1. Watch time

From YouTube’s perspective, Watch Time, or the estimated total minutes spent viewing your content, is more important than a raw view. The updated Analytics dashboard makes this clear by dedicating an entire section to this new, more telling metric of video performance. You need to track your watch time so that you understand if you need to go back to the drawing board and either change the quality of your videos or use a better video editing app.

2. Understand your traffic sources

Where are you getting more numbers when it comes to your content? YouTube has a comprehensive report that shows you a graph displaying various sources of traffic. This is meant to help you understand where your audience are getting your videos. By understanding this report, you’re able to see where you need to focus on to increase your reach.

3. Get the demographic right

You might have a commercial YouTube channel but majority of your audience are below the age of 18, which would then be rather pointless. However, if your demographic is right you’re able to create content for the right age group as YouTube shows you the gender that is consuming your content, geographical location and age group as well.

4. Where is your audience

Determining where your videos are being viewed can help you understand how your audience is discovering your content. Are they searching and finding it through YouTube itself or via external websites? This way you can easily understand if you need to optimize your content or whether the real opportunities is getting your videos embedded on external websites and blogs.

5. Quality of views

Do you want to know if people are actually watching all your videos until the end? You can take a look at the audience retention rate which shows you how long people watched your video for and when the drop off was. This way, you can see if your videos are too long or is it because of the topic that you chose. Using this information, you can figure out where you lost your viewers’ attention and what may have caused them to leave, which helps you prevent similar mistakes in the future.

6. Track your subscribers

How many subscribers do you have? and how many people are following you and also track the Subscribers using the report you can view the amount of subscribers you lost or gained on a video-by-video basis.

7. Monitor your comments

It’s important to track your comments and always respond accordingly. Always ensure that you have responded to comments to keep your audience engaged.