Effective Video Tips Gleaned from the Best

Pew Research Center recently examined YouTube channels with at least 250,000 subscribers to gain insights. These popular channels alone posted nearly a quarter-million videos in the first seven days of 2019, totaling 48,486 hours of content.

YouTube is a global phenomenon. Just over half of these channels (56%) posted a video during the first week of 2019, and the majority of these active channels (72%) posted at least one video that was partially or completely in a language other than English.

Videos aimed at children were highly popular, as were those that featured children under the age of 13 – regardless of their intended audience. Videos featuring a child or children who appeared to be under the age of 13 – regardless of whether the video in question was aimed exclusively at children or not – received nearly three times as many views on average as other types of videos.

Content involving video games also popular. Content about video games was one of the most popular genres of content as measured by total views during the seven days of the study period, and these videos also tended to be much longer than other types of videos.

Certain video title keywords were associated with increased view counts. Videos mentioning words like “Fortnite,” “prank” or “worst” received more than five times as many views at the median as videos not mentioning those words. The word “Trump” in video titles was associated with a significant increase in median views among videos about American current events or politics.

Cross-promotion of videos with other social media channels increases views. Seven-in-ten of these videos mentioned other prominent social media platforms such as Instagram or Twitter in their description (either in links or in the text itself), and those that did received more views than videos that did not link to other platforms.

Read the complete analysis.