YouTube Help Advice on optimizing YouTube channel for US traffic - posting schedule issue

[grace4pple]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for some advice from TubeBuddy or YouTube experts here that can help me with this issue.

I'm a YouTube manager for an e-learning channel. Our main target audience is supposed to be in the US, but it seems like our videos have been posted on Asia time (our time) instead of US time ever since the channel was created. This wasn't optimized for our US audience and may be the reason why we're not getting enough US traffic.

We started following TubeBuddy's recommended posting time, which is still in Asia time, because that's where our channel started, and most of our audience is active. We want to change this and optimize our channel for US traffic.

My question is, is it too late to fix this issue by posting at the correct US time, or can we still change our posting schedule to optimize for US traffic? Do you have any advice on how we can do this?

Any inputs are appreciated. Thank you! ^^

 

[MattCommand1]

Youtube has said that over the course of time, post times don't matter to performance broadly speaking. Because of their comments, I don't get wound up when my videos get posted but I do tend to match U.S. the time zones. But aside from the initial burst of traffic the first few hours, I don't think it matters long term.

Your videos have to be interesting enough for someone to not only click on it but stay in the video no matter what time you post. You may want or prefer U.S. viewers but I don't think we have direct control over this no matter what time you post.

Personally, I don't think people care when someone posts a video. Most people simply know a video suddenly appears and is available.

 

[Xavier De Buck]

Youtube has said that over the course of time, post times don't matter to performance broadly speaking. Because of their comments, I don't get wound up when my videos get posted but I do tend to match U.S. the time zones. But aside from the initial burst of traffic the first few hours, I don't think it matters long term.

Your videos have to be interesting enough for someone to not only click on it but stay in the video no matter what time you post. You may want or prefer U.S. viewers but I don't think we have direct control over this no matter what time you post.

Personally, I don't think people care when someone posts a video. Most people simply know a video suddenly appears and is available.

I hear you, Matt. I always tell people to worry first about actually posting something consistently for weeks on end instead of trying to time the post itself...

However, if TB suggests certain posting times ie Wednesday 4pm -- and there you are scheduling it, yet it doesn't get released on that time because of time difference settings? I'm sure those can be adjusted in settings? I must have nonchalantly ticked off a few boxes upon setting up my account back in the day...

 

[MattCommand1]

I hear you, Matt. I always tell people to worry first about actually posting something consistently for weeks on end instead of trying to time the post itself...

However, if TB suggests certain posting times ie Wednesday 4pm -- and there you are scheduling it, yet it doesn't get released on that time because of time difference settings? I'm sure those can be adjusted in settings? I must have nonchalantly ticked off a few boxes upon setting up my account back in the day...

It is all I can do to keep up with once a week on a consistent basis. When a video is done, I will schedule it anywhere between 6am and 11pm local time whenever the next available hour is.

There are some things I just don't beat myself up over because if I did every time I fell out of line or tried to follow every rule I heard of, I would either be paralyzed or riddled with self-criticism. If I screw up, I just move on and learn from it and try to improve next time. To me, it is the long game which means multi-year view.

If someone tells me the time REALLY matters, I can adjust but YT says that over the long-term, it doesn't matter. But admittedly, I do like to see fireworks now and again. From that perspective, I do occasionally try to find an "ideal time." Most of my audience appear to be in the evening, nights, and weekends especially Sundays local time.

 

[MediaMan]

In my experience the past 5 months, release time of day has no impact on long form videos. However...with shorts I've had success timing video releases based on audience metrics and when my viewers are most active.

 

[MattCommand1]

In my experience the past 5 months, release time of day has no impact on long form videos. However...with shorts I've had success timing video releases based on audience metrics and when my viewers are most active.

I definitely feel timing of Shorts matters a lot more. But when? I am not sure.

 

[MediaMan]

I definitely feel timing of Shorts matters a lot more. But when? I am not sure.

Just incase you (or others) are not aware...... Analytics > Audience > (Scroll down) > When your viewers are on YouTube

 

[MattCommand1]

Just incase you (or others) are not aware...... Analytics > Audience > (Scroll down) > When your viewers are on YouTube

I am aware of times of MY audience.

