October 24, 2012
YouTube has recently announced it is putting more emphasis on measuring the time people spend watching videos rather than just how many people watch them. They are tweaking the algorithm that suggests new videos that YouTube users might to like to watch.
Clearly, they want to reward engaging content, not just videos designed to attract a click.
Here are three thoughts on what this means for you and anyone else in the world of social media and content marketing.
1) Nothing, keep making great content
No surprises that what this change will do will put even more emphasis on engaging content. Not just link-bait style video with a high impact title and thumbnail, but something that holds the attention of the viewer through all or most of the video. In a nutshell it’s got to be relevant and add some value to the viewer.
2) Use new analytics functionality to improve your content
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Youtube now has a new feature in the analytics areas so you can see the time spent watching your videos. Watch this like a hawk to see what video content is getting the most time, not just the most clicks.
3) Think about promoting content to seed community first
I have no evidence that this will work but it might be worth trying! Promote your content out to your loyal fanbase/community first. My thinking is they are more likely to watch the content fully as they are the target audience. This will help to boost the ‘time spend watching’ metric, thus making it more visible to others via the algorithm.
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