When working with a technical audience, we create a lot of content in a variety of ways: documentation, blogs, presentations, and videos. Some people learn best by watching somebody else do something, or explain a concept with visuals. As we create this type of content, we need to be able to measure what is working well so we can learn from our experiences. This is where video analytics comes into play (specifically on YouTube for this post).

Our team likes to create playlists with short videos that break up a topic. Playlists are helpful to guide the audience through the series of videos so they get all the content in the right order. Eventually, you want to know how each video in the series is doing, but when you go to look at the playlist analytics, the view counts don’t seem to add up. What’s going on? How do you figure out the actual views on this series of videos?

Why don’t the playlist views add up?

YouTube playlist analytics are helpful to see the effectiveness of a playlist specifically. The video views shown are specific to the views of that video from within the playlist, not overall views of the video.

This is not usually what you need to know, though.

Continue reading “DevRel metrics – Which video in a series is the best performer?” →