A Test - Does Promoting = Less Views?...

just Moto

just Moto

I Love YTtalk
Another thread on here got me thinking...

Is initial self promotion of our videos doing more harm than good when it comes to audience retention? We want youtube to recognise our video as one that's well watched so they promote it for us... so maybe it is best just to leave it up to our loyal subscribers who WANT to watch the video that way the video is being watched to the end and getting a high retention rate. After giving it some thought, I can see promoting the video across all different levels straight off the bat being counter productive.

I am uploading a video this Monday and there will be no promotion of it at all. I'm leaving it up to the subscribers to watch (hopefully to the end), enjoy (hopefully), and will get back to you with some results in the coming weeks.

MM
 
Oooohhh~ Good luck! I'm watching this thread ^^

But how is your audience retention when you promote tho? Is it any different from your other sources?

Another thing I've been thinking for a while now is how long would it take for youtube to notice a good retention for it to start "promoting"? Does it only take account of one video or does it look at the retention for all of the videos in the channel? Does it look for weekly, monthly or lifetime retention? Ya get me? So many questions, so little resources.

This might take a few months to work tho, don't forget to post your findings ^^ Thank you for doing this.
 
But promoting the video can help you gain more subs because what if by you promoting the video a new person that subs would have never seen that video other wise? but your thought process is something to think about possibly idk
 
Brinkbabe91 said:
But promoting the video can help you gain more subs because what if by you promoting the video a new person that subs would have never seen that video other wise? but your thought process is something to think about possibly idk
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That's true. It will be a trade off for subscribers gained through a suggested video. My main aim is to get youtube to promote my video in suggested videos. This happened with one recently and it's almost 300K views in 3 weeks. I think alot of people get tired seeing similar vids posted in the same areas and just aren't watching them to the end. However if I rely on a percentage of my subscribers who I know enjoy watching them to the end or just click, go yeah... nah.. nahhh! and leave making the retention rate far less than it could be.. well... I'll have to keep you posted on that one :)

wasabiroots said:
Oooohhh~ Good luck! I'm watching this thread ^^

But how is your audience retention when you promote tho? Is it any different from your other sources?

Another thing I've been thinking for a while now is how long would it take for youtube to notice a good retention for it to start "promoting"? Does it only take account of one video or does it look at the retention for all of the videos in the channel? Does it look for weekly, monthly or lifetime retention? Ya get me? So many questions, so little resources.

This might take a few months to work tho, don't forget to post your findings ^^ Thank you for doing this.
Click to expand...

The last video I put up last week has seen an audience retention of 59% (about 5-6 minutes of a 10 minute video) however it has failed to make it into the YouTube suggested videos. Also I think it's view count could be alot higher by now. Could just be the content though and my deluded expectations haha.

The video I put up that YouTube promoted seemed to get picked up on the first or second day. It only has 30% retention but was a 24 minute video so 7 minute averages... Could it of been better if I hadn't of promoted it? Maybe. Maybe not. It did also accumulate a hell of alot of thumbs up fast, so again, could of just been the right content in the right order.

This next upload will be good just to see how things pan out for it without any promotion at all as its the same length as the one posted last week and similar content. I'll be able to post up some comparison pics of the analytics between the two videos.
 
motomadness said:
Another thread on here got me thinking...

Is initial self promotion of our videos doing more harm than good when it comes to audience retention? We want youtube to recognise our video as one that's well watched so they promote it for us... so maybe it is best just to leave it up to our loyal subscribers who WANT to watch the video that way the video is being watched to the end and getting a high retention rate. After giving it some thought, I can see promoting the video across all different levels straight off the bat being counter productive.

I am uploading a video this Monday and there will be no promotion of it at all. I'm leaving it up to the subscribers to watch (hopefully to the end), enjoy (hopefully), and will get back to you with some results in the coming weeks.

MM
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Without a lot of subscribers you will depend on people sharing or a hot search topic. Besides that you are at the mercy of optimum SEO, perfect tags and titles that just happen to get searched for, or luck. You need that initial push in my opinion unless you have a fan base. This is how I get most of my views, I push them out there. Pet videos are easy to do this with though, a lot of videos types aren't.
 
YouTuber1978 said:
This is 100% the smartest thing you've done. Just be patient and give it time. And by patient I mean be prepared to wait 3-6 months if you're a small channel (under 2,000 subs). This will definitely pay off in the long run.
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Almost at 20 thou subs which is good for the initial push. I'll be interested to see how this pans out. So far it's not looking good :p

Time will tell. I'll just have to learn some patience!

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