10 Ways to Tell What’s Working on your YouTube Channel (so you can grow faster!) | Ep. 8

With thousands of metrics in your YouTube analytics… how do you know what’s actually working on your channel right now? It’s important to figure it out because when you know what’s working, you know what to double down on!

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Transcript

Meredith  0:00  
I think we all know by now that it's basically impossible to grow your audience on YouTube, if you're completely blind to what's working on your channel right now. Because when you know what's causing your channel to grow, getting views, subscribers, leads, and revenue, then you know what to double down on on. But there are 1000s of metrics inside of your YouTube analytics Have you looked? It's a lot? How do you know what's working? What are the numbers that you should be looking at? And what are the metrics outside of YouTube that can tell you whether your YouTube strategy if you even have one is paying off for you? Let's talk about it here on episode number eight of the video brand infusion podcast. My name is Meredith Marsh, and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business for consistent revenue without constantly selling or waiting for your possible future clients and customers did accidentally stumble on your sales page. And I totally get the overwhelm of looking at your YouTube analytics. Because sometimes it seems like you open it up on your phone or your desktop. And even if you know what to look at, like, what numbers are important, if it's not looking good. If it looks like things aren't working well, then it's kind of deflating. And so it's like, no wonder, I don't want to look at my analytics. If every time I open it up, it's not giving me good news, right. But I think it's a really dangerous trap to fall into this, like recurring habit recurring thought of like my channels not working, it's not growing, something is broken, I need to fix it. Because the reality is, if you're uploading videos at all, you probably have some numbers, some metrics in there that are actually working really well for you. And if you don't know what they are, or you don't know where to find them, then you would never know what to double down on to make your channel grow faster. So we want to point out some green flags for you to find on your channel as opposed to red flags. And once I started putting my notes for this episode together, I realized that my next episode is probably going to have to be like, how to fix the things that you find that aren't green flags, and do actually need to be fixed. So make sure you follow me here for that episode. And for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to use some screenshots from the YouTube Studio app on my phone to show you what you can look for through the app in your phone as well. And if you're listening to the audio version of this, I promise it'll be simple. And you can follow along or you can come over to YouTube and watch the video version. So I've got 10 very specific metrics in areas that I want you to look at inside of your YouTube analytics. The first one is just the first thing that you see in your analytics, which is YouTube is actually telling you what's working. YouTube has in the YouTube studio, where it shows you your views your watch time your subscribers your estimated revenue, if your channel is monetized, it gives you little green arrows if it thinks you're doing pretty much as good as normal, it'll give you a down arrow, which is usually gray if that particular metric is doing worse than normal, and it will give you a field in green up arrow if it's doing better than normal. The key word here is compared to your own metrics. That's the only thing that you can really compare your metrics to that makes sense to versus what you know you see metrics on somebody else's channel or something your job is really only ever to improve on your own metrics. So I just want to point this out number one that YouTube does tell you if things are working, or not working or doing like about as good as you would expect in number two still on the first page of the YouTube Studio app but down a little bit. You have what YouTube calls your latest published content. And this can be problematic for your mental health if you're not careful the lucky me as I'm recording this episode, my screenshots shows that my latest video is doing very well. I have green up arrows for my views, my impressions, click through rate, my average view duration. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this particular video in just a moment. But the reason why the latest published video performance box can be problematic is because if it doesn't look good if you're getting gray down The arrows, then it doesn't feel good, it does not feel good to see that, especially when you've put so much time and effort into creating your content, and you take the time to upload it. And to see that the numbers are down compared to your own, like what's normal for your channel. It's very deflating. But there could be any number of reasons why that's happening. And a lot of times, we look at that box, and we see the numbers and we make some kind of a judgement on whether this video was good or bad. And then we take it one step further and make a judgment on whether we are a good or bad content creator. And that's not good, because you're not looking at all of the numbers, which means you're not even really looking at the whole story, you're only just looking at some numbers from the latest video that you published. And then making those numbers mean something. Now there is one metric in this latest performance box that you can do something about after your video is