We are always talking about how you can get more views on your YouTube channel if you have a better understanding of your 

. But access to that data hasn’t been possible to do away from a desktop - until now.

Understanding YouTube Analytics - Mobile Version!

The first thing you will need to do is to make sure your iOS or Android version of the Creator Studio app is fully up-to-date. To do this, go to either the Android Play Store or Apple App Store, search for ‘YouTube Studio’, and if it isn't up-to-date right now, you should get an option to update it from this screen.

Now open up the Creator Studio app from the Dashboard screen

Tap on ‘View More’ for channel analytics

Then tap on the ‘Discovery’ tab to show you the screen Impressions and click-through rate for your entire channel over the last 28 days.

Even the full desktop Creator Studio doesn't show you this side-by-side comparison, which can be useful to review as a snapshot of how impressions affect your click-through rate.

You can tap on each of the graphs to go into detail and the impressions will show you growth or decline over the last 28 days.

The dropdown filter allows you to refine your results to the last seven days but unfortunately not to the last 48 hours or 60 minutes so it isn't quite realtime, an advantage you do get through the desktop version.

As well as channel impressions and click-through rates, you can view the same analytics on a video-by-video basis.

Go to the ‘Video’ section of the Creator Studio app and select the video you want to view

You'll see the same Discovery tab at the top of the screen which will show you impressions and click-through rates for that one video.

Now for a quick explanation of these two analytics:

 are the number of times your thumbnail is seen on YouTube. You want as many impressions as possible because that's basically free advertising for your content.

 is the number of times a person clicks on a thumbnail when it's seen. For example, if you get a hundred impressions and 10 people click on those thumbnails, that is a click-through rate of 10% and that would be considered very high and very good.

The quality of your thumbnails is what usually drives your click-through rate, so from our tutorials on how to make better thumbnails, we've got a playlist over here.

A lot of people have been getting very excited about these analytics finally coming to the mobile app, and you may be wondering why it's taken so long for that to happen when they've been available on desktop for over a year.

Well, to be honest, it's our fault. Well, I don't mean vidIQ's fault but the creator community at large. YouTube is currently having to maintain both the new Creator Studio and the Classic Creator Studio and until they can pull resources off of that Classic Studio, they can't put them into resources that will help them create all of these analytics for the mobile application.

So the quicker we can all get off Classic, which is happening very, very soon, the quicker YouTube can create more awesome tools for us on the desktop and mobile analytics for YouTube.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Mobile screen showing YouTube impressions data and growth with green arrow and logo.

YouTube has finally made some vital analytics data available on its mobile app. We show you how to find these insights and how understanding them will help your channel grow.

How to Get More YouTube Views by Understanding These New CRUCIAL Analytics

Did you know that you can confirm the number of YouTube subscribers that actually click on your notifications? To find out how just do the following:

We will begin where we always do, on the YouTube front page.

Click on your profile image and then go to the new YouTube studio.

Next, click on the Video tab on the left-hand side

When you mouse over a video, you will see some icons.

Click on the graph icon to go to the analytics for that particular video.

On this screen, click the ‘Reach’ tab at the top, and then halfway down the screen, you should see an analytics panel labeled ‘Bell notifications’ sent.

Bell notifications are the number of subscribers on your channel that have switched on all notifications.

The notification click-through rate is the crucial analytic we're interested in here. It represents the number of subscribers who actually clicked on the notification to watch the actual video. As YouTube states, typical CTR on notifications is between 0.5% and 2.5% percent.

Here's what I'd like you to do now. Go and find one of the most popular videos on your channel, and take a look at the notification click-through rate analytics.

YouTube CTR Analytics: Why That Metric Matters

 metric is an extension of data that YouTube rolled out to creators last year. You can access the data by going to Channel analytics, and then clicking on the Audience tab at the top of the screen, and scrolling down to Subscriber bell notifications.

As you might expect, we did a full tutorial on that data at the time, so you can check it out here:

As a suggestion to YouTube, what I'd love to see here is the notification click-through rate for your entire channel over the last 28 days. Oh, and I'd also like to add it as a metric in the advance analytics for individual videos too, thank you very much.

Now, for me, these analytics have been somewhat of an eye-opener. We currently have 475,000 subscribers, and over 35,000 of those clicked on the notification bell, and yet that only generates 500 views. Doesn't really seem worth it, does it?

However, as with all analytics, you have to put it into the context of your channel as a whole.

