Channel Promotion and Retention Rate

SweetsAndCandy

SweetsAndCandy

Well-Known Member
Hi Everyone,


over the last months I tried to promote one of my channels on social media such as Reddit as well as on youtube itself (by commenting on other videos).

As a result, the traffic on this channel went up as expected. I get more views (and therefore watchtime) due to the promotion activities. However, I noticed that this is only very low retention traffic and therefore it was ruining my Retention Rate.

So my questions are: in your opinion, do you think it is wise to continue to promote the channel? (gaining views and watchtime is obviously a good thing, but the significant lower retention rate could be a problem). Also, do you have similar experiences with low retention rates due to channel promotion on social media???


Thanks for your opinion

SweetsAndCandy
 
I think it is absolutely wise to promote your channel if you want it to actually grow.
Before you start to worry, let me ask you: How could low retention rate potentially be a problem?

Because, as I see it, that's more of a tuning tool than a base channel tool.
If you have low retention, they didn't stay for the whole video.
Which means either change your content strategy (new stuff) or promotion strategy (new places).

But that's not a problem, yo. That's a solution.
 
SweetsAndCandy said:
Hi Everyone,


over the last months I tried to promote one of my channels on social media such as Reddit as well as on youtube itself (by commenting on other videos).

As a result, the traffic on this channel went up as expected. I get more views (and therefore watchtime) due to the promotion activities. However, I noticed that this is only very low retention traffic and therefore it was ruining my Retention Rate.

So my questions are: in your opinion, do you think it is wise to continue to promote the channel? (gaining views and watchtime is obviously a good thing, but the significant lower retention rate could be a problem). Also, do you have similar experiences with low retention rates due to channel promotion on social media???


Thanks for your opinion

SweetsAndCandy
Click to expand...

Looking at your channel, you're in the kids vertical. Your target audience is 2-5 year olds. Ask yourself the simple question, where is my audience?
If 2-5 y.o's are on reddit, it makes sense to promote there to them.
If 2-5 y.o.'s comment on other videos and read comments and click the links, it makes sense to do comment promoting.
The fact is, they are not. 2-5 y.o's are not on external social nor do most of them have access to nor can read and write comments.

You're right, the low retention will kill your channel, if it has not done so already.
It's fairly obvious that the bulk of your subs are s4s. 6k subs with 20-100 views on most videos in the past month is indicative of high s4s activity.
While s4s is a viable and often-used "strategy" to bootstrap a channel on launch (especially in the kids/toys vertical), continuing it into the thousands is seriously detrimental. In the best case, s4s generally should not proceed to more than 1.5-2k subs. Anything above that and you are killing your channel due to low retention and very low view:sub ratios.
The algo looks at your channel, sees 6k subs, but only 10 are watching (and 10% of the vid at that), and determines there is something seriously wrong with this channel. In this case, it will never place your videos in front of real viewers, which is what appears to be happening to your videos.

You need to take some serious actions to attempt to recover your channel.
 
KiddieToysReview said:
Looking at your channel, you're in the kids vertical. Your target audience is 2-5 year olds. Ask yourself the simple question, where is my audience?
If 2-5 y.o's are on reddit, it makes sense to promote there to them.
If 2-5 y.o.'s comment on other videos and read comments and click the links, it makes sense to do comment promoting.
The fact is, they are not. 2-5 y.o's are not on external social nor do most of them have access to nor can read and write comments.

You're right, the low retention will kill your channel, if it has not done so already.
It's fairly obvious that the bulk of your subs are s4s. 6k subs with 20-100 views on most videos in the past month is indicative of high s4s activity.
While s4s is a viable and often-used "strategy" to bootstrap a channel on launch (especially in the kids/toys vertical), continuing it into the thousands is seriously detrimental. In the best case, s4s generally should not proceed to more than 1.5-2k subs. Anything above that and you are killing your channel due to low retention and very low view:sub ratios.
The algo looks at your channel, sees 6k subs, but only 10 are watching (and 10% of the vid at that), and determines there is something seriously wrong with this channel. In this case, it will never place your videos in front of real viewers, which is what appears to be happening to your videos.

You need to take some serious actions to attempt to recover your channel.
Click to expand...


Hi KiddieToysReview,


thank you for your insightful answer. You are (almost) right. I was not doing S4S, however, I was heavily commenting on other videos in the kids-vertical. In the beginning it was really tempting to do this since views and subs went up. But in the end I came to the same conclusion you mentioned in your reply above. It's not a good thing due to low retention rate and the mentioned bad sub/view ration. So I stopped commenting about 7 months ago. As a result, retention rate slightly recovered to about 30 % and views dropped significantly.

Since I really appreciate your opinion, do you have any good idea how to solve the problem?[DOUBLEPOST=1494337835,1494337627][/DOUBLEPOST]
ProfessionalRik said:
Before you start to worry, let me ask you: How could low retention rate potentially be a problem?
Click to expand...


