I should've gone full clickbait title and said "...you won't believe what happened" but it's actually not that hard to believe, because barely anything happened
So I restarted my dead channel a month ago and for the first 4 videos I didn't do any kind of promotion, I didn't even put a channel link in my signature here. I wanted to see what YouTube would do for me. I ended up getting about 25 views total through search/suggested. I'm already questioning whether the strategy of "no promotion to keep retention high" would even work with my comedy content because:
So anyway, I chose to try out promotion for my Halloween sketch. I didn't expect many subs because it wasn't targeted (how would I target comedy) but I was surprised about even the small number of "curiosity clicks" (as Crown calls it.)
Here's what I did:
Judging by the realtime views that I watched like a hawk, this forum actually "worked best".
The funniest and also most disturbing thing was that my G+ community post received 6 +1s, but during all that time I received 0 views, so these people just clicked the button hoping I'd check them out. Now I know that there's not much to be expected from the promotion communities on G+ or Reddit, but even if I found a community that fit, I would have to be an active member and I don't want to spend hours on it just for getting a few clicks. (That feels wrong in many ways.)
BTW, this was NOT a promotion post , I love this community and I'm interested in your thoughts/experiences, especially if you do comedy.
ETA: I want to mention the 'top comment' results as well. I got 400 upvotes on a popular video, received 40 views, 3 subs and the retention for that day is 40%. Not too great.
So I restarted my dead channel a month ago and for the first 4 videos I didn't do any kind of promotion, I didn't even put a channel link in my signature here. I wanted to see what YouTube would do for me. I ended up getting about 25 views total through search/suggested. I'm already questioning whether the strategy of "no promotion to keep retention high" would even work with my comedy content because:
- the titles/keywords aren't something that's searched for
- YT doesn't feel the need to pair me with other comedy videos (it suggested my vid on a psychology video just because of the similar title)
- even if I was suggested on comedy videos, humour is so highly subjective so there's no guarantee the viewer will enjoy my stuff
So anyway, I chose to try out promotion for my Halloween sketch. I didn't expect many subs because it wasn't targeted (how would I target comedy) but I was surprised about even the small number of "curiosity clicks" (as Crown calls it.)
Here's what I did:
- Tweet (to 150 followers)
- Tumblr post with hashtags
- Google+ post with hashtags
- Google+ post in the biggest promotion community
- Reddit post in /r/youtubers Show-Off thread
- Reddit post in the biggest promotion subreddit
- YTtalk thread in promotion forum
- YTtalk thread in main forum (not just for promotion, lol)
- Witty comments on about 15 big YouTuber videos within the first half hour
Judging by the realtime views that I watched like a hawk, this forum actually "worked best".
The funniest and also most disturbing thing was that my G+ community post received 6 +1s, but during all that time I received 0 views, so these people just clicked the button hoping I'd check them out. Now I know that there's not much to be expected from the promotion communities on G+ or Reddit, but even if I found a community that fit, I would have to be an active member and I don't want to spend hours on it just for getting a few clicks. (That feels wrong in many ways.)
BTW, this was NOT a promotion post , I love this community and I'm interested in your thoughts/experiences, especially if you do comedy.
ETA: I want to mention the 'top comment' results as well. I got 400 upvotes on a popular video, received 40 views, 3 subs and the retention for that day is 40%. Not too great.
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