Those first 500 views are valuable for the first couple of hours of a video's launch, to get that velocity on your content. However, through our experience with the vidIQ channel, an educational channel, we know that we're going to get the majority of our views, over the long term, from browse and search.

For other channels where the storytelling and the personality is far more important to the channel itself, then you would expect a higher click-through rate on notifications. But remember, it's still, at a benchmark level, relatively low at 2.5%.

So, ake these analytics from a few videos, and benchmark them. Let's say your average notification click-through rate is 1%, then aim to improve that to 1.2%, or 1.4% over the next three to six months.

YouTube notification click-through rate (CTR) at 2.2% with upward green arrow indicator

Did you know that YouTube confirms just how many of your subscribers actually click on your notifications? Find out how to access this crucial metric.

How to Get More Views On YouTube From Your Channel Subscribers

If you're reading this blog post then it's a pretty good bet that you're ready to make the leap and start the YouTube channel you've been promising yourself to. While it's a cliche, there really is never a better time to do so than right now. We're making it easy for you with the tips and tricks all the successful YouTubers use.

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

 so you get all the help you'll need on this exciting journey!

How to Create Your YouTube Channel: 10 Amazing Tips

Check out all 20 tips in the following video:

Tip #1 Write a full ‘About’ section for your YouTube channel

First of all it addresses what the viewer is going to get from your channel. Introduce who you are a little bit, and then reinforce what the viewer is going to get with even more good stuff in another paragraph. YouTube does search these channel descriptions, so it also helps with your SEO.

If you're going to be filming outside most of the time, brilliant, you've got all the natural light in the world. However, if you're filming indoors, you probably want to invest in some proper studio lighting, because it will have a massive impact on the quality of your videos. Great lighting can really help with your videos, much more than say a new camera, at least in my opinion.

Tip #3 Go all-in with YouTube Custom Thumbnails

Now for a whistle-stop tour of some thumbnail tips and tricks:

If humans are going to be in the thumbnail, think of the three E's: eyes, excitement, and emotion. Connect the people with the viewer, and they're more likely to click on the thumbnail.

Use colorful backgrounds that help separate the foreground and backgrounds that contrast with competitors, so that you really stand out when people are scrolling through the search results, and their browse feeds, because your thumbnail looks so different to everybody else's.

Oversaturate the colors in your thumbnails, to give them more pop when they are reduced in size. You can also sharpen the thumbnails for exactly the same reasons.

Use the thumbnail to tease a story of the video itself. You want to entice people to click, but not to give them the whole story so they have no reason to click.

If you're doing tutorials, show the viewer the payoff in the thumbnail. They'll still need to watch the video to know how to get there.

Design small. Remember, you will create your thumbnail on a full screen, but all of your viewers will see the thumbnail in a different size.

And when you finish a thumbnail, take an objective look at it and say to yourself, would I click on this thumbnail? If you're not likely to, neither are your viewers.

You are right in that we barely scratch the surface here, so check out our full 

YouTube playlist on custom thumbnails here

, and also check out the thumbnail courses in the 

Don't just record footage, make sure to edit it as well. It may often be the case that you have half of your footage on the cutting room floor that you never use, and that's fine, because you only want the best and tightest footage to put to an audience. You can also use editing to shave off those little pauses at the beginning, in the middle, the end of your talking.

And, also think about pattern interrupts. Have you noticed something different about this part of the video? It's because I'm not using any pattern interrupts. I'm just talking, and it's probably getting a little bit boring for you now, because I'm not doing any of the sound effects, and music's not playing. The camera's not changing, and shifting angles a little bit, and... You see, I've paused here, and I've got it wrong, and I'm not going to edit this out, I'm going to keep it in, because that's where you'd want to edit your wrong stuff out.

Anyway, where was I? Pattern interrupt. It allows you to keep the viewer engaged by changing something in the scene, every five to 10 seconds. Try that the next time you're editing your videos, and instead of a minute-long worth of rambly stuff, you'll get a clean 15-second footage that your audience will enjoy a lot longer.

This is something I have to constantly remind myself because it's so easy to change persona when you press a record button. Remember to be you. There's only one of you in the entire world unless you have an identical twin. Your audience wants to see something different, something that they can't get anywhere else, and they can only get that from you if you are uniquely you.

If you try to imitate somebody else, it won't feel authentic, and your audience will see right through it. When you start to relax and be you on camera, as hard as that can sound to begin with, when you press record, your audience will start to react to you.

