3 Metrics To Look For If You Wanna Beat YouTube’s Algorithm
They will, in no time, sky-rocket your channel’s growth
YouTube Analytics is something, every creator is aware of. But are they using it the right way? You can find its answer by looking at the number of YouTubers who are tremendously successful. Very few?
Thus no, not every creator is using it the right way.
Among analytics’
- Overview
- Reach
- Engagement
- Audience
- Revenue
The majority of small creators only looks at the ‘Overview’; I myself am guilty of it. The overview is nothing but the general picture of your channel. For instance, in Jan 2021 you got this many views, this many watch time hours, this many subscribers, and this much money.
Now the thing with Overview is, it draws a very vague picture of all your growth. It doesn’t tell you where that growth actually came from? How people find your videos? What was the video which brought the most views and subscribers to your channel? What worked for you what didn’t work for you?
That’s why the majority of the small creators take a big span of years to grow on YouTube.
Every tab in YouTube analytics should be considered and taken seriously because that’s the reason they’re there.
But in this article, we’re here to talk about the three most important metrics, which would either make or break your channel -
1. Retention
2. CTR
3. Watch time
These are the three most important metrics, the holy trinity, the success mantra when it comes to a viral video.
To get a brief knowledge of each, CTR is click-through-rate or the percentage of people who have clicked on your video to watch it; Retention or audience retention is the percentage of people who are still watching your video during your video playback; lastly, watch time is the total amount of time people have spent watching your video on YouTube.
Okay, so now you know the metrics but how are you gonna smash them?
Now obviously a fascinating idea is a must, to do this. You can’t go viral while talking about a day of your life where you did nothing special. First, come up with a weirdly new idea that sounds fascinating not only to you but to a majority of people, who would eventually gonna watch that video.
Done?
Let’s begin.
1. First comes, Retention.
Holding people to watch your video, practically isn’t in your hands, as you can’t be present in thousands of places when thousands of people would be watching your video at the same time. So the only way you can hold them down is, by structuring your video the right way.
In the first fifteen seconds, your audience should have the answer of — What, Why, and How? This gives a clear understanding to the viewer that what the video is going to be about, and most probably how everything is going to take place. This phase is called the ‘Set-Up’.
The pacing of your video should be correct and appropriate, and the video should not have dull/low moments where a viewer could click-off.
Lastly, the pay-off. Your video should have a great pay-off, the one it has promised in the title, after all that’s what the viewer is still waiting for.
And that’s the recipe for a good audience retention rate, an amazing idea with great storytelling and pacing. As it leaves the audience no choice but to stick around till the end of the video.
2. Now comes, the CTR aka Click-Through-Rate.
CTR consists of four major things -
- Title
- Thumbnail
- Tags
- Description
Among those four things, tags and description used to be very important. But from 2020 onward, they are not that important anymore. Even big YouTubers like MrBeast and Mark Rober has stopped using tags in their uploads, and keep description of their videos comparatively short.
Means now the CTR would majorly depend upon two things, the thumbnail and the title of the video.
Now for title, there are many theories out there, the title should work like explainer, it should act like one liner, it should be short, it should be long, it should not be more than 30 characters or 50 characters, and what not.
Honestly speaking there’s no right answer to it, it’s just, do what suits you best. But in majority of big creators’ cases, they prioritize short and simple titles. For instance,
I Ran A Marathon In The World’s Largest Shoes
I Bought The World’s Largest Firework ($600,000)
Last To Leave $800,000 Island Keeps it
I Ate $100,000 Golden Ice Cream
Notice how, in the above titles, MrBeast reveals the plot of the video in the most simple language. In his most recent upload, I Ate $100,000 Golden Ice Cream, he could’ve written the name of the ice cream in the title. But he didn’t, why?
Because people wouldn’t be able to understand what it is about, so like usual he broke it down to the basic.
Another thing to point out is, he clearly mention the price of the prop which he bought or uses in the video — Largest Firework ($600,000), $800,000 Island, $100,000 Ice-Cream. What is all this?
Why is he telling the price in the title itself?
Because he’s MrBeast, and MrBeast very well knows that the goal is to catch the attention from the very first moment. Just telling World’s Largest Firework or Ice-Cream or Island wouldn’t have affected the audience that much. The much, mentioning the price has does. Because people wanna know how does a $100,000 ice-cream or $600,000 firework would look like.
So keep your title short and simple, something from which people could understand the whole point of the video. Don’t confuse them, even for a second because then they not gonna click on your video.
The art of holding a viewer starts from the very first impression. Because what good that amazing content would be of, if there would be no one to watch the video.
The second thing is, Thumbnail, which every creator is aware about. But still, they mess it up.
YouTube said Thumbnail is the life of the video, and hearing that, small creators filled it with everything they can, like legitimately everything. Three to four photo effects, texts with two or three different kinds of fonts, and what not.
Like why? Why are you doing it?
YouTube said thumbnail is the life of a video, so embrace it, don’t stuff it.
That’s why the big creators apply the same rule of their titles into their thumbnails, keep it simple and short, and here, by short I mean clean. Just look at all these thumbnails below whose titles you read above.
Could you guess, which title is of which thumbnail. I’m sure you could do it, it’s damn easy, or should I say, MrBeast made it easy.
So that the viewer could get the content without any hidden codes in it.
Make clickable thumbnails, thumbnails which has homemade feeling, an amateur-ish look, that’s the kind of content people come for, on YouTube. So you better give them that.
Because thumbnail is something which could easily make or break a YouTube video.
3. Now the third and last thing in the tier is, the Watch Time.
I think, Watch Time does not need to be explained alone. As it goes hand in hand with CTR and Retention. If your CTR and Retention are good, means you’ll obviously have a good watch time, and if you have bad CTR and Retention, you’ll have a low watch time, that’s it.
Lastly, if you somehow managed to get four minutes or above watch time, 50% or above retention rate, and 10%-20% CTR,
BOOM!
You would have a banger.
An already viral or about to go viral video, I guarantee.
