GuerrillaDayProject
Guerrilla Day Players
Welcome to the exciting world of video production, where you and tens of thousands of strangers will simultaneously compete for each others attention. Once upon a time, a video was published to youtube, and thousands of people had the opportunity to watch it on the day it was released. But those days are long gone, even YouTube prescribes a regiment of community involvement watching other producers content in order to stimulate traffic to your own page. But the ugly truth, is that most people that publish videos online are only interested in watching their own views grow, comments accumulate, and subscribers increase. The prospect of supporting another producer is foreign. Even though it is the only way to see that the community survives.
When we start conversations with YouTubers, the results are a varied as people. But a few constants remain.
YouTubers are selfish:
This is most apparent in commenting etiquette. After watching a producers video and leaving a comment, the reciprocation of this time spent, is often a two word response on the same producers page. Seldom if ever does a fellow track back to your channel and watch much less comment on your own videos. In fact, most of the comments that end up on our current videos from these producers, are a continued conversation about the comment that we left on their video. How does that encourage traffic on our page.
Producers will often leave irrelevant plugs to come watch their videos or subscribe to their channel, and this would be fine if a moment was taken to comment on the actual video as well. But most YouTubers being selfish, are more likely to spam than to give a damn.
YouTube uses Quantitative Data
If your video receives less than 10,000 views in it's first 48 hours-- Only your subscribers will see that video. Sure excellent meta data, tags, and video responses are a fine way to pull in the occassional view. But if you're video never made it to the featured page, you can count the hundreds of views while you dust your museum exhibit of unwatched content.
Because of this ridiculous window, trends and techniques for gaining traffic have been developed, but YouTube does it's best to make this impossible to gauge. Some say Tuesdays-Thursdays 2pm-4pm are prime time for the bored office worker. Others that Summer means a bolster in views from school out of session. But finding YouTube Account Holders logged in, is as much fun as divining a well-- and you're apt to fall down there, and Lassie's a TV show, so your cries for help won't save you.
You need to find a large number of commenters and likers and sharers in order to get the "Most Discussed" bump as well, so large, that we have no idea as to when YouTube offers that nod, it's the Holy Grail of viral videos, it would seem.
Most Traffic Views Anonymously
As previously mentioned, the typical video is fighting an uphill battle for acknowledgement. So be sure to use Annontations with subscription links, links in your description, and incorporate some video responses, annotations, or uniquely tagged videos to create a down the rabbit hole effect. When you have a viewer engaged, you must encourage them to watch more of your content, and to watch it as a registered account willing to write a few kind or likely vicious words. But hey, no such thing as bad press...
There is such thing.
Specifically in this community, which it would seems aims to bolster the fellow producer. We have seen a negative response from producers in boats no different from our own. Inflammatory cries against Trolling discourage producers from commenting on videos in a promotional way. But to tell someone that they have a good video, and that you've made a similar video-- is a play from the YouTube Playbook. Yet small minded people, do not see the benefit of cross promotion. Video Responses get ignored 99% of the time. And even starting conversations on threads in forums is met with pitchforks and torches. If you're afraid of leaving comments, then you may want to upload your videos directly to iTunes, where they will be attention starved to death. The point of YouTube is the community, the benefit is the dedicated traffic pool, but these things are disappearing daily with each new Vevo channel or the flood of media recorded from screens.
While on the Subject of Publishing Screen Captures:
SOPA/PIPA would have crushed a lot of artists and we may have never said ever to another Beiber, but at the same time limiting the amount of IP violations could have filtered out a ton of screen captures, which gain traffic for established content (perviously marketed by millions of dollars), and create revenue for producers that didn't produce much of anything. If I created audience's commentary on a full episode of MadMen, most viewers would find this insulting to the show, but in for some reason there is a community willing to watch each other play with themselves and talk about it.
Promoting your video with 3rd Party Tools
There are solutions to the new face of YouTube. Creating a quality video alone will not be enough to gain the traffic it will need to survive. Obviously posting your video to cites like FaceBook and Twitter seems okay in everyone's mind. After all this is your network of friends, you all joined the network to share this kind of content with each other.
There is a grey area when it comes to other social networks, places like FireViews and YouLikeHits. These are not as elegant in the distinction between YouTube itself. Many producers, feel that it is gaming the system to promote a video in a community full of like minded producers. YouTube does nothing to encourage community participation, well nothing positive. The truth is YouTube shows there preference to million dollar marketers, the promoted video one of the few tools that a producer feels they have to gain traffic, costs more than the views gained. So if YouTube itself, allows for a producer to pay for traffic. A free community that barters in time, is no stretch of the system. The TOS on YouTube state that you may not automate a process beyond the rate of human interaction. These networks cluster YouTube videos and allow another user to gain traffic at the same rate at which they are offering it. The sites do not guarantee that the feedback comes back to your channel. In fact, we've wasted a lot of time gaining hundreds of views that only count on YouTube as a few dozen.
When we were offered partnership by FullScreen we gave our Accounts Man a list of all of the sites that we promote our videos on, and before we were given partnership we had this list green lit to avoid an adsense violation, that we'd been so weary of that until signing with FullScreen we'd not even registered with AdSense. Those guys are like Nazi's, more specifically Soup Nazi's but you get the point.
No matter how you do it
Sub 4 Sub, Box 4 Box, Comment 4 Comment. These are practices that everyone should follow-- having to solicite this kind of interaction is simply a biproduct of the narcissistic society that we are participating in. Most users are more concerned with there image than they are with their traffic, but because the game has changed, if you want to be successful on YouTube you must help others to gain it first. YouTube has followed the global trend and made sharing platforms a popularity contest. Imagine how different YouTube would be if instead of filtering through you and your subscriptions typical behavior, it curated videos similar to one another. Oh wait, that was how it was until the Reply Girls came into the picture and made a killing. So now enjoy the handfull of videos that Google thinks you should watch on "YouTube: A Place for Friