YouTube Insight provides detailed information regarding use of the videos you post to the site.   It shows how many times your videos were viewed, how long people are staying on the videos and which site has deemed your video worthy enough to embed it into their site.   I use this tool weekly to gain an understanding of the audience that is viewing our videos and to help make decisions about what type of videos to make in the future.

One of the reports within Insight called “Demographics” has been very interesting to me.   When YouTube users create an account on do they really enter their age?   I never use my real age or birth date when I create accounts on Web sites, I want to have some privacy and retain some ownership of my personal information (if only in a small way) so how accurate is this chart really?

But what does this chart actually tell me.   Let’s look at it a little closer.

In order for YouTube to gain this information a user must be logged in.  By that token we would have to assume that males 35-54 are more likely to be logged into their YouTube account than females are.  (Guys, do they know something we don’t ).

Missing Key Metric
The missing metric?   Anonymous users.  How many people viewed my videos anonymously?   What percentage of entire use is this demographic really based on? How many people are actually logged into YouTube accounts when viewing videos?

Until YouTube provides this anonymous use information I will treat demographic information on their Insight tool with a bias, knowing that it isn’t accurate and only really represents a smaller audience than it should.

Social Media is first the willingness to listen to your customers and have an honest conversation with them.  The ability to do this has been made much easier with Web sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flicker, Friendfeed and many more that have established themselves and have gained a large audience of people who check in with them and their “social network” with great frequency.

The biggest challenge you will face when embarking on a social media campaign is not the creative side of the campaign but the willingness to listen.  People will have something to say about your product and most often, they are right.  It is the willingness to listen and make changes based on that feedback that can prove to be invaluable in improving your product or services.

The first step is having the courage to ask the question “how are we doing”, if your willing to hear that answer, then social media is the right place for you to engage your audience.

Just installed Word Press on my local site and am learning how to use this tool. This is fantastic, Wordpress, where have you been all my life? You may have to be patient with me as I learn how to use the interface and the random theme I chose. I plan to start updating this much more regularly and make a rich content site out of it.