published. But I'm going to talk about that in the very next episode. But not everything that you look for on your channel to see if things are going well. And what's working is a number. So let me talk about comments. Everyone loves to get comments, positive comments, their YouTube videos, it's great to have that engagement. It's even better. When the comments that people leave are long. They're people who are adding to the conversation, they're adding value to your content. They're hearing what you say, and then saying, Yeah, me too. Here's my situation, here's my experience. And they're not just doing that, so that you see the comment there, they're adding to your content or adding value to your content as a whole. So that other people who are watching your video can chime in. And it just makes the whole like community engagement experience on YouTube. So much better. So we always appreciate getting a longer comment from people on my videos, because I appreciate the fact that you take the time to leave a comment and leave details and and tell me your experience or your struggle. Because if you didn't care at all about anything that I said in the video, you would just leave, the fact that you cared enough to leave a comment means that the content I created is resonating with you. So sometimes I publish a video and I get a lot of long comments. And I know that the content I created is resonating with my audience, regardless of whatever the numbers say the views and the click through rate and the the watch time and the subscribers gained. It's these long comments, that makes me know that the content I created is is resonating. And that's ultimately what I want to have happen. On my channel. It's not just gaining subscribers, it's also connecting and growing a community. And I'll tell you this video that I recently published that's doing very well, numbers wise, I got some good long, juicy comments from my core audience as soon as the video was published, or you know, that day within the first half, half day, eight hours, 10 hours or so. And then the video has continued to do very well, numbers wise, it's gaining more traction, than would typically be considered, you know, average for my channel, which is great. I've been checking my analytics, checking that latest video performance box and seeing the numbers continually go up. But you know, what hasn't been going up is the number of comments. So it's like I got comments from my initial core audience. Great. Love you guys. Thank you so much. And then YouTube got my video out in front of more people that weren't necessarily my core audience. They weren't people who may be even have ever heard of me or watched a video from me before ever. There really isn't that big of a connection.

Meredith  9:24  
And I stopped getting comments, although I did get one just before recording this that says glad YouTube recommended this one in my feed. Excellent advice. Thanks for the video. So I know it is getting out in front of the people that I want it to get out in front of. But if I only ever looked at the actual numbers, the views and all that stuff, I would be missing out on the ultimate goal which is connecting with my audience. So if you're getting comments on your videos, that's a green flag. If you're getting comments that say thank you. That's another green flag you You're creating content that's useful and valuable, and people appreciate it enough to leave a comment thanking you for it. If you're getting comments that are long paragraphs and very detailed, then you know for sure that the content you're creating is resonating with your core audience. Those are all green flags of varying degrees. Now let's talk about a metric that's not even on YouTube at all. That helps you know that what you're doing on YouTube is working. So if you are building your email list, and you're using YouTube, to build your email list, then all you have to do is go to your email list and see if people are downloading your lead magnets and opting into your freebies, to know that what you're doing on YouTube is working. So it doesn't matter how many views and how many subscribers or any of that if your ultimate goal is to get people to your list, then forget about the YouTube metrics, just look at our people opting in to your list. Now I use ConvertKit for my email marketing, and it's a little tricky to figure out like, Are there are certain videos that are helping grow the list more than others. If you want to be real data nerdy about it, you could probably track this in some way with Google Analytics and UTM codes and things like that, but it will show you that your leads are coming from YouTube. If they are in fact coming from YouTube, it's just hard to track, like which video on YouTube, where are they coming from number five back inside of your YouTube analytics, if you go to your analytics tab inside of your app, and it's going to give you your views, if you slide over it gives you watch time, you have to have views in order for YouTube to work for you. And the it's like the more views you have, the more views you're going to have, which I know it sounds silly, what came first the chicken or the egg, you have to have views in order to have views. It's circular. But I sometimes like to click through that views graph. And then I can filter between looking at the last 28 days, or the last 90 days or even the last 365 days. And you want to see that your views are increasing, because you're adding content to the platform. So your older videos are going to keep getting views, ideally. And you're adding new videos to the platform, which are also going to get views. And so ideally, you're increasing your views and your watch time over time because you're adding content