“When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.”
Make no mistake - metrics like views, clickthrough rate, watch time, retention, likes and subscribers are really fascinating. Such data points reveal a lot about the audience and the performance of production outputs. However, linking these metrics as a production feedback results in undesirable influence. Really, it comes done to what you are trying to achieve.
Maximizing these metrics could become the goal, creating an environment that encourages:
| Metric | Encourages |
|---|---|
| Views | Videos that many people will watch |
| Clickthrough Rate | Titles and thumbnails that attract people |
| Watch time | Videos that take long to watch |
| Retention | Videos that keep the attention of the people |
| Likes | Videos that people do not dislike |
| Comments | Videos that promote engagement |
| Subscribers | Videos that people want to see more of |
These are metrics of the people for the system that connects them to videos - “the algorithm”. None of these metrics are in direct control of the creator.
Metrics should be incidental.
| Metric | Encourages |
|---|---|
| Video count | Producing more videos |
| Video quality | Creating videos that improve the self-reported standard |
| Video impact | Producing videos that are valuable and benefit people |
Titles and thumbnails should be a true representation of what the video presents. The thumbnail should be a unaltered frame from the video. There is no reason why anything related to the video that is not included in the video would provide more value.
A video production may fall into one of three categories:
- guide: to do this, the following dependencies are required and these step are to be followed
- research: this is a problem, and this is the existing literature
- perspective: to see the world differently