Now, it could be that the audience loves you, or the audience hates you. The important thing is, is that they feel something about you. That's what you want from your audience. And you can ignore all of the people who hate you. You don't need to care about them. You need to put all of your love into those who love you back. Embrace your audience.

But, the moment you start to worry about the judgment of your audience, that's when you start to change on camera, and you don't be you anymore. All of the mannerisms, the way you talk, the quirks that you have, embrace them, and share them on YouTube because if you don't, that's going to leave a mark on your ego.

All right, time to get into some keyword research basics. Get into the head of what your typical target audience viewer is likely to search for on YouTube, and create content, and titles, and metadata around those search terms.

The YouTube Search bar itself is a super powerful tool because it auto predicts what people are searching for, depending on the time of year. For example, as I record this at the end of December if I type in just the word star, it brings me back all of the results for 'Star Wars Episode 9: Rise of Skywalker', because that is trending right now. Use it on your own topic, to find out what people are searching for, and again make content around those subjects.

 to find out what keywords have potential on YouTube, those being with high search volume, but low competition. And although tags are no longer important, it's still interesting to look at the metadata that other creators are using, because it represents the detail and level of research that goes into their content. I will still argue that it's much better to give YouTube as much information about your video as possible, rather than none at all. It may give you the marginal edge, versus other videos who are competing with you, who are a similar size.

And once again, that is a fraction of a percentage of the knowledge that we have about keyword research. We have even more information in an hour-plus course on the 

, along with this video and this post on 

Tip #7 Become part of the YouTube community

When you start to make videos on a particular topic, you become part of that YouTube community. Make sure to join it. And by that I mean watch other peoples' content, and post comments, add to the discussion.

People will start to recognize your name in the comments, and by adding value, not just trying to spam your own stuff, people will be interested in you and come to watch your content. And who knows, the video creator themselves might recognize you after a while, and you could potentially do a collaboration.

Try not to think of other video creators in your space as competition, but as collaborators. The nature of video creating on YouTube, forces it into a singular, sometimes lonely experience, and there are millions of video creators who do this, but they're all working towards the same goal, to make an impact on a shared audience. Why not share the creating experience as well? You get to share your audience with somebody else's audience, and vice versa.

Just remember this at the forefront of your communication with others. It's all about the value that you can add, not what you can take out of it. That comes afterwards, and it becomes a far greater reward when you achieve this.

Got some quick YouTube description tips for you now:

The first two lines of your video description are super important because they can be seen when people are going through the search results on a YouTube page. So try to write your description as if you are writing a traditional tweet of 140 characters.

Make it super valuable, full of metadata, and further tease the viewer into the video.

Somewhere within the description, try and write a paragraph that includes as many of the keyword phrases as possible for the video, but make sure that it still reads as a proper English sentence.

And if you can, try to add timestamps of your video, because they may end up on Google Search, which gives you another avenue of YouTube views.

Tip #9 Set realistic goals and be patient

If you're this deep into the video, you've probably got a lot of this in abundance, but it does bear repeating because YouTube can be a tough game.

To succeed as a video creator, you are going to need determination and patience. You may take all the advice from many sources, all good, put it into practice, and then you may see very little in return for a very long time. You could be 200 videos, and six months into this, and wonder why am I not gaining views and subscribers? And then, all of a sudden, it happens overnight, and you have a viral moment for your channel.

For a lot of creators on YouTube, overnight success takes weeks, months, sometimes even years. Just remember this, if you're putting in the hard work, and the analytics are telling you good things, as well as your audience, eventually, YouTube will stop ignoring you, and start to distribute your content to more people, but it does sometimes take a little longer than what you might think.

With that in mind, I want you to set goals that are achievable in the next month to three months. Rather than setting your first goal to monetize your content, try and go for something more obtainable, like 50 subscribers, 100 subscribers, 10,000 views. Those sort of step by step targets that you can celebrate on an incremental level until you reach those big goals.

If your first goal is to monetize your content on YouTube, again you're thinking about how you can extract as much as possible from YouTube, as opposed to providing as much value to your audience as possible.

“And that's it”, “thanks for watching,” “hope you enjoyed this video.” All words and phrases you should never use at the end of a video. The moment a viewer can sniff that you're trying to wrap up a video, using trigger words such as that, they will immediately switch off.

You should be keeping the viewer engaged right up to the moment the video ends. Yes, you can have calls to action, to ask people to subscribe to your videos, etc, but never tell the viewer that it's basically time to switch over.

Two smartphones displaying YouTube logo on a laptop keyboard, digital video concept.