to the platform. And so the more content you have on the platform, theoretically, the more people that your content is going to be in front of him, the more views you're going to have. So if you look at your views graph, and it's going up or it's steady, or it's on, you know, some kind of little incline, that's a green flag. And if you have a video that kind of pops off more than normal, it's going to mess up your whole graph. Because you will probably and I'm not just talking about like going viral, you know, like getting hundreds of 1000s or millions of views when you normally only get like in the hundreds or low 1000s I'm talking about, you know, something that really kind of takes off. Last summer had a video that like normally I would get, you know, three, four or 500 views in the first day or so. And I had a video that had like 1000, and then it had 5000 and then it had 10,000. And then it had 15,000 in like the first week. And I was like holy crap, like what is happening, that spike happened and then the views stayed up. That video kept getting out to new people and new people and new people. And then slowly it tapered off after a while. And so I have this big spike. If I look at the last 365 days, I have this big spike. And then and then there's a dip and it comes back down to normal but when you're in the dip, and you go and you check your analytics, it hurts your heart a little bit. So it's a good to zoom out. I like to look at the last 90 days rather than only looking at like the last week or so because they're everything is up and down. It's a it's a fluctuation but generally you want to see your views at least staying the same, but really just a little bit of an incline. As you add more content to your channel, but one of my favorite places to look in YouTube Analytics. And actually like, pretty much anytime I have a new client or new customer, or anyone who wants me to do a deep dive on their analytics inside of my membership, this is one of the first places that I go in your analytics. Look at your top 10 videos. And it's going to be telling you by default your top 10 videos in the last 28 days, I like to zoom out to 90 So I have a bigger picture. But what do you want to look here in your top 10 videos to know that your channel is doing really well, like algorithmically the health of your channel is doing well. If your top 10 videos are aligned with what your current video videos are about, and who they are for is the audience that you're trying to reach and attract and grow with your new content. Pretty much the same audience that's coming in through these top videos on your channel. If they are, that's great, because these top 10 videos are the videos that are getting the most eyeballs to your content. So the eyeballs coming in the viewers with their eyeballs are coming in through these top 10 videos consistently on autopilot all the time. And so when you have new content, or more accurately the next time those viewers open up YouTube, and YouTube knows that they watched one of your videos, top 10 videos, YouTube is going to try to show them some of your newer content. And when you publish a new video, YouTube might try to put that on their homepage and say, Hey, would you like to watch this. And so if they're not aligned, they're not going to click your new stuff, they're not going to they're not going to be interested. And that's going to send a negative signal to YouTube that your new content is not that interesting, because it's trying to show it to your audience. And what it thinks is your audience is not interested. So the video must not be good, the content must not be good. And then you're going to not like your numbers when you open your analytics and your channels not gonna grow. Another thing I like to see inside of that top 10 list is how recent how new are the videos that are in the top 10 list. For example, during the pandemic, I had some videos about like zoom and recording yourself and your screen at the same time. That just we're just getting tons of views. And they continued getting tons of views and tons of views and tons of views. And then early 2023, I'm looking at my top 10 list and seeing there was really only one fairly recent video in my top 10 list and the other ones were like three years old. And that's okay, because the content was still attracting the right people to my channel, like, that's fine. That's great, that's wonderful. But what I like to see is when a newer video from the last, you know, six months, three months, creeps its way up into that top 10 then I know that the new content I'm creating is reaching more of the right people more of the audience that I want to have on my channel, if the content on your top 10 list doesn't really match the audience that you're trying to attract. We're gonna have to talk about that in the next episode. Because there are some things that you can do and change and tweak. We'll get into it,

Meredith  18:48  
