A Little-Known YouTube Feature that Delivers Vital Information

Do you know what the second most popular search engine is, after Google?

YouTube.

And for “how to” information, YouTube is the #1 search engine.

You can take advantage of a little-known YouTube feature to gather statistical information about videos in your niche, and to learn how people are finding those videos.

Here’s what to do:

For our example, I’m using one of my favorite marketing videos, “What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.” (The video is embedded at the end of this post…be sure to watch it!)

This popular video has had over 585,000 views. Let’s find out how viewers discovered this video.

Beneath the video, you’ll see a hyperlink that reads, View comments, related videos, and more. Click the link.

Directly below the video (on the righthand side), you’ll see a box that notes how many views the video has had. Click the “Insight” button in that box and scroll down to the “Links” section of the analytics.

You’ll notice that over 67,000 viewers came from various Facebook pages. That information tells me that this video “went viral” on Facebook, with people liking and sharing it like crazy.

Over 13,000 people accessed the video from the creator’s website (where the video resides permanently on the Home page).

More than 11,000 people viewed the video from their smartphone.

And here’s a telling statistic: Over 10,000 viewers found the video through searching within YouTube.

Here’s how to apply this information to videos you are developing:

1.  Before you create a video, search YouTube for keywords you’ll likely use to help folks find your video.

2.  Check out the statistics of the most popular videos for that keyword and list the most prominent sites from which viewers are finding the videos.

3.  Note the keywords that those popular videos use in their titles, descriptions, and tags.

4.  Use the most relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags of your own video.

P.S. If you have uploaded your own videos to YouTube, and you don’t want your video’s statistics visible, click the “Insights” button (in the box next to the number of views) and then click “Private.”

Now for the video you’ve been waiting for (let me know what you think of it):