But if I am releasing Shorts, isn't the idea to reach people NOT my audience? Just because MY audience is evenings, weekends, especially Sunday, I am not sure that automatically means those are the ideal times to post for a wider Shorts audience.

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for some advice from TubeBuddy or YouTube experts here that can help me with this issue.

I'm a YouTube manager for an e-learning channel. Our main target audience is supposed to be in the US, but it seems like our videos have been posted on Asia time (our time) instead of US time ever since the channel was created. This wasn't optimized for our US audience and may be the reason why we're not getting enough US traffic.

We started following TubeBuddy's recommended posting time, which is still in Asia time, because that's where our channel started, and most of our audience is active. We want to change this and optimize our channel for US traffic.

My question is, is it too late to fix this issue by posting at the correct US time, or can we still change our posting schedule to optimize for US traffic? Do you have any advice on how we can do this?

Any inputs are appreciated. Thank you! ^^

Honestly, posting time and consistency has almost no value anymore, not in the new YouTube system. It is not going to affect how YouTube indexes your video in the slightest or your channel ranking.
I am not saying that it might not offer some benefit to the viewer, but in general, it will only benefit subscribers that follow your channel and have all notifications options turned on, which is a tiny fraction of subscribers.

I have been doing YouTube for 18 years and I can tell you what you need to know about American culture and viewing habits on YouTube. Americans predominately watch Youtube videos between 6 and 11:00 AM Monday through Friday, and 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm Monday through Thursday, Americans do not watch very much Youtube Friday afternoon through the weekend. Peak watching times are around 10:00 am Tuesday through Thursday. I release all my videos at 9:00 am on Monday.

 

[MediaMan]

just because MY audience is evenings, weekends, especially Sunday, I am not sure that automatically means those are the ideal times to post for a wider Shorts audience.

How are you defining a wider short's audience? Releasing a video not related to your channel? Surely the audience metric isn't based on just subs, so the data should already represent a fairly wide potential audience. For me the difference is 1000s vs 100s of views if I release a short in the recommended time slots or not.

But if you want to roll the dice on a something not focused on your channel then at that point you just post during the typical 3 slots, 6:00-9:00am, 11:00-2:00pm, 6:00-9:00pm and track what happens. Almost every report I've read says the best days of the week to post shorts are Thu-Sun with Fri-Sat typically being the best.

 

[MattCommand1]

How are you defining a wider short's audience? Releasing a video not related to your channel? Surely the audience metric isn't based on just subs, so the data should already represent a fairly wide potential audience. For me the difference is 1000s vs 100s of views if I release a short in the recommended time slots or not.

But if you want to roll the dice on a something not focused on your channel then at that point you just post during the typical 3 slots, 6:00-9:00am, 11:00-2:00pm, 6:00-9:00pm and track what happens. Almost every report I've read says the best days of the week to post shorts are Thu-Sun with Fri-Sat typically being the best.

I don't profess to be anywhere I need to be on Shorts. However, I didn't even know this!

"Almost every report I've read says the best days of the week to post shorts are Thu-Sun with Fri-Sat typically being the best."

That is helpful. It may well be that people who don't embrace Shorts could well be at a handicap. The one thing I know is that my mental bandwidth is limited resource.

It wouldn't be hard to start doing more shorts and put in the time to learn and get better at it. But mastering long-form is higher priority for me because almost all the creators I admire are masters at long-form (personal bias/preference).

 

[MediaMan]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of watching or creating shorts....at all. But...imop there is potential value in creating them even if your channel will never be monetized form shorts.

1) Any long form video can be edited to a short in a matter of minutes, so it's great filler content.
2) Surprisingly even topics other than the trendy stuff can still get enough views to make #1 worth while.

On a whim.. I did a 15 second edit of a long form video and put the words "link to full video in desc" in the first 5 sec of the short. I did this yesterday, and to my surprise it has 1k+ views 24 hours later with 100% like percentage. I fully expected only about 20-100 views because of the text in the short. So I would encourage all channels to experiment with shorts. As I've said before, I consider shorts & long form 2 different markets and I don't think treating them as such hurts your overall channel at all.

