YouTube has approximately 245 million active users in the United States.
As a business owner, you want to connect with as many of these users as possible. However, you can’t know how your channel is doing if you don’t track the right metrics and pay attention to how your performance changes over time.
This post breaks down ten essential YouTube metrics to monitor and explains why they’re vital to your brand’s success.
1. Subscribers
Your subscriber count is one of the most essential YouTube metrics to track.
These people like your content enough to subscribe to your channel and ensure they don’t miss your future videos. If your subscriber count consistently goes up, that’s a sign that your audience is growing and your content is resonating with more people.
Pay attention to specific videos that increase your subscriber count, too.
For example, if you gain lots of new subscribers after publishing a how-to video, that suggests that your audience likes that type of content. You’ll then know to create more videos like that in the future.
2. Most Popular Videos
Similarly, you should also pay attention to the most popular videos on your website.
Look at the top five to ten videos (based on views and engagement). The videos that make up this list will provide valuable insight into your audience’s preferences.
Keep these videos in mind so you can make more informed decisions about the content you’ll produce in the future.
You don’t have to play guessing games with your digital marketing strategy when you monitor the right metrics. Instead, you can create and share videos that people genuinely want to see.
3. Impressions
The impressions metric tells you the number of times viewers saw your video thumbnail on YouTube (impressions on other websites and apps don’t count).
Remember that impressions are different from video views. An impression just means that someone saw your video thumbnail. It doesn’t necessarily mean they clicked on the video and watched it, though.
YouTube Analytics will tell you how many impressions your videos get. It’ll also let you know the percentage of impressions that came from YouTube recommendations. You can use this information to understand what kind of content gets picked up by the YouTube algorithm.
4. Views
Along with impressions, you should also monitor the number of views your YouTube videos get.
Ideally, the number of views you receive should increase with each video you publish. If you don’t notice consistent increases, that might be a sign that you need to adjust your content to make it more appealing to your audience.
5. Returning and Unique Viewers
Views matter, of course. However, you should also take note of the number of returning and unique viewers your YouTube channel receives.
The returning viewers metric lets you know how many people are returning to your channel and continuing to consume your content. It helps you better understand your loyal followers.
The unique viewers metric tells you how many new viewers each video gets.
Suppose you notice that you aren’t receiving many new viewers. That could signal that you’re relying too heavily on your existing audience and need to invest more time/resources in acquiring new viewers.
6. Traffic Sources
Monitoring traffic sources helps you see where people are coming from to watch your YouTube videos.
For example, was the video linked on another website? Was it recommended based on a YouTube search?
The more you know about your YouTube traffic sources, the easier it is to understand your audience, whether your content is being picked up by YouTube’s algorithms, etc. You can then use this information to further optimize your content strategy.
7. YouTube Watch Time
As the name suggests, the watch time metric tells you how long people spend watching your videos (on average).
It’s easy to get hung up on the number of views your videos receive. However, watch time matters just as much, if not more.
If you get thousands of views, but they only last a few seconds, that’s not great for your channel, is it?
Take note of the average watch time for your videos and consider how it changes based on the types of videos you share. If people spend more time watching one kind of video over another, you’ll know to create more videos like the first one.
8. YouTube Engagement
“Engagement” refers to various actions that people take to engage with your YouTube content. It includes likes, dislikes, comments, and shares.
Understandably, it’s best to receive a higher number of likes compared to dislikes. The more likes a video gets, the easier it is to see that your audience wants more of that style.
Comments (the number of comments you receive and the specific content of the comments) can also provide valuable insight into your content and help you optimize it in the future.
As for shares, that also helps you understand the types of content your audience enjoys the most. After all, if someone chooses to share a video on another platform, they likely got some kind of value from it.
9. YouTube Audience Demographics
It’s also helpful to learn about your audience and the characteristics your audience members share.
YouTube's analytics lets you track basic viewer demographics like age, gender, and geography.
Within these demographics, you can also monitor additional metrics.
For example, the geography report shows views, view duration, and watch time per region. You can use this information to see where in the world you have the largest and most engaged audience.
The age and gender report also provides insight into views and watch time hours.
10. Revenue
If your YouTube channel is monetized, you’ll naturally want to keep track of the amount of revenue it generates. YouTube's analytics allows you to track revenue per mile, or the amount of income you earn for every thousand viewers, as well as your top-earning videos and estimated monthly revenue.
Monitoring revenue-related metrics will help you understand the average return on investment you’re getting from your YouTube videos. It can also help you decide whether or not you want to invest more time and resources in YouTube moving forward.
YouTube and DashboardFox: The Dream Team for Your YouTube Metrics
With so many people relying on YouTube for their businesses, it's no surprise that YouTube metrics are becoming increasingly important. YouTube metrics provide valuable insights into how well your videos are performing and can help you make smarter decisions when it comes to marketing and creating content.
Checking these YouTube metrics may seem easy at first glance, but it can drain you of your time, effort, and energy. You need a helpful and efficient business intelligence tool to ensure that the numbers you’re getting are for the best.
Good thing there’s DashboardFox to get things done. With DashboardFox, our new API querying method can connect to the YouTube API in seconds. You won’t have to worry about leaving out important data because we got you covered.
This works by connecting to the YouTube API endpoints to capture the key metrics discussed in the article. In seconds, you can check and monitor the metrics you need and align your plans and decisions based on the numbers you’re getting.
In addition, DashboardFox is self-hosted and uses codeless build reporting, allowing you to use it no matter how proficient you are in computers. Its enticing no-subscription payment policy and VIP quality customer service are sure to sweeten the deal.
What are you waiting for? Avail of our free live demo sessions or set a meeting with us to discuss how we can be of service to you.