YouTube Concepts

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is YouTube?

YouTube is a video-sharing social media network and search engine on which users can upload, view, and share videos. It is used by marketers to increase engagement, views, shares, and conversions.

It’s important to understand that YouTube is not only a broadcast platform. It’s a social platform where viewers expect creators to engage with them. So don’t act like a TV show. Talk directly with your audience and encourage engagement and collaboration.

Setting objectives

Before you get started on YouTube, it’s important to set your YouTube-specific objectives, making sure that they align with your global marketing strategy narrative:

• Do you want to grow your channel views? This means, do you want to get as many views as possible on your YouTube channel?
• Do you want to increase your channel following? Do you want more people to subscribe to your channel and expect new content on a regular basis?
• Are you looking to increase watch time? Watch time is very important, and the more you increase it, the more YouTube will help you grow your audience.
• Are you looking to build a sustainable community? This is the community that will come back and watch your videos over and over, every time you upload a new video.

When considering your objectives, you also need to consider your key performance indicators, or KPIs. It’s important to evaluate key platform KPIs such as watch time, subscribers, and views.

• Watch time is the most important metric on YouTube. YouTube prioritizes watch time as its most important factor for referencing your videos in search results.
• The more subscribers your channel gets, the better. YouTube regards subscribers as people who want to see more of your content. Subscriber growth will help your channel get referenced higher when people search for your content.
• Although views aren’t as important as watch time, they’re still an important metric to measure, to see if your channel is growing.

When tracking your KPIs, don’t get caught up in vanity metrics. You need to set goals that matter to you, and define your KPIs accordingly.

Optimizing performance

Anything you can do to optimize your channel performance is a plus. Through your YouTube Analytics, you can zero in on a number of important questions:

• What are the top-performing videos in terms of views, watch time, and audience engagement? Knowing what content resonates with your audience will then drive your future video-creation decisions.
• What content themes are most relevant to your target audience? You can then present that content as, for example, how-to videos, tutorials, vlogs, or webinars.
• How do video details such as thumbnails, titles, and video length impact your video performance? When you know what works well, you can incorporate those aspects into future videos.