I promise. Number seven, what I want you to look at is go into your actual content inside of the YouTube Studio app, find not your most recent video, it should be something that you published at least three days ago, what I want to do is click on the analytics. And now you're looking at your metrics just for this one specific video, you're going to hit the video performance box. And what you're going to see is you're now looking at your metrics for just that one video instead of the metrics for your whole entire channel. And what you want to do is come down to audience retention on this page. And this is another one of those metrics that can hurt your heart a little bit. When you see that the time and effort you put into creating a video and you only have people watching on average, like 10% of the way through it or 20% And you're probably going to ask me I know what you're thinking like, how what percentage should we be shooting for here, Meredith? And what I always hear people say is shoot for 50 percent retention. So you want like on average, people are watching at least half the video that's considered good. I will tell you, for me personally, it's really difficult to get 50% retention. And this is why it's so important to look at a bunch of numbers that paint this bigger picture that tell you a more detailed, more accurate story of how your channel is doing and how your your videos are doing, than just looking at your latest performance box or just only zeroing in on one metric. Now back to your analytics, if we come over to audience, you're going to see this metric of returning viewer. So number eight, take a look at are the people who are watching your videos, Returning viewers, or new viewers. And this is my least favorite metric to look at. Because I have more new viewers than Returning viewers. And you might think that's great. You're getting new people on your channel, that's wonderful, Meredith. But like ultimately I, I would rather have a core audience that is really driving the views on my channel, because then I know like that's a sign that the content I'm creating resonates with a core audience of people. And I think over the years, I mean, this is my ninth year on YouTube, I've changed directions here. And there, I did an actual pivot a few years ago, that were really kind of like, I lost momentum. But also I still have people, I have subscribers on my channel who came through content that I don't really talk about anymore. And it's not like, completely different. It's not a completely different niche. But it's different enough that the content I create is probably not interested, interesting to them. So even if YouTube does put it on their homepage, or get in front of them, somehow they're probably not clicking on it. And so it makes total sense to me why I have more newer viewers than Returning viewers. But ideally, in an ideal world, if you started from scratch right now today, you would want to see the opposite, you would want to see that the content you're creating is like perfectly aligned, and perfectly resonating with your existing subscribers your existing audience, so that you get the most traction when you upload it, which then helps it get out to new people, more people. Another metric that I like to look at is the old favorite subscribers, are you gaining subscribers. And if you click through on this, it'll tell you how many subscribers you're gaining from your top content. And a lot of this makes sense. Over time, your contents reaching more people, new people, and those people are hitting that subscribe button. So I've talked before about how like your number of subscribers really does not have much of an effect on your success with YouTube or like your ability to generate revenue with YouTube. But I think there is an aspect of, you know, for people who have at least like 1000 subscribers, I feel like when you see a channel that has at least 1000 subscribers as a new viewer, you feel like they're a little bit more legit. Like they know, they know what they're doing. They've showed up enough times that people have hit subscribe. And it's you know that they're not just like a flash in the pan or the this is just some random channel, of course, we want to have subscribers. It's it's social proof, right? But my videos have been doing very well. Lately on my channel. Metrics wise, I've been very happy with the views and the click through rates and the watch time, but yet my subscriber count is showing a down arrow. So again, you can't just look at one number. And that's probably the number that you zero in on when you open up your analytics, like are my subscribers up or down? If I only looked at that, I would look at my channel now and be like, Oh my gosh, like what is happening? My subscriber count is down. And I don't I don't see it like that. I don't feel that way. Because I'm looking at all of these other success metrics. And lastly, number 10. You know, I have to mention this if you are creating YouTube content, not only to grow your audience, but also to generate revenue. And you also have to look at are you generating revenue with your YouTube content? If your channel is monetized with ads like yes, we can look at that. My ad revenue It was like a fraction of my actual business revenue. And so I don't even really hardly pay any attention to that number. But if you're bringing in leads, and you look at your your leads coming in from YouTube, then also take a look at your sales, see if you can tie your sales to your YouTube content, and start measuring that to see if your strategy on YouTube is paying off for you. And if it's not, then I would recommend setting up a simple, set it and forget it YouTube funnel. I've talked about this quite a few times now on this podcast. And if you want to see how a YouTube funnel works, if you want to see it in action, if you want to see how mine is set up and how you can set it up for yourself. I covered that in episode one of this podcast. And that way you can create content that not only grows your audience, but also attracts your ideal customers so that your course your programs, your services, your your book even can essentially sell itself with the algorithm like fueling it. So if you haven't mapped out your own YouTube funnel yet, go back to Episode One, where I cover all of the details of that and in the very next episode of this podcast, I'm going to cover how to fix your channel if it looks like everything is broken. I'll probably refine that title a little bit but I hope to see you there