#1 YOUTUBE ANALYTICS: MORE INSIGHT INTO CUMULATIVE SUBSCRIBER COUNT
To get the most out of your YouTube channel, it’s important to have good insight into Analytics. YouTube Analytics offers great insight into various metrics, but for a long time it was not possible to see data about the total number of subscribers. YouTube changed this last month.
In YouTube Analytics you now have more insight into the cumulative number of subscribers for your channel. Where previously you could only see the current number of subscribers, you can now see the progress of the cumulative number of subscribers over time. In addition, you can watch live the counting of the number of subscribers. A fun addition is that you will see a festive animation when you reach milestones such as 100, 100,000 or 1 million subscribers!
To gain insight into this go to the homepage of YouTube Analytics and click on “See live count” under the number of subscribers.
What does this mean for you? Through this new section of YouTube Analytics you can answer several questions about your cumulative number of subscribers. For example: when did I reach 1 million subscribers? Or: how many subscribers did I have on the same date 2 years ago? The new feature makes it much easier to find out how many subscribers your channel has grown by and when you reached certain milestones. This also makes it possible to distinguish certain trends or peaks in subscribers.
#2 FROM ‘TRENDING’ TO ‘DISCOVERING’ ON DESKTOP
Most of us are probably familiar with the YouTube ‘trending’ page. However, last year this was changed to the ‘discover’ tab in the YouTube mobile app. The reason for this was to allow viewers to become more familiar with smaller channels spread across different topics. To ensure a consistent experience, YouTube made this change last month on YouTube for desktop as well.
The ‘discover’ tab can be found on your desktop homepage on the left side of your screen. The ‘trending’ content can still be found here, but now as a specific part of ‘discover’. The ‘discover’ tab also offers certain destination pages focused on specific topics such as music, news and sports.
What does this mean for you? After the ‘discover’ tab was added to the mobile version of YouTube, it was found to generate significantly more attention for small but fast-growing YouTube channels. Now that this adjustment has been applied to desktop as well, this effect will likely become even stronger. If your YouTube channel performs well and falls within the topics of one of the destination pages, new viewers could literally discover your content through this new tab. This will then generate more impressions and possibly more clicks and views.
#3 UNDERSTANDING VIEWS FROM THE LIVING ROOM
YouTube Analytics has always shown on which device viewers viewed your content, but now YouTube has expanded the number of possible devices. Last month YouTube added so-called “living room impressions”, consisting of TVs and game consoles, to these devices. So when viewers watch your content on their game consoles or TVs, you can see this back in the Analytics of your YouTube channel. This is interesting because YouTube is increasingly being used in this way. YouTube is increasingly competing with parties such as Netflix and Videoland.
It is important to note that this is only a change in reporting. The impressions and views on TVs and game consoles were always counted, now this is only ascribed within YouTube Analytics.
What does this mean for you? Gaining more insight into how viewers view your content can help you discover what your viewers’ intentions are in watching your content. When someone watches your videos from the couch on television, this is often a different way of viewing than on the phone or laptop. The “living room impressions” for example can indicate watching videos with multiple people at the same time. In addition, we see that with this type of viewers the willingness to watch long content is also higher.
The more you know about the intention with which people watch your videos, the more you can design your content to generate more views. In addition, this knowledge also opens up new opportunities for advertising on YouTube. As an advertiser, you could use “TV-like” commercials for this specific group of viewers, thus still using advanced digital marketing at a low price.
#4 ADD SUBTITLES MORE EASILY
Subtitles are one of the components that the YouTube algorithm draws information from to rate and recommend videos. Hence, this component should not be overlooked while uploading a new video. Still, it is often a lot of work to add good subtitles to a video. Fortunately, it is now significantly easier to add subtitles to a video!
YouTube has made the three different ways of adding subtitles a lot more user-friendly.
Option 1: entering manually
Entering manually may sound like cumbersome, but nothing could be further from the truth. While you are editing a video, you can now easily enter the subtitles per timecode. You do this by typing along while the video is played in the editor. Afraid that this is going too fast? Don’t worry, YouTube has provided an option that pauses the video while you’re typing so that the entry process is as efficient as possible.
Option 2: sync transcript
In addition to typing out the text manually, YouTube also offers the option to automatically sync text to the video without having to specify time codes. Choose the option ‘Auto-sync’ and simply paste the text into the editor. Click on ‘Assign timings’ and YouTube will automatically assign the relevant text to the correct timing.
Option 3: Upload a file
Perhaps the easiest option to add subtitles to your video is to upload a file. Choose the upload option in the editor and select the file you want to upload. This can be a file with or without a timestamp.
What does this mean for you? As mentioned earlier, the YouTube algorithm looks at the subtitles of your video. This allows YouTube to better understand what your video is about and therefore recommend the video to the right audience. Also, all words from the subtitles are used as keywords for your video.
In general, we also see an increase in watch time for videos with subtitles compared to videos without subtitles. In addition, a video with subtitles is more accessible to the hearing impaired and people who speak another language, which means you can reach a larger audience. These options for adding subtitles to your videos make it even easier to take advantage of the benefits that subtitles offer within YouTube
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT DIFFERENT YOUTUBE FEATURES?
Want to learn more about specific YouTube features and how you can use them on your YouTube channel? Check out our blogs on 3 indispensable YouTube features, YouTube Shorts, new features like community posts, YouTube features for the YouTube algorithm and much more!
Want to discover what a YouTube marketing agency can do for you?
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