With over 10 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every single minute, getting your video noticed amongst the masses can be a difficult task. Which is why optimizing your video is so important.
Guaranteed Hits
Some video producers can be guaranteed a certain amount of viewers. For instance, record companies uploading a music video can be assured a much-viewed video, although not many will achieve as many as Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend.
There are also the YouTube personalities such as Chris Crocker and Fred who can be safe in the knowledge that their latest efforts will garner at least enough attention to warrant them uploading it in the first place.
The Rest Of Us
But what of the rest of us who produce a video and stick it on YouTube in the vain attempt at persuading thousands of people to watch our efforts over everyone else’s?
Luckily for us YouTube non-personalities, there is somewhat of a cottage industry surrounding optimizing videos for video sharing sites, and using collected data to analyse where you’ve gone wrong, and where you’ve gone right.
YouTube Insight
YouTube itself offers Insight, a video analytics tool introduced in March that allows anyone YouTube account holder access to detailed statistics about the videos they have uploaded to the site.
Here is YouTube product manager Tracy Chan explaining the tool:
YouTube Insight Overview
Insight HotSpots
Now, as part of Insight, YouTube is set to introduce HotSpots. According to AdAge, this addition to the free tool kit available for content creators on YouTube will be available later this week.
While Insight allows you to see the popularity of your video as a whole, and where the audience is viewing from, HotSpots allows you to pinpoint which parts of your video are being watched and which points are being largely ignored
HotSpots does this by showing a graph alongside your video which goes up to hot when the viewer numbers are high, and down to cold when they go down. This will help determine which parts of your video are being viewed intently and which bits are mostly being skipped over.
The Importance Of Optimization
Optimizing videos for YouTube is as important as blogs and websites optimizing articles for search engines. The more effort that is put in, the more benefit is seen as a result.
In the same way that website owners can make more advertising revenue from making sure keywords are used, so video content creators can make sure they gain maximum viewers and therefore make more revenue for their efforts.
Related Ad
Buy ‘Web Analytics For Dummies’ from Amazon
