Advice for Political Channels or Channels with more Serious Subjects?

[Rae Talks]

Hey everyone,

I've been making videos for a little over a year now and although my channel is doing alright, I was hoping to get advice on increasing channel growth. I feel that my quality is at a pretty high level compared to where I started, and my views are usually higher than my subscriber count. But that's the issue I'm having, I can't seem to turn many of my viewers into subscribers.

My videos are usually about politics, racism, sexism, etc. Somewhat similar to Laci Green or MTV Decoded.

Does anyone have any advice for gaining subscribers for channels that cover more serious subjects? I've been trying to get into tumblr and that seems to have helped a little.

 

[Political Junkie News]

Hey friend. I just checked out your channel.
It's refreshing to see someone else doing current events. Haha. I always feel drowned in the ocean of gaming cat channels.
Before I critique, just know that you have more subs than me, so yeah, not an expert here.
First, your production values seem pretty good. Lighting is nice, camera focused on you, thumbnails look good.

I've experiened my greatest spikes in views chasing big events and people. I can see that you've tried that as well with your raven/Taylor swift/charleston reactions.

One piece of advice I can give is to present visuals in some way. That has always brought me a higher audience retention. You mentioned laci green. In her videos if she says "15% of feminists like David Hasselhof" then usually an animated 15% will appear (or something like that. You get what I mean). Her simple animations keep the audience engaged.
I've found more is better, so it depends on how much time you have to make graphics.

On the topic of audience retention, have you considered muting your branded intro and just starting the discussion while your little animation plays? That first 5 seconds is where you can lose so many people. Why make them wait for the content?

The other option of course, is to simply flood the market with low edited commentary and see what sticks. Many viable news channels on youtube (tyt, secular talk, David Pakman) posted upwards of 10 videos a day and forced their way onto the scene. I don't know how feasible that still is in 2015.

Lastly, let me address the way you present yourself. I'm not sure what to say. What's your target audience? You come off to me like you're trying to emulate the quirky vlogger types, which is totally cool if you're aiming at younger people. But you mentioned "serious" topics and "politics" which usually would target "older" folks, so that may require some fine tuning on your end.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I don't do sub4sub, but we can buddy up if you like. It's hard to find people in this genre.[DOUBLEPOST=1445415136,1445410540][/DOUBLEPOST]One other thing I just noticed when going to your channel again:
your channel art needs some updating. Your profile pic is not a sharp image (like unfocused, or is that just my slow internet?). You channel banner doesn't really tell anyone aht they can expect when they sibscribe. talk about "it"? talk about what, exactly? I know what you were trying to do there, but I just think vagueness is not a good marketing strategy.

Ok. I'll leave you alone now. I hope all this criticism comes off as constructive. Overall I think it's good that you are tackling important topics like race, and you have a good personality/high production value.

 

[Harpuia]

As someone who almost did a political channel myself, I can say that I knew that current events channels will have a lower sub to view ratio than most other channels. The reason for this is because people go there to see the issue at hand, not so much the Youtuber. You probably need to show yourself in 4-5 videos or do something super controversial to get noticed (ala Nicole Arbour), but the latter will get you subscribers for the wrong reasons.

Also, maybe you might wanna broaden your topics as well so you can create gateway videos to bring in a bigger audience. Most of your current events videos seem to be on topics that people aren't talking about very often. Bigger topics often draw bigger crowds with bring in more subscribers.

When I had my political blog back in 2011, I always went to Google News, and blogged about something that I saw on the front page of Google under World, U.S., Finance, or Entertainment. If it weren't in the front page, chances are few were using it as a watercooler topic. An exception to this rule is if it was something I was strongly passionate about that had to be said. (Great example for me is usually whenever a church scandal rose up or story about some harassment of minorities in my town.) or something that I thought was a hot topic but nobody talked about (but it has to have a lot of potential to get noticed).