Ready for some more awesome advice on how to create a YouTube channel? We've another 10 amazing tips for you!

How to Create a YouTube Channel: 10 More Amazing Tips

Many YouTubers have had that one successful video that has outperformed all others, and a deep-dive into your analytics can uncover the secrets to your most-viewed content. In this episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast, we show you what metrics to look out for, what you should be focusing on, and how you can replicate success across your channel.

, and he’s all about helping businesses get more value from their video marketing efforts. Dane is the founder of the TubeTalk podcast, and he's also been a vidIQ user since Day 1. He’s also a proud 

! Click on the link above or download the TubeTalk podcast from the following:

If you have followed all the best practices for creating a great video, like giving it a great title and a compelling thumbnail, it should perform as well as any other you have uploaded. But we all know that’s not the case - some videos underperform and it pays to understand exactly why. In this podcast we take a look at:

Optimizing Thumbnails for a good click through rate

Using the right language to end your video

Leveraging traffic sources for views & content ideas

Why buying YouTube views is a really, really terrible idea

Understanding Audience Retention for YouTube Success

Just one of the topics covered in this TubeTalk podcast is Audience Retention. Dane confirms that a good way to look at the audience retention metric is to ask “how fast do people want to leave this video?" because in many videos it's very fast! He divides audience retention into three parts:

 How well does your intro and hook correspond with what you're doing in the thumbnail and title? If there is a disconnect between what you’ve promised and what you actually deliver your audience retention can drop very fast. For instance, if your thumbnail and title promises a video about ice cream but you actually focus on pizza your audience is not going to stick around (or come back).

 This really is the bulk of the video where you should be engaging your viewers after the initial premise, keeping them interested and continuing to add value.

 Did you convince your viewers to stay to the very end? Getting them to click on your end screen can really improve not just the ranking of that video, but the channel overall. You want to keep them watching as long as possible, and convince them to convince them to click and watch another video. If you can get them to watch to the end and get them to watch your next video, that's a very powerful signal for 

Looking at each of these sections independently can really help you understand how your content appeals to your audience. A lot of creators focused on the intro and the hook, but should take into consideration all three parts.

If you're a marketer and want to out more about how to promote your business on YouTube using high value, low cost, helpful how-to videos, you can watch Dane and HEY.com 

. Also he interviews the top video marketing experts on the "

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators amd marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

Want To Get More YouTube Views & Subscribers?

Want to better understanding YOUR YouTube analytics? Make sure to download vidIQ today. It will help you research YouTube, understand what's working and what isn't, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

TubeTalk logo with white and black text on a blue gradient background

Understanding your YouTube analytics is the first to step to creating content that drives views and subscriber growth. In this episode of TubeTalk we discuss Audience Retention, how to end your video, and why buying views is a really, really terrible idea.

Recreating YouTube Success by Understanding Analytics: TubeTalk Episode 158

Pay attention because this tip is super important. Why? Because YouTube wants you to get as much Watch Time as possible in every single video that you make. For those who've never heard this term before, Watch Time is generally considered the most important metric on YouTube. Basically it is the physical number of minutes and hours your content is watched for by people on YouTube. But why is Watch Time more important than views?

Watch Time: Good for YouTube, Good for Video Creators

Let's take a look at it from this perspective. Views represent clicks, or visits, but they don't tell you for how long somebody is on the YouTube platform or on the mobile app. The more Watch Time YouTube has from its audience, the more ads they can sell to the audience, making more money for YouTube, and more money for the video creator. So it stands to reason that the more Watch Time you can create from your videos, the more YouTube is going to reward you, and share your content with more people. Win win win.

But also bear in mind that you don't have to monetize your content to benefit from this. The search and discovery engine is separate from the monetization engine. Let's do a simple example here. You've got a video with 1,000 views, with an average view duration of one minute. That gives you 1,000 minutes of Watch Time in total. But you've also got a video with 500 views, with five minutes of Watch Time, which gives you a total of 2,500 minutes of Watch Time. Which do you think has the better chance of doing well on YouTube in the long run? Yeah, it's probably video B.

YouTube have stated that when it comes to Watch Time, audience retention is hugely important, but there are a lot of ways to get more Watch Time, and that's what we're gonna explore right now.

Using YouTube Analytics to Confirm Watch Time Stats

Let's look at the numbers first. If you haven't already seen our 

, I recommend you watch that video at some point to help with navigating around these screens more confidently.

With that being said, on the Creator Studio dashboard, click on ‘Analytics’, and then at the top of the graphs, click on the ‘Interest Viewers’ tab. You should now see an average view duration box and if you click on this, it will show you a graph of on average how long your videos are watched for. This is useful from a channel perspective, and as we've already said, more is better.

But this graph doesn't take into account how long each individual video is. So to improve Watch Time, you really want to start by scrutinizing every single second of a single video. To do this, click on the ‘Videos’ link to the left, which lists all of your videos. Then choose a video you want to analyze. Click now on the analytics section, and on the first screen here, you should see this audience retention box.

Now, you can make a video an hour long if you want to, but if nobody's watching it after a single minute, that's going to send some pretty negative signals to YouTube. Audience retention is all about keeping that viewer interested throughout the entirety of your video. Keeping them informed, interested, intrigued, and entertained. And you want to try and get that audience retention to as close to 100% as possible. Generally speaking, that's very difficult to do. So a general benchmark is somewhere around about 50%. And this box will tell you all that, the total length of the video, and the average view duration converted into a percentage.

To really drill down into this data, you can click on the ‘See More’ button, and then watch the video to see where there are peaks and dips in your content. There's always loads of useful stuff you can glean from audience retention graphs, like why Audience increase or decreased at a certain point in the video.

Let's talk about how important video intros are. You are always going to have a sharp drop off in viewership as soon as the video starts. For some viewers, the content is just not going to click, and they will turn off instantly. And then there's gonna be another group of viewers who may stick around more maybe 15 or 30 seconds to try and determine whether this video delivers in some way from the thumbnail and the title. That's why there needs to be some sort of hook or payoff. A way to entice a viewer to invest a few more minutes into the video, and hopefully keep them engaged for the entirety of the video. You can look back at pretty much any video on vidIQ, and you'll see me trying to entertain, inform, or intrigue you in those first 15 seconds before you see the vidIQ splash screen. That is my attempt to get you to watch longer, and I think it works, generally speaking.

On educational videos, creators will give you the final result at the beginning of the video, and then the rest of the video is about how to get there. For compilations or stories, there may be an epic part of the video that's used at the very beginning intro, and you don't actually see that part until maybe four or five minutes into the actual video. It's kind of like teasing a story before you watch the beginning of it. So if you've not tried this before, experiment with a dedicated intro to your video, and try to keep it to 15 seconds or less. Oh, and your branded intro or bumper should be no longer than five seconds.

How to Keep the YouTube Viewer’s Attention with Pattern Interrupts

Because as you well know, the average audience attention span of a YouTube viewer can be pretty short. So how do you fix that? You do something called pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt is a change of pace, tone, and style - think of pattern interrupts as attention reset buttons. You still know what the videos about, but there's something new to look at on the screen

I try to have a pattern interrupt at least once every ten seconds, but other video creators do pattern interrupts every two or three seconds. Now, there is one huge drawback to the video creator when you use pattern interrupts, and that's editing. It adds hours to the process. So try not to go overboard, and start to watch video creators who operate in your space on YouTube with a critical eye to see if they adopt pattern interrupt strategies, and how often they do it. You should start to notice that the best video creators in your space adopt a certain style and tone through pattern interrupts that you should be at least aware of if you're not trying to follow in some way. Also, consider using B-roll in your video to keep the YouTube viewer watching and entertained. And if you’re going to try and cover many topics in a single video, at least tell the viewer in the title or the video intro, or do another dedicated video on that topic. Stay focused, edit ruthlessly.

Don’t Create Long Videos for the Sake of it

The most important currency on YouTube is time. You want as much Watch Time as possible, but your viewer wants to spend their time on YouTube as efficiently as possible. Just because YouTube states that Watch Time is one of its most important ranking factors, doesn't mean you should make longer videos to get more Watch Time. You're pandering too much to an algorithm, and doing a disservice to your audience.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Man reacting to a digital timer and YouTube logo, vidIQ branding in the corner.

Watch Time is one of YouTube's most important ranking metrics - but what is it and how do you increase Watch Time on your own YouTube videos and Channel?

YouTube Watch Time: The Secret Sauce to More YouTube Views and Subscribers

Welcome to the start of your future. Welcome to a world of self-discovery, creativity, influence, impact, stress (sometimes), fulfillment, and maybe even a career.

It's never too late to start a YouTube channel, but the longer you wait the harder it will be to grow. This video will help guide you through the reasons, the mindset, the strategies and the basic analytics of growing a YouTube channel from absolutely nothing.

