This weeks social media video tutorial will cover a reporting tool that YouTube is currently Beta testing – Annotation Analytics.

Annotations are links or spotlights content creators can add to their videos and are very useful for providing extra information including links to other YouTube videos and most commonly to gain channel subscribers.

For now these links can only link within YouTube, meaning you can’t have an annotation link to your website or blog. That’s what the YouTube video description is for anyway.

Creating Annotations is very easy, however getting that coveted click from a viewer is another story.

Compare Click through Rates and Close metrics:

YouTube also allows you to Compare Click through rates and close metrics. Obviously if your annotations are being closed more than clicked though, it may be time to change their location, length that they appear, how many annotations there are in the video, or even the text that they are embedded with.

SEE ALSO: How to Ask YouTube Video Questions or Polls

YouTube will display Annotation information for:

Click Through Rate: which describes the percentage of click-able annotations that received clicks per 1000 views

Close Rate: details the percentage of annotation impressions that were closed by the viewer. Meaning they saw your annotation appear, but closed it.

So what does this all mean?

Though YouTube is still Beta testing this tool, it’s important to know if the time spent embedding annotations is worth it. Being able to see both the click through rate and close rate of those annotations will help you track viewers and make appropriate changes. Remember there are many factors on whether or not a user will click on your annotation.

Ask yourself:

Was the content in your video helpful and engaging enough? Was the annotation placed too early in the video and closed? Or was the duration of the annotation on screen wrong? These are all great questions and now thanks to tools like YouTube Annotation analytics and YouTube Audience Retention you can begin monitoring and optimizing your videos.

Remember to comment below if you have a topic that you’d like me to cover for an upcoming episode, or if you learned something new. Thanks

Ready for more lessons? Check out more how-to guides and social media tutorials.