If you’ve already spent an hour and 14 minutes watching a YouTube video today, you can admit it. You’re not alone: 74 minutes is the time the average internet user spends watching YouTube every day.
Views are great, but your YouTube engagement rate is the metric that matters. Getting 1000 views and 100 comments is much better for your channel than 10,000 views and 1 comment.
Interaction builds relationships. Engagement provides insights. Engagement sells.
Find out how your YouTube engagement rate will change in 2022, and 9 ways to increase it.
What is YouTube Engagement Rate?
YouTube engagement rate is the percentage of people who watch your videos and interact with your channel and content. This includes video views, likes, dislikes, comments, likes/unfollows, and posts.
YouTube engagement rates matter for two main reasons:
- It tells you if your audience likes your content.
- When it comes to creators, brands use your level of engagement to evaluate their work with you and measure performance. For brands, your average engagement rate helps you predict campaign results and improve your YouTube marketing strategy.
No matter what your current engagement level is, always follow YouTube’s Fake Interaction Policy. YouTube may remove your videos or your entire channel if you use third-party automation tools to artificially increase views or comments or try to trick people into watching your videos. Even if they don’t, the YouTube algorithm won’t reward you.
Average YouTube Engagement
What is a good YouTube engagement rate? It depends.
92% of people watch online videos every week, although some types get more views than others.
Source
This means that average engagement rates vary by topic and niche. For example, game videos have an average engagement rate of 5.47%, while music videos get more views, but only an average of 2.28% of viewers click the Like button.
Overall, Statista reports an average engagement rate of 1.63% for all channels with less than 15,000 subscribers.
Interestingly, brands are looking for lower average engagement rates (7%) and subscriber counts (3,000) when partnering with YouTube compared to TikTok creators.
This could be because posts on TikTok have higher overall engagement than other networks — 5.96% versus 0.8% — at least for now. Either way, this is great news for YouTube content creators.
How to Calculate YouTube Engagement Rate
To find the overall engagement rate, you first need to find the engagement rate of a specific video. Select a recent video and use this formula:
(Total Interactions / Total Impressions) * 100 = Engagement Rate %
An impression is not the same as a YouTube view, so check the right column in Channel Analytics. In the example below, our equation would be: 2 (views) / 400 (impressions) = 0.005 times 100 equals 0.5% engagement.
This assumes that our only engagements were 2 views. You need to consider all the engagement metrics you can track:
- views
- Comments
- Like
- Does not love
- Signed
- Stock
If you want to keep it simple, focus on these 3 interactions that have the most impact on your channel:
- Like
- Comments
- Stock
This calculation of the engagement rate by reach (ERR) is the most common method, but not the only one. Check out our guide to all the different ways to calculate engagement, including best practices for specific use cases.
What about overall channel engagement?
Use the formula above to calculate your latest video engagement rate…then do it for your last 5-10 videos. Then calculate the average of all the percentages you just generated.
If all that math talk is making you wheeze into a paper bag, get Hootsuite instead.
Manage your entire schedule, posts, YouTube comments, and create in-depth YouTube analytics reports that count beyond 101. Plus, use customizable report templates to know exactly what you need in seconds—for all your social platforms.
See how much time (and brainpower) Hootsuite can save you in less than 2 minutes:
Free YouTube Engagement Calculator
Not ready to try the Hootsuite analytics tool yet? Enter your numbers into our free engagement rate calculator and get juicy insights instantly.
How to Create Engaging YouTube Videos: 9 Tips
1. React to trends
Participation in a trend is useful for 2 reasons:
- People are looking for this type of video, which increases your chances of attracting new viewers.
- You don’t have to come up with a new idea. Instead, focus on following the trend well and showcasing your unique brand and personality.
What counts as a trend will vary by industry and content category, but one example is the “expert reaction”video.
These are thematic clips taken from the media or other creators, to which the creator “reacts”, AKA expresses his opinion. For professional filmmakers or photographers, this trend often includes scenes from famous films, innovative camera technology, or the latest releases of photographic equipment.
The videos use the keywords “director’s reaction”in their titles to show up in search and quickly communicate that they’re part of a trend.
2. Collaborate with other channels
Teamwork makes the dream come true. Cheese warning, but true.
Why do you watch YouTube creators or brands you follow? Because you certainly like their content and find it useful or interesting (hopefully both). But it really comes down to trust.
Another cheese warning: “People do business with people they know, love, and trust.”As a marketer, I am legally required to include this famous quote when talking about trust.
Due to the cognitive bias, the first time people see you around someone they trust, they are also more likely to trust you. The psychological trick at work is the halo effect: when we make rash judgments about someone based on a single point of reference.
Partnering with others opens up a new target audience for you and automatically creates an association in the minds of viewers that you are capable and trustworthy.
If you are a creator, partner with other relevant, albeit non-competitive, creators for mutually beneficial audience growth. Companies can take the same approach with additional business partners or invest in YouTube influencer marketing.