 - Should I start a YouTube channel in 2019?

 - How to grow a channel with 0 views and 0 subscribers

 - How to grow your channel with a YouTube strategy

 - How to grow your channel by generating ideas

 - How to grow your channel by understanding analytics

Man showing okay sign next to YouTube logo with green sprout and starter guide text

Want to start and grow a YouTube channel in 2019? This is your complete starter guide!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: The Ultimate Guide!

All YouTube Analytics starts with impressions showing your thumbnails and titles. Make sure your impressions to views are always improving with great thumbnails.

You can find the impressions to views click through rate numbers by going to the new studio beta, clicking on the video, click analytics, then click reach users.

You want to aim for YouTube promoting your content for free by getting lots of watch time.

Watch the video above for all the details and 

don't forget to install vidIQ for free now!

YouTube analytics graph showing growth and metrics with a thinking man and #NotBoring text

Want to grow your channel faster? It's all about impressions to views and watch time.

How to Grow Your Channel Fast By Understanding Analytics!

In this simple tutorial, we show you how and answer some of the questions as to why and why you might not want to delete YouTube videos.

You will see 3 little dots next to your video.

A popup will appear to make sure you want to delete your video. Remember you cannot get these views, watchtime and enagement back if you delete it.

Normally we don't suggest deleting videos as you are going to loose your views, watchtime and social engagement. However if you have duplicate content or copyright material you should consider removing these if you apply for the YouTube partner program.

YouTube logo with green arrow pointing to a trash bin, symbolizing video deletion.

YouTube is in the process of creating a new Creator Studio for video creators and some of the basic functions have changed, one of them is how to delete a YouTube video.

How to Delete YouTube Videos In The New Creator Studio

Here are a few tips tricks and tools to make sure you have lots of video ideas so you can grow your channel faster.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world with over 2 billion users.

Don't under estimate the power of answering questions people are asking. Use the YouTube search dropdown to see what questions people are asking and focus in on your niche.

After you search for a term on YouTube you will see that vidIQ has a lot of information on the right hand side. Including keyword score, related queries and top search terms. This helps you understand the universe of keywords around your niche.

You can click on any keyword to launch the explorer to see more details including the current trend of the phrase.

Ask your audience how you can improve and what they would like to see next.

Another great way to get channel ideas is to see what others in your industry are up to using the vidIQ competitors tool.

For more tips on growing your channel make sure you watch the video above. And don't forget to 

Man showing OK gesture next to glowing light bulb icon on blue background with vidIQ logo

To create a sustainable channel that will continue to grow, you need video ideas and lots of them. Video ideas will help you to create content on a consistent basis that you can feed to your audience, attract a new audience, gain more subscriber, gain more views, gain more watchtime... more of EVERYTHING!

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel Fast in with an Idea Generator!

If you've never clicked on the vidIQ Channel Audit button, now is the time.

It is our most power tool, we've just upgraded it, so this is your complete beginner's guide on how to use it.

Note: In order to follow along you’ll need to 

. Don’t worry, we offer a Free version of the tool if you’re not quite ready to access our premium features.

The Channel Audit tool is divided into five sections. Starting at the top you have an instant snapshot of the health of your channel.

Second is the Content to Double Down On section, which includes eight different metrics that track your best videos in each of these categories.

On the top-right hand-side are videos from competitor channels.

On the lower-right-hand side is the traffic being sent your way from other channels’ videos (Top Suggested). These are you cluster channels.

So whether you want to know which videos have the most watchtime, the most views, the highest audience retention or gained the most subscribers, the Content to Double Down On section is what you want to review to help you decide on what content to produce next.

We also include which search terms are driving the most traffic to your channel, as well as the performance of your endscreens and interactive cards.

These often forgotten about YouTube tools can really help with engagement and ensure your audience to directed to more of your content.

As well as showing you what you're doing right you also need to know what needs more work which is why we've included the Content That Could Use Work section.

This section shows your videos with the lowest watchtime, likes ratio, audience retention, views and which videos are actually causing your subscribers to leave your channel.

The final two sections are all about improving the metadata — that's tags, titles and descriptions — of your videos.

The Average Metrics and Items to Improve Upon sections highlight where you might have missed opportunities such as adding video cards, endscreens as well as adding videos to playlists.

The channel audit includes many interactive features to give you even deeper insights and analytics.

Mouse over the channel snapshot metrics for more details such as views this month versus views last month.

How To Get More Views on YouTube