YouTube Views
Wondering why YouTube placed so much importance on watch time, retention time, session duration, average view and minutes watched. All of these are signals YouTube uses to measure the amount of dwell time on a particular video.
The ultimate goal of YouTube is making people spend more time if not to spend all day on YouTube viewing videos.
Why Focus on Watch time
The number one YouTube metrics is watch time. That is what YouTube Algorithm uses in ranking and suggesting the most important videos on their platform.
How YouTube Algorithm uses Video Watch Time to Increase Visibility and Suggestions
YouTube uses what is called a watch time funnel, right on the top of the YouTube video analytics page. It starts with the number of impressions gained and the click-through rate (CTR) of a particular video. The number of impressions is how many views your video has garnered and the number of clicks.
How to get more YouTube Video Views
The mathematics is this… if you can multiply the number of views and watch time, you will gain average view duration and great average view duration keeps your video at the top.
The recipe is – if your Thumbnail CTR and your average view duration are really exceptional. Your video will be suggested to many people. The more your watch time, the more your video gets discovered or found on YouTube.
How to Increase your YouTube views and Increase your watch time
Here in this post, I will share with you a few things you will do to improve your video views (how many people your video gets suggested to) and increase your click-through rate (CRT).
Use Compelling & Attention-Grabbing Title and Thumbnail
The choice of a video title either increases its a view and CRT or decreases it. The title is just a way of making the first few viewers click on your video which will increase watch time and make YouTube suggest your video to a lot more people.
The goal is for your video to do well within the first few hours it’s uploaded. Three things you should have in mind when choosing a video title – Enticement, mystery, and interest. Here is an example of an enticing, interesting and mysterious title that people were eager to click when the video got published years back on YouTube “The YouTube Algorithm: Dirty Little Secrets.”
Tips: don’t give the same name to both your Video title and the thumbnail.
Give YouTube Video Viewers a Bet
It’s easier to come up with a compelling and attention-grabbing title and thumbnail but to keep your viewers watching after clicking on your video without bouncing back is dependent on your ability to give them a viral trigger or bet that would keep them watching.
That bet might be telling a compelling story, giving out a quick guide that might need a further explanation, etc. The secret to visual hookup has its roots in how you make your audience feel.
According to a famous YouTuber Brian – “I want to make people stop, think and feel, if I can do that, I’ve got them hooked.”
Create a User-Centric Videos
Often times you see many content creators talk about how they have scheduled their content creation and uploading time to meet up with consistency and volume. Setting up a deadline is good. And working on been consistently creating a lot of content is as well a great brand strategy. However, if that will contend with quality and what users or viewers want to see. It’s a poor content creating strategy. I would rather have a highly engaging video that drives results uploaded than a low performing video with poor view times and subscriber counts.
That doesn’t mean that uploading a lot of videos on your channel isn’t a good strategy because if you don’t enough content you will have had time growing your YouTube channel.
Tips to creating a user-centric YouTube Video
- Choose a video topic.
- Think of areas there is to cover on the chosen topic.
- Script those points out.
- Examine your script over and over to spot out redundancies and drift from the main point.
- Repeat the same process while filming and again when editing.
- Cut out the unnecessary even when it’s a good part of your content, especially when it makes your content redundant and boring. You need to keep editing and re-edit until you’ve got a final epic content.
Note: In the end, what matters is not the amount of hard work inputted nor the time but the end product of a good video that can go viral, offer great value and meet up with users expectations.
Mistakes you should Avoid as a YouTuber
Often times you see YouTube marketers get emotionally tied to their content, with the feel-good that they are moving forward by the number of content there are creating and how good they feel those content are.
Here is gist…
As a marketer rating, the content you create isn’t your job, your job is to study, understand and create content that your audience wants. Seatback and wait for YouTube analytics data to tell you if it’s really what your audience wanted or not.
Also, that you have a well-optimized YouTube tags and description doesn’t mean your video will grab a lot of views. The truth remains – well-optimized tags and descriptions don’t equal expected results although people rate it to be. What you should focus on is to get out of the picture and really focus on connecting deeply with your audience.
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Pinterest