YouTube have recently modified the statistics they give on videos. The feature that caught my eye is called Hotspots. It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t think it’s fully thought out yet. Either that, or the help doesn’t explain it well enough.

The idea, according to YouTube, is to show “The ups and downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length. The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer viewers are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again.”

So it’s comparing your video against all other videos for something like how many people are watching it compared to the same point in other videos. Nice idea, but it leads to some very weird graphs. I’ve included two examples of videos of mine. One has over 17,000 views, the other has over 22,000 views, so there should be enough data for a statistically valid sample.

How on earth do you interpret these graphs? Where’s the actionable insight? The second graph makes it look like more people are watching the end of my video than are watching the start, which is clearly nonsense!

I think it would be better if there was another graph that just showed the viewership for your own video at each point, without reference to other videos. The graph would nearly always be a line descending from a high point at the start, it would probably just be a question of how quickly the line drops off. But I think that would give people much more actionable knowledge.

That’s what analytics really comes down to: actionable insights. What can I do as a result of seeing this piece of data?

Here are five different ways people are using Twitter that you might find useful for your business:

1. Links to your articles
This type of feed just provides a link every time you post a new article. It can be automatically created by your content management software.
Benefit: it alerts followers when there’s something new to be read.
Drawback: it can get monotonous, and gets less effective if you publish too often.
Example: @guardiantech – The Guardian’s technology feed.

Interesting links to other sites
Rather than linking to your own articles, you can aim to be an interesting source of links to other information.
Benefit: a useful community service that casts you as a source for news, helps to build your brand.
Drawback: doesn’t engage people directly with your own products, services and information.
Example: @smashingmag – Smashing Magazine – An online magazine for designers and developers.

Customer support
You can set up searches on Twitter to find customers who mention your product and are having problems. You can then respond. For example, I posted a message saying that I was having trouble purchasing an image from iStockPhoto.com. A representative of the company then contacted me to get in touch. (Actually, I’m not sure if he was an employee or just a member of the community offering support.)
Benefit: rapid alerts if something goes wrong, and a quick chance to provide good customer support.
Drawback: time-consuming, reactive rather than proactive.
Example: @rackspace – the Rackspace hosting company.

Behind the scenes
Here, you tweet about what’s really going on in the company. Sometimes this is done under the name of the person, rather than the company itself.
Benefit: Personalises the brand and shows that there’s real people involved.
Drawback: only one person’s view, can appear unprofessional if not done well.
Examples: @krishgm – Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy. @NobleF1 – Autosport F1 Editor Jon Noble.

Supplying content
Sometimes you can put snippets of fully-formed content on Twitter. @VizTopTips publishes very short pieces of content exactly as they would appear in the magazine in their short Top Tips column.
Benefit: readers can experience your unique information and discover (or be reminded) how good it is.
Drawback: content must be good and relevant.

This list of 50 ideas on using Twitter for Business, by Chris Brogan, should get magazine publishers started with thinking how they might use Twitter to build their reader communities.