The average YouTube pay in the US is around $1,100 per week. There is a huge opportunity to earn money from YouTube, but with opportunity, of course, comes competition. Like other social platforms, engagement is vital to being successful on YouTube. Standing out can be difficult, so we have cultivated key metrics and tips to increase your engagement on YouTube. 

But first, let’s start with the basics! 

What is YouTube Engagement?

There are a few ways to engage on YouTube videos and channels. You can view a video, like a video, comment, subscribe, etc. These are all metrics that measure the performance of your YouTube videos or channel. 

YouTube offers extensive analytics for its creators inside YouTube Studio. Diving deep into these analytics allows you to see the level of engagement you received from each video. This will help your overall YouTube strategy because you can easily see which videos your audience prefers over others. 

You can see which videos get the most views, which videos turn viewers into subscribers, how long users watch the video so that you can see if people stay the whole way through, and see which videos receive the most comments and likes. 

As you can see here, you can tell the duration of when most of your viewers watch the video. By seeing the time many people dropped off, you can detect at which part of your video you may have lost viewers, or key moments for retention so you can replicate this content.

These extensive insights are available per video or for your channel overall so you can measure your growth. 

How to Calculate Your YouTube Engagement Rate

To calculate your overall YouTube engagement rate, you must first calculate your engagement rate for one singular video. However, the standard formula for calculating YouTube engagement is the following:

Total interactions / total impressions x 100 = engagement rate %

Calculate engagement for one video

It is important to note that YouTube impressions are a different metric than views. So to find each piece of engagement you would interchange the impressions portion of the equation with likes, shares, comments, etc. 

Calculate engagement for your channel

To calculate the engagement for your whole channel you will use the same equation as we discussed above, do it for your last 5 to 10 videos, and then calculate the total from those numbers. 

As marketers, we often do not want to get bogged down with all those math equations. So don’t worry, we get it, and have a solution. 

Measure YouTube Engagement with Metricool 

With Metricool, you can analyze your video metrics, view your top-performing content, manage your comments, and benchmark your competitors. Plus, did you know you can also schedule YouTube videos and Shorts directly from Metricool?

With Metricool you can view the following:

• Community growth and balance of subscribers- this shows the number of subscribers, video, revenue, and subscribers you have gained and lost.

• Audience Demographics shows your audience’s gender and where they are viewing from.

• Videos with revenue, this shows you the list of videos that have gained some amount of revenue.

• Published videos and viewed videos- this section shows all your video metrics from likes, dislikes, watch time, average views, comments, and shares.

• Competitors- here you can add up to 10 competitors and monitor their stats so that you can use their information to better your content.

7 Ways to Boost YouTube Engagement 

If after calculating and diving deep into your insights now you need to boost your engagement, here are seven useful tips to boost your engagement on YouTube. 

Participate in trends

Just like many of the other social platforms, trends can take your videos to new heights and increase your reach. 

To do this it is important to conduct keyword research. By doing this you can see what kind of topics users are searching for. When you create this kind of content you have a high chance of popping up when people search. Be sure that the trends or the keywords you use are relevant to your brand. 

For example, using KeywordTool.io we found that finding trending audio has a good search volume, so we created both a YouTube video and a Short for this topic. 

Collaborate with influencers and YouTube creators

Collaborating with influencers is a great way to boost engagement. Influencers are known for their loyal and active follower base, so partnering with them can put your content in front of new eyes and turn into sales! 

Engage with your audience

This is a simple yet effective way to increase engagement. Start with a CTA in your captions to generate initial comments, but when you do receive comments it is equally as important to respond so that you create a strong and real relationship with your audience. 

With Metricool, you can easily engage with your audience using the Metricool inbox. By organizing all your unread messages in one place, you can manage and reply to each and every comment and message you receive.

Create YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts are short-form, vertical video content created using a smartphone and uploaded directly to YouTube from the YouTube app. These videos have become extremely popular and have very interesting trends to help inform your content approach.

Hook your audience with Thumbnails

Thumbnails on YouTube are the first thing your audience will see, so making it interesting and enticing is vital to make users click on your video. Metricool has an AI feature where you can type in a phrase or keyword and our AI tool will come up with several prompts.

Working with Metricool’s text creation wizard saves you hours in a day and gets you ahead quicker. 

• Save time creating copy for your posts. 
• Avoid running into writer’s block. 
• Get inspired by Metricool’s brainstorming. 
• Write copy faster and schedule content quickly. 
• Ask AI to adapt your copy by platform.

For example, hooking your audience in with a question like the one below is a good way to attract views. 

Utilize Cards 

Cards on YouTube allow you to link other pieces of content such as a link to your website, a link to subscribe, and more videos to watch next. 

If users enjoyed your video, they often want to look for more information, so providing it to your viewers inside of the video making it easy to navigate can help your engagement immensely. 

Promote your videos on other platforms

Your audience likely differs on each platform, so promoting your YouTube video to your Instagram audience could be beneficial to get some new eyes on your content. 

We often link our YouTube videos to all our social platforms including our blog and newsletter! 

YouTube is a great platform to grow your brand, so by following these tips, you can watch your channel shine! 

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave us a comment. 

With increased engagement comes the opportunity to monetize on YouTube, if this interests you, be sure to check out our blog linked below: 

sophie , 12 February 2024