Hey Everyone!
I am new here, but not new to the world of content. For the last 6 years I've been deeply involved in content + marketing - and for the last 5 years I've been both a personal blogger, social media strategist and other roles involving audiences and content.
In my short (hours) worth of time on YTTalk, I've seen a lot of focus on subscribers. Naturally, I get it - it's the most obvious number. It's the 'follower' count. It's the ego number. It's the social proof that people should watch your channel, or they themselves should subscribe. It certainly is important to the Youtube creator experience and can be the number that keeps you going. But I want to remind everyone that the Sub # is not everything. In fact, on Youtube, it's not even the best indicator of a successful video in my opinion.
As a content creator/blogger/strategist - the goal of content is to get people's eyes on your stuff and keep them there. As a personal blogger, it's great when you see a post got 500, or 1000, unique eyeballs on the page... but while that number is nice for the ego, it's not very good for the website in the long run. And Youtube works much the same way. If I write a blog post that's 1000 words and keeps 10 people reading for 5 minutes... that's a lot more valuable than 150 people who only stick around for 10 seconds.
Youtube (from what I understand because the are owned by Google, and Google does the same kind of thing) prioritizes content based on a few things... and one of the big ones is retention. If you are getting views, but they only stay for seconds - that could actually be hurting your channel in the long run as Youtube punishes poor performers thinking that it's bad content based on view stats. I've done a bunch of research on this over the last several weeks as I became obsessed with it. I've read that the average Retention rate on Youtube is 30%. Meaning if you upload a 10 minute video, you're on average going to get people to watch 3 minutes.
This number has a lot of value - because it means you need to think about your videos differently... if you're posting a 3 minute video, and retention rate is 30%, your first 54 seconds have to be watchable - and keeping them beyond that is crucial to a successful channel. Why are gaming channels so successful on YouTube? Because of the episodic nature of the content. Episode 1, The mission begins. Episode 2, Continuing the mission. Episode 3, You better have watched episode 1 to get what this episode covers. etc. People watch for 20-30 minutes! That's a major push up the YouTube ranking compared to someone posting a 20 minute vlog that people check out of after 15 minutes.
So, while subscriber numbers are certainly important, I encourage everyone to check out their channel retention rates. If you're feeling brave - share them in the comments so we can all kinda see if that 30% is accurate or not. For me, I'm currently sitting at 43%... with a couple videos (that are now unlisted) at 10%, 5.2%, 9.6% pulling my average down a bit.
Feel free to discuss/disagree! I love the discuss this kind of thing and think we're all better off to have it (with different opinions).
I am new here, but not new to the world of content. For the last 6 years I've been deeply involved in content + marketing - and for the last 5 years I've been both a personal blogger, social media strategist and other roles involving audiences and content.
In my short (hours) worth of time on YTTalk, I've seen a lot of focus on subscribers. Naturally, I get it - it's the most obvious number. It's the 'follower' count. It's the ego number. It's the social proof that people should watch your channel, or they themselves should subscribe. It certainly is important to the Youtube creator experience and can be the number that keeps you going. But I want to remind everyone that the Sub # is not everything. In fact, on Youtube, it's not even the best indicator of a successful video in my opinion.
As a content creator/blogger/strategist - the goal of content is to get people's eyes on your stuff and keep them there. As a personal blogger, it's great when you see a post got 500, or 1000, unique eyeballs on the page... but while that number is nice for the ego, it's not very good for the website in the long run. And Youtube works much the same way. If I write a blog post that's 1000 words and keeps 10 people reading for 5 minutes... that's a lot more valuable than 150 people who only stick around for 10 seconds.
Youtube (from what I understand because the are owned by Google, and Google does the same kind of thing) prioritizes content based on a few things... and one of the big ones is retention. If you are getting views, but they only stay for seconds - that could actually be hurting your channel in the long run as Youtube punishes poor performers thinking that it's bad content based on view stats. I've done a bunch of research on this over the last several weeks as I became obsessed with it. I've read that the average Retention rate on Youtube is 30%. Meaning if you upload a 10 minute video, you're on average going to get people to watch 3 minutes.
This number has a lot of value - because it means you need to think about your videos differently... if you're posting a 3 minute video, and retention rate is 30%, your first 54 seconds have to be watchable - and keeping them beyond that is crucial to a successful channel. Why are gaming channels so successful on YouTube? Because of the episodic nature of the content. Episode 1, The mission begins. Episode 2, Continuing the mission. Episode 3, You better have watched episode 1 to get what this episode covers. etc. People watch for 20-30 minutes! That's a major push up the YouTube ranking compared to someone posting a 20 minute vlog that people check out of after 15 minutes.
So, while subscriber numbers are certainly important, I encourage everyone to check out their channel retention rates. If you're feeling brave - share them in the comments so we can all kinda see if that 30% is accurate or not. For me, I'm currently sitting at 43%... with a couple videos (that are now unlisted) at 10%, 5.2%, 9.6% pulling my average down a bit.
Feel free to discuss/disagree! I love the discuss this kind of thing and think we're all better off to have it (with different opinions).
