next video, that's a very powerful signal for YouTube Watch Time.

Looking at each of these sections independently can really help you understand how your content appeals to your audience. A lot of creators focused on the intro and the hook, but should take into consideration all three parts.

If you're a marketer and want to out more about how to promote your business on YouTube using high value, low cost, helpful how-to videos, you can watch Dane and HEY.com on YouTube. Also he interviews the top video marketing experts on the "Video Marketing Value Podcast." And he's huge on LinkedIn, so follow him there as well.

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