It wouldn't be hard to start doing more shorts and put in the time to learn and get better at it. But mastering long-form is higher priority for me because almost all the creators I admire are masters at long-form (personal bias/preference).

oh for sure... but you can experiment with shorts more and do things you may or may not do in your long form videos. I basically consider shorts to be "commercials" for my channel and long form content, as if I was doing a tv commercial for a tv show. lol..

@MattCommand1, for example... in your shorts you could frame yourself talking within an overlay of animated fire, lightning, etc, just something visual to get the attention of the short attention span shorts viewer. Plus if the animation is in the entire short, that would result in a pretty interesting thumbnail increasing the odds of the drive by viewer watching it.

 

[MattCommand1]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of watching or creating shorts....at all. But...imop there is potential value in creating them even if your channel will never be monetized form shorts.

1) Any long form video can be edited to a short in a matter of minutes, so it's great filler content.
2) Surprisingly even topics other than the trendy stuff can still get enough views to make #1 worth while.

On a whim.. I did a 15 second edit of a long form video and put the words "link to full video in desc" in the first 5 sec of the short. I did this yesterday, and to my surprise it has 1k+ views 24 hours later with 100% like percentage. I fully expected only about 20-100 views because of the text in the short. So I would encourage all channels to experiment with shorts. As I've said before, I consider shorts & long form 2 different markets and I don't think treating them as such hurts your overall channel at all.

oh for sure... but you can experiment with shorts more and do things you may or may not do in your long form videos. I basically consider shorts to be "commercials" for my channel and long form content, as if I was doing a tv commercial for a tv show. lol..

Totally unrelated to this discussion, I am in processing of trying to finish writing a new book which requires a fair amount of mental bandwidth while producing a weekly video and the other stuff I do. When I get done with the book hopefully by the end of March, I will embark on writing another book. So, I am currently super-sensitive to anything that requires a lot of mental bandwidth.

I greatly appreciate your support and encouragement. I might be persuaded to go back to my older videos as you suggested and excerpt a passage or two and make reference to the full video. I like that idea a lot and I will definitely keep my expectations in check.

And the idea of keeping animations going through the entire video is a great idea!

 

[Xavier De Buck]

On a whim.. I did a 15 second edit of a long form video and put the words "link to full video in desc" in the first 5 sec of the short. I did this yesterday, and to my surprise it has 1k+ views 24 hours later with 100% like percentage. I fully expected only about 20-100 views because of the text in the short. So I would encourage all channels to experiment with shorts. As I've said before, I consider shorts & long form 2 different markets and I don't think treating them as such hurts your overall channel at all.

What an original way to test things out - I'll try it out on my side as well and see what it'll do to traffic! Cheers!

 

[Xavier De Buck]

It is all I can do to keep up with once a week on a consistent basis. When a video is done, I will schedule it anywhere between 6am and 11pm local time whenever the next available hour is.

There are some things I just don't beat myself up over because if I did every time I fell out of line or tried to follow every rule I heard of, I would either be paralyzed or riddled with self-criticism. If I screw up, I just move on and learn from it and try to improve next time. To me, it is the long game which means multi-year view.

If someone tells me the time REALLY matters, I can adjust but YT says that over the long-term, it doesn't matter. But admittedly, I do like to see fireworks now and again. From that perspective, I do occasionally try to find an "ideal time." Most of my audience appear to be in the evening, nights, and weekends especially Sundays local time.

I guess if I rationally think about it - people will more than likely have time to watch stuff after work & in the evenings, which is why my audience stats of Mon-Thu between 5-9pm makes sense to me. Social evenings Fri-Sat are very low wrt YT viewings, but then comes along my channel's best day/time to post on Sun 5-9pm....go figure!

 

[The Bargainhunter uk]

I would like my content to hit people in the US maybe they will il just wait

 

[Damon]

I am in processing of trying to finish writing a new book . . . I am currently super-sensitive to anything that requires a lot of mental bandwidth.

I'm in the same position trying to get an online course finished and producing fishing content here at the beginning of the season.