Thank you for your reply. I think retention rate is a relatively important factor for the ranking algorithm. therefore the worry.
 
I'd say keep promoting your channel on Youtube (by being nice in the comments), Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc...Your channel can never have enough promotion in my opinion. So keep doing that. However...I'd avoid the sub4sub group. Where people only care about the numbers. They will never care about you, your content, what you're trying to do and will never support you...ever. So be weary and cautious of those. A couple sites I tried for promotion I found out were only sub4subs and I was extremely disappointed.

Just try not to make the same mistake I did. =] And good luck.
 
SweetsAndCandy said:
Hi KiddieToysReview,


thank you for your insightful answer. You are (almost) right. I was not doing S4S, however, I was heavily commenting on other videos in the kids-vertical. In the beginning it was really tempting to do this since views and subs went up. But in the end I came to the same conclusion you mentioned in your reply above. It's not a good thing due to low retention rate and the mentioned bad sub/view ration. So I stopped commenting about 7 months ago. As a result, retention rate slightly recovered to about 30 % and views dropped significantly.

Since I really appreciate your opinion, do you have any good idea how to solve the problem?[DOUBLEPOST=1494337835,1494337627][/DOUBLEPOST]


Thank you for your reply. I think retention rate is a relatively important factor for the ranking algorithm. therefore the worry.
Click to expand...

"Heavily commenting in other kids channels" with many comments from other kids channels = s4s loop. There's not really much distinction. Anyways...

There are a number of things you can try (in no particular order):
1. pick a few channels in the 10-50k sub range in your sub-vertical that are growing and carefully analyse their videos, seo, and try to match their strategies. If they are growing and getting 100k-1M views/video, it means they are hitting current interest trends in surprise eggs. Look to make similar videos with your own creative input and interpretation.
2. aim to make a viral/gateway video - see if you can come up with an original idea. For example, there was a channel that got some insane views when they (software) colored Kinder Joy eggs in various colors - that video went viral and served as their gateway.
3. try targeting your audience (young kids) via Adwords. Way to do this is to target parents in the 22-35 age range, device target to mobile and tablet, and time target to early afternoon weekdays and weekends daytime. These are the times kids watch on their parents' devices. You'd need a significant $ investment in the campaign to break out into self perpetuating growth.
4. don't waste time and resources promoting outside Yt - it's just other kids channel creators all spamming their own links to other kids channel creators[DOUBLEPOST=1494341827][/DOUBLEPOST]
Farley Productions said:
I'd say keep promoting your channel on Youtube (by being nice in the comments), Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc...
Click to expand...

This is, sorry to say, bad advice. The OP's target audience (2-5 year old kids) do not use those social media platforms. What the OP will do is end up promoting to other kids channel owners, that will result in s4s type activity and further cause low retention and high bounce rates from his videos.
Those social networks may work for internet marketers, health, makeup, gamers channels, etc, but they do not work for kids and toys channels. Instagram may work for kids in the 10+ age group, but conversion rates will likely be way less than 1%, closer to 0.1%
 
on the flip side of the coin that everyone seems to be discussing here: if you don't care for the quality of views- comments and likes which such creator supporting another creator loopholes do deliver, then it's quite honestly fine. any interaction with your video gives a possible 'real viewer' a chance of seeing it, so don't worry about retention rate unless you really want to sell your channel for being engaging.

unless you're looking for a sponsorship deal with a large brand, the retention rate is little more than a graph to sigh at occasionally.
 
KiddieToysReview said:
3. try targeting your audience (young kids) via Adwords. Way to do this is to target parents in the 22-35 age range, device target to mobile and tablet, and time target to early afternoon weekdays and weekends daytime. These are the times kids watch on their parents' devices. You'd need a significant $ investment in the campaign to break out into self perpetuating growth.
Click to expand...

Is the ad scheduling based on your own time zone or the viewers time zone? Is it possible to do a campaign that is for all countries and the ad is scheduled at the same relative time everywhere?
 
ToysForKids said:
Is the ad scheduling based on your own time zone or the viewers time zone? Is it possible to do a campaign that is for all countries and the ad is scheduled at the same relative time everywhere?
Click to expand...

It would be the viewers' timeframe. So if I want to reach kids in the US after school, target Eastern and Western US timezones appropriately.
Not that I'm aware of. The closest would be a manual tinkering on a 24 hour campaign, but you isolate to the major timezones' afternoon. Alternatively you can setup several campaigns each targeting a timezone region.
 
Could some educate me as to what is considered as good retention. For example;

Channel - less 1 year old/ less than 100 subs - good retention: .... Bad retention:....
Channel - less 2 year old/ less than 1000 subs - good retention: .... Bad retention:....
 
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