Videos are a creative endeavor. Your team consists of writers, actors, filmmakers, and other artists, trying to make something interesting and worthwhile. That type of person tends to run screaming for the hills when presented with things like numbers and data. Unfortunately, if you want to turn your video publishing into a fruitful endeavor and create videos that are popular and well received, you need to be able to look at and interpret data as well. Here’s how to merge the data aspect of publishing with the creative aspect, to maximize your videos’ potential.

Know Your Audience

The first step in video publishing is to find your niche. What type of videos are you creating? Is it sketch comedy? Short films? Vlogs? What topics do you want to cover? What will your videos be about, and what areas will they cover?

Once you know your niche, it’s time to define who your audience is. What demographics are you trying to reach? What are those people’s lives like? How old are they, what do they do for a living, and what’s their education level? Obviously everybody is different, but that’s where data comes in. You can use data points to figure out the type of person you’re looking for ideally and what the average person in that demographic is like. Once you know your ideal audience, it will help you reach them more effectively.

Find Your Audience

Once you’ve got a good idea of who your ideal audience is, you need to target them with your content. To do that, you need to know where to find them. What social media platforms are they most likely to use? Does your audience use Facebook and Twitter? Instagram and Snapchat? Are they on Pinterest?

Do your research and find out where you’re most likely to find people in your target demographics. Then establish a social media presence on those platforms. Connect with online influencers on those platforms who have sway with your key demographics. Zero in on the specific areas where your target audience is concentrated and promote your videos there.

It’s also important to know how your audience prefers to communicate. Do they like e-mail? Direct messaging through their preferred social media platform? Do they hang out in the comments of things you post? Knowing that will help you to connect with them more effectively.

Cater to Your Audience

Now that you know who your audience is, where best to find them, and how best to communicate with them, it’s time to start making videos geared towards them. Do things that you think will appeal to your target audience, based on the research you’ve done. Promote them on the social media channels you’ve cultivated, and in all the places where you’ve established that your audience can be found.

Then, see how they like it. Is your audience responding to your videos the way you’d hoped? Are your videos being shared? Is your audience growing steadily over time? How many people are you reaching with each video? Is one type of video doing better than another? What are people saying about your videos in the comments sections of YouTube and of the social media platforms where you’re promoting them?

It’s also important to know how people are finding your videos. Which social media platforms are they being linked from most often? What search terms are people using to find your videos on Google or YouTube? Look at the analytics from Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc. and see what insights you can glean.

Then, adjust your videos and promotion accordingly. If one type of video is doing better than another, make more of that type. If a lot of people are commenting that they’d like to see you do something, or not do something, listen to them. Create videos around the popular search terms that people are using to find you, in order to maximize SEO. Use the data you’ve collected to make better, more popular videos and grow your audience.

Data can be a bit daunting for creative types, but it’s essential if you want to be successful at video publishing. There are plenty of tools to help you collect and analyze all the important data surrounding your videos and organize it into clear insights to help you figure out how to act in response. You can even add someone to your team who understands data better than you do and can make recommendations based on it. By using data more effectively, you can reach more people in your target audience and expand your viewership significantly over time.