Using YouTube's Social Media Analytics for Engineering Educators

Videos are an effective means of knowledge delivery and educators are increasingly using videos as part of their pedagogy. While many universities have digital teaching and learning platforms, most of these platforms are not specifically designed for video-based tuition. Social media platforms, however, have become a popular choice for the uploading of educational content. YouTube is the largest media sharing platform worldwide and provides educators the capacity to share their knowledge with a global audience. In so doing, YouTube provides extensive metrics as part of its social media analytics which are powerful tools that educators can use to improve their educational content and increase their impact on the platform. While there has been some scholarly activity on social media analytics, few, if any, publications are aimed at explaining what YouTube's social media analytics are and how educators can use them to improve their content. This article aims to critically explain and analyse 14 of YouTube's social media analytics to assist educators in increasing their impact. The article reports on the success of numerous engineering tutorial videos published in 2020 and 2021 that have accrued over 1 million views on YouTube. The aim of this article is to provide the reader with practical tools to improve their own offerings on public networks such as YouTube. Since as much as 60% of all YouTube views originate from YouTube's recommendations rather than from direct search queries, YouTube's recommender system is also presented in this article.