Kajabi wisely chose to partner with Amy Porterfield in this video. Porterfield gives valuable advice to entrepreneurs—Kajabi’s target audience—and because she too uses the platform, it inspires confidence in Kajabi’s product, which ultimately leads to sales.
3. Engage with your audience
Another word for participation? Interaction.
YouTube videos are one-sided, but don’t fall into the trap of “talking”to your audience. Build relationships by interacting with viewers.
Ask them questions about your industry or find out what kind of videos they want you to make. Anything to start a conversation. Yes, all these comments will increase your engagement, but more importantly, you will get valuable feedback and video ideas.
Of course, that also means keeping an eye on your comments section and responding to as many as you can. This can quickly get out of hand in a few videos, so at the very least, only focus on the answers in your last video. (Or use Hootsuite to manage your YouTube channel, including easily organized moderation of comments and replies. 😉
Tech vlogger Sarah Ditchie is known for being her own person, and her videos often make you feel like you’re talking to her rather than ✨under the influence✨Which, ironically, makes her more influential.
4. Create YouTube shorts
YouTube Shorts are videos that are 15 to 60 seconds long. They are designed to quickly entertain, educate, or encourage viewers to watch your longer videos.
Yes, this is pretty much a TikTok rip-off, but they are great for boosting your engagement. Launched in June 2021, the shorts are now garnering over 30 billion views per day.
Shorts are identified by a small red icon in search results, or users can click Shorts in web or mobile navigation for an Instagram-style scrolling experience.
You can create a mini-recap of your latest full-length video and share it as a featurette, or show less polished behind-the-scenes content like on TikTok or Instagram Reels.
Still stuck? We have many ideas for getting started with YouTube Shorts.
5. Create strategic thumbnails
Spoiler: People judge books by their covers all the time, including YouTube videos. The cover in this case is your thumbnail.
The thumbnail should immediately communicate what your video is about and why someone should watch yours, and not dozens of similar options surrounding you in the search results.
An effective thumbnail includes:
- Text for the topic message (but keep it minimal)
- Creative images to engage viewers (e.g. graphic overlays to indicate a theme, facial expressions to convey mood, etc.)
- Your unique style
Don’t be afraid to experiment with thumbnail designs, but – and you know what I’m going to say here – keep your overall style recognizable. “Be different, but also consistent.”Yes of course without problems.
Aurelius Tjin does a great job of this. His thumbnails effectively illustrate the theme with logos, graphic overlays, and bold fonts, yet are still easily recognizable as they include his face and generally share a similar layout and style.
6. Use editing to keep your audience’s attention
No, our attention spans are not getting shorter, despite the oft-quoted statistic “goldfish now have more attention spans than humans.”
Well, can a goldfish read this sentence? Stop comparing yourself to Actinopterygii for F.
But this is not a reason to bore people. Very attractive YouTube videos make extensive use of quick cuts and editing techniques to cut out the excess. You want to get to the point quickly, but still allow your natural personality to emerge.
A few tips to keep people watching:
- Script your videos ahead of time to avoid rambling.
- Edit anything that doesn’t bring immediate benefit to your audience.
- Don’t know how to edit or don’t have time? Outsource it.
It doesn’t mean talking like a fast robot. Include a joke here and there if it’s part of your brand. Use unrecorded footage if it’s good.
When editing, ask yourself: “Is this section/part/sentence/etc useful and/or interesting for my ideal viewer?”
Also make sure you’re using YouTube’s chapters feature so users can jump to the right section quickly.
Ali Abdal uses a dynamic editing style, uses overlays to enhance key points, and always includes chapters for easy navigation. You don’t have to be that fast, but Ali’s videos are very effective at capturing and holding attention.
7. Use Information Cards and Look Beyond End Screens.
Include relevant pop-ups, which YouTube calls information cards, in your video to direct viewers to the products, websites, or other videos you’re talking about.
And add an end screen with suggested videos for you to watch next time. This will keep more people on your channel instead of scrolling to the next video in the search results or in the queue.
8. Host a contest or giveaway
Pranks may seem like a quick fix that only temporarily boosts your engagement levels, but they can have a lasting effect.
Most YouTube contests invite people to enter in order to win by leaving a comment. That’s good and encourages engagement, but it’s even better to have a secret question in your video that people have to answer.
Why? Because it increases watch time and forces people to leave longer comments instead of single words or emoji like 👍 which YouTube might interpret as spam.
Another key point is to choose a prize that your target audience is interested in and that is relevant to your content. For example, if you’re talking about technology, give them the latest laptop or phone.
9. Work smarter, not harder, with the right tools
Using the right tools saves time, allowing you to focus more on what really matters on YouTube: creating high-quality videos.
Use Hootsuite to plan and schedule YouTube videos—along with content for all other social platforms—in one place. Moderate and reply to YouTube comments and view comprehensive analytics for YouTube and all of your other platforms, including multiple YouTube accounts.
See Hootsuite’s YouTube interaction features in action: