Data Point: 32% of professional organizations have inactive YouTube accounts
From Our Research:
Waveform Intelligence reviewed 2,824 professional organizations, associations, and trade unions and found that YouTube had the highest rates of inactivity among widely used public social platforms (excluding LinkedIn), with nearly half of those with an account not publishing any videos to the platform in Q3 2024.
Analysis: Our data suggests that, besides the minor exodus from X/Twitter over the past year, even more organizations are not actively using their YouTube accounts—publishing either annually (e.g., for annual membership meetings) or without a regimented calendar.
Video is a difficult format to execute—let alone master. Our review suggests that many organizations have decided to deprioritize publishing on YouTube instead of investing more resources in content creation. This may also be a factor in the slow adoption of TikTok, where just 8% of the organizations we reviewed had an account at all.
Missed Opportunities: These organizations with inactive YouTube accounts reach a combined 1.1 million subscribers. While some of these subscribers might occasionally come across older videos, the reality is likely more disappointing: many aren’t engaging at all—or even worse, they’re interacting with competitors’ content instead. This missed opportunity leaves a significant audience untapped, potentially shifting their attention elsewhere.
Additionally, the experience that content teams get from publishing across multiple platforms may lead to beneficial returns. In Q3 2024, among organizations with an active YouTube account, their engagement per video on Instagram was more than five times higher than that of those organizations that had stopped publishing on YouTube.
Too many marketing executives and practitioners don’t know how their efforts compare to those of their peers. It’s easy to deprioritize a platform until you see how others are finding success there. If you're wondering how your organization stacks up, get in touch.
