A Step-by-Step Guide to Analyzing Your Law Firm’s YouTube Channel

Video has become an essential element of today’s marketing mix. YouTube is the premier channel for hosting and promoting video content, and it’s actually the second most visited website in the world (after Google). Are you doing the right things to reach your audience on YouTube? How do you know? Follow this guide on analyzing your law firm’s YouTube Channel performance. 

1. Review Key Metrics Within the YouTube Studio Dashboard

First login to your account, and locate the YouTube Studio link. This will bring you to a dashboard where you can get an overview of how your channel is doing. You’ll see several options, but we suggest starting by looking at subscriber count, total views, and total watch time. Ideally, these numbers will rise over time, indicating that your channel is growing. If you notice a drastic change, dig deeper into specific analytics so that you can see what happened. If the numbers aren’t changing at all, you need to investigate what’s stopping people from viewing your videos or subscribing to the channel. 

This is also where you’ll monitor comments on content. Your dashboard will let you know of any new comments that have been made. Take time to address the thoughts and questions of people who have taken time to comment. This feedback provides a valuable opportunity to interact with your audience, and also to get insight into what matters to them. 

This is also the time to check your latest video’s performance. How did it do compared to other videos? Focus on obtaining a general upward trend, rather than expecting big jumps in each video. Analyzing your law firm’s YouTube channel through the same key metrics over time will help give insight into what’s working and what’s not.

2. Dig Deeper into YouTube Channel Analytics

Within the dashboard, click “Go to Channel Analytics” to see how many views, how many hours of watch time, and how many subscribers your channel has. You can choose to compare performance over time periods, such as the past month or year. Arrows will indicate the general direction of performance – with green showing growth and red showing a decline. Look for peaks associated with certain activities that indicate what generates the most traffic for your channel. One of the most important insights is which videos are performing well. By analyzing your law firm’s YouTube channel with these insights, you’ll learn what type of content and what format your audience likes best. Then look at these specific tabs: 

1. 1. Your channel’s reach – Reach should see a positive trajectory over time.  In particular, you want to pay attention to how many impressions you’re getting compared to your click-through rate. You can also explore where your impressions come from. If impressions are low, look for more ways to share your videos. If click-through is low, look for more ways to engage your audience. 
   2. Your channel’s engagement – This information reflects how much time people spend on your channel and when they spent that time. 
   3. Your channel’s audience – This tab tells you more about who visited your content. The more you know about your audience, the better you can tailor your content. You can also see how regular visitors compare to subscribers so that you can make more efforts to get channel subscriptions. 

3. Evaluate What the Analytics Are Telling You

Up until now, you’ve collected a lot of raw data by analyzing your law firm’s YouTube channel through the YouTube dashboard. But what does that data really mean? In particular, you need to understand any irregularities (such as a dramatic spike or an unexplained dip in views), and how they should impact activities going forward. Some noteworthy items that you’ll want to examine further include: 

1. 1. Your video ranks at the top.
   2. Your stats spiked after your video was posted.
   3. Your stats dipped after your video was posted.
   4. You received a notable comment on a video.

To find more information, you can go to “Content” in the side menu, and then hover over a particular video and choose the “Analytics” icon. This enables you to see more specific information like: 

1. Audience retention – This data tells you how much of the video the average person viewed and at which points your viewers left. You can use the graphs to see where attention dipped and improve future videos. 
2. Other video data – The Reach, Engagement, and Audience tabs show the same information as your channel tab, but just for a particular video. 

Takeaway: 

If you’ve made it this far, then you have the necessary data to figure out who watches your videos and when, what topics and formats are popular, and even more specific information like which videos aren’t as popular. Take this information and curate a list of insights that your video creation and digital marketing teams can use to optimize future video production and promotion. If YouTube performance is a priority for your firm, you’ll want to go through this process at least quarterly and develop some documentation around your reporting and analyzing your law firm’s YouTube channel. If you still don’t feel equipped to handle measurement and analytics for your firm, contact us today and we can help you transform data into actionable insights.