Have you ever wondered how videos show up in web search engine results? How do videos get hundreds of thousands to millions of views on YouTube? Who’s watching my videos? Well, with a little hard work on optimizing and networking your video content and a helpful tool called YouTube Insight, you can be on your way to working with video and optimizing it for real business results.

YouTube Insight is a handy analytics tool that displays statistics for YouTube Videos. By using Insight you’ll discover statistics such as:

• how many views your video has over specific periods of time,
• the demographic and geographic breakouts of the views and
• how people are finding the video content (web search, YouTube search, embed, etc…)

Though Insight’s data is not always 100% accurate (YouTube states this when you are working with it) and can use some further development in features and functionality, it’s a great start to gaining “insight” to this ever so important media.

YouTube released the tool in March of 2008 and there was a certain amount of mention of the release, but it warrants a closer look. YouTube’s blog post about the release mentioned:

“Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time.”

This tool along with a couple of pointers on optimizing your videos can really supercharge your YouTube videos.

Get started with Video Optimization:

Uploading and promoting video content can drive bottom line business results. Increased site traffic and brand impressions can be achieved from YouTube and other video websites. Video results are showing up in Google and other search engine results more and more as Universal search results are served on various queries. The more you leverage YouTube and it’s Insight program, the more key market research and data feedback can be derived. The more you optimize your video, the better results and more data input you’ll see. So how does one get started?

Open and Optimize your YouTube Account/Channel

Start by setting up a YouTube account. You’ll simply need to enter name, email, password, postal code/location, date of birth and gender. These last three datapoints are key inputs to YouTube Insight. Keep these simple tips in mind:

Account Name: Make it the name of your company or get it as close as possible to your domain name. For example, if the name of your company is Network Systems International, Inc., name the account something like NetworkSystems and you’ll end up with nice YouTube URL like www.youtube.com/user/networksystems.

Profile Information: Fill out as much of your profile information as is possible. You may even get into hobbies and interests. You may include in the profile information (in hobbies and interests) some keyword rich descriptors such as your company mission statement or core competencies. Most importantly, include a link back to your website in the website field. Viewers who are intrigued by your videos will explore further and click over to your website to see what you have available there. Suddenly you’re developing new traffic to your site!

Upload video content: A YouTube account and campaign is only going to be as successful as the input of the video content and how well optimized and networked the content is. If your videos are junk and you don’t spend time promoting them, chances are they are not going to be that popular, nor will you receive a lot of views which will in turn make your Insight data sample much smaller and not as useful for marketing insights. To maximize views on your videos, start with good content, but also optimize and network your videos. A couple of tips on optimizing video:

1. Optimize the Video File name. For example if the video is saved on your hard drive as VideoXYZ123, rename your video to something descriptive and keyword rich. So for example if the video is say a “how to video” about “How to fix a flat tire”, make sure you name the file something along those lines, like “how to fix flat car tire car repair” This will maximize the changes that your video will be picked up by search engine spiders. More and more, Google and other search engines will include the file name in the algorithms when ranking content. So your video vs another “how to” video (that is named with something generic rather than keyword rich) may perform better and get better search traffic.
2. Optimize the Title of your Video – Every video will have a title on YouTube, so use keywords that you’d want this video to be found for in search.
3. Optimize your tags. When setting uploading video be sure to fill out the tags line with very descriptive keywords of your video content. Think like your target audience to capture more searches, separate keywords and mash them together – use different combinations and try various spellings. Tags are important as this will help you video to be displayed more often next to other videos with similar content and increase your views/exposure within YouTube itself.
4. Identify your video with your brand. It is important to identify SOME of your video content with your brand by using logos or graphics- you may overlay your company name or domain name in your video. In some cases, this can be done in obnoxious ways, so don’t let it “obstruct” the message or usefulness of the video. You may also want to provide a certain amount of video content that has no brand labels in it, to let it live and breathe in the raw.
5. Network your profile and your video – Keyword search for similar content on YouTube and interact with those that have uploaded it and commented on it. How do you interact?
   1. Post Video Responses. Maximize your traffic through comments. Instead of commenting in text all the time, POST A VIDEO RESPONSE. A video response allows you to post your video in the comments section of other users video comments section. This will draw a targeted, direct view of your video by someone who viewed related content. Try posting your video response to the most popular videos (with 10’s or even hundreds of thousands of views) on YouTube in your content area ; chances are you’ll get more exposure from those popular comment sections.
   2. Comment on other similar videos and then invite / add the person who uploaded that video to be your friend. Also, if there are other viewers who commented “awesome”, go see their page to see if they have uploaded similar content as your subject area. If they have, perhaps they too would be interested in your content and you can add them as a friend as well. If anyone comments on your video, give them a thumbs up and invite them to be a friend. If they accept, be sure to go back and compliment if you see something on their profile that is of interest in your subject area.

The heart of the matter: Video Statistics and Data for Marketing information, research.

Once you’re familiar with posting videos and optimizing you can begin to dig into Insight. Think of YouTube insight as Google Analytics for Video, except it’s a bit more basic.

You can access YouTube insight from your profile page under > Performance Data & Tools > YouTube Insight. Also on this page you’ll see main datapoints.

- Views: How many times were videos accessed and watched:

- Popularity: A measure of your video’s strength as compared to other videos in a similar category.

- Discovery: HOW viewers found your videos.

• Related: Related videos in YouTube. After being played, YouTube shows yours as “related.

• YouTube Search: Keyword searches on YouTube.

• Embedded Player: An embed of your video on a website (other than YouTube).

• Google Search: Keyword searches on Google web search. For this video example, YouTube Insight shows over 25 keyword combinations for which my video has been found in Google Search. This is very exciting data and useful for keyword research and reoptimizing tags on this and other video content.

YouTube Insight indicates that one video in this account is showing up at position #6 on 1st page in Google web search for the keyword “BMW S50 Motor“. That’s productive keyword optimization and search result penetration:

- Geographic: Aside from the US, a fair amount of views have come from United Kingdom, France, and Poland. Indeed marketing your content in these countries may be of benefit to you in the future. With a handy drop down, you may view specific regions or states within countries. You can even see down the region and state level in the US.

Demographic: For this particular video, 40% of views are between ages 35-45. 88% of views are by males. For an early stage business this can help define who is the key market:

It is critical that businesses get involved in video optimization for reach, search results and branding. Video is not going away and is one of the most powerful mediums of communication in today’s day and age. By using video you can increase your brand’s reach through keyword search and social networking.

For marketers to measure video results, YouTube Insight is a decent tool to add to the analytics kit. And though it needs some more developement, it can certainly bring light to the effectiveness of videos and even empower you with new keyword, demographic and geographic information for your products and services.

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