A friend says he watches all your YouTube videos. He loves your content and finds your videos engaging and entertaining.

But you have your doubts about all this. So, you decide to play detective and see whether he’s telling the truth…

Can you actually see who views your videos on YouTube? And can you use this data to create better content?

These are some of the questions I’ll answer in this article.

Can You See Who Views Your Videos On YouTube?

The short answer is no.

There’s no way to see who’s individually looking at your videos.

That friend that told you that he’d seen your video several times… unfortunately, there’s no way to verify whether they’re telling the truth.

Unless… you want to sit beside them next time they’re on YouTube.

All kidding aside.

YouTube’s privacy policy (and the company’s commitment to protecting user anonymity) don’t let you know who the individual viewers are.

However, you can get a lot of information from YouTube’s analytics.

When you know how to interpret this information, you can use it to create better video content.

Understanding Your Audience with YouTube Analytics

Understanding YouTube Analytics (available within your YouTube studio app) should be your first step as a content creator.

When you understand this data, you unlock tons of benefits:

• You can accurately measure your channel’s performance: First, you can track watch time, views, and subscriber growth. These are all critical metrics in your YouTube journey.
• Refine your strategy: Often, things don’t work out as we expect. In this situation, the worst thing you can do is keep doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. I believe that’s the definition of insanity. Interpreting your analytics correctly (and course-correcting) is the best way to move forward.
• Identify trends: You’ll get in on trends early when video ideas resonate. The earlier you capitalize on a trend, the more successful you’ll be able to ride that wave.
• Open up monetization opportunities: Understanding your audience is crucial to making an income. Whether using YouTube ads, getting sponsorships, or even promoting affiliate products, the correct data makes it easier to succeed.

Note you can also use your YouTube app on your phone to access these analytics.

Key Metrics Available in YouTube Analytics

These are the key metrics you can (and should) track:

• Views: how many times have your videos been played?
• Watch time: The total time your audience watches your videos.
• Demographics: Who’s the typical persona watching your videos? What’s their age, gender, and location?
• Traffic source: how are people finding your videos? Is it through the search feature, externally, or through YouTube suggested videos? Looking deeper into this metric will help you create better titles and thumbnails to attract more viewers — as quickly as your next YouTube video.
• Audience retention: How long are people staying? Ideally, the analytics data should show that people stay from start to finish.
• Engagement: how many likes, comments, and shares are your videos getting? This should increase relative to the number of subscribers on your channel. It’s essential to monitor this metric as your channel grows.

Growing Your YouTube Account

The above metrics are critical in the growth of a YouTube channel.

Many of those metrics are also (somewhat) out of your control. That said, there’s a lot you can control.

Here are some key takeaways (I learned through trial and error) when growing a YouTube channel.

Upload High-Quality Content

Ensure you upload high-quality videos on a consistent schedule.

Creating value is what the YouTube game is all about.

Value is also defined differently based on your niche, audience, expertise, and target market.

Striving to:

• understand your audience’s problems and
• find ways to help them solve them

…is an excellent frame of mind to have.

Stay Organized

A content calendar lets you know which videos will go live and when.

A simple tracker with statues like:

• Idea
• Scripting
• Recording
• Editing
• Uploading
• Published

…will go a long way to keeping you organized.

If you haven’t already, ensure you’re using a content calendar.

Encourage Engagement

Encouraging comments and replies is always a good idea.

If you can build a community within your YouTube channel, monetizing that audience becomes easier — whether on YouTube or other community platforms.

Speaking of engagement, you can also create polls for your audience.

Getting a feel for what your audience likes and wants to see more of can help you create more successful content in the future.

Also, running Q&A sessions is a great way to encourage engagement.

You can answer your audience’s burning questions and build the know, like, and trust factors simultaneously.

Conclusion

You can’t know precisely who’s hitting the play button on your videos.

However, there’s a lot of data you can use on YouTube.

Using this data lets you learn more about your audience and the content they find valuable.

And when you’re in the long-term game of content creation, knowing your audience and what defines valuable content is invaluable to success.

I encourage you to access YouTube analytics and explore the data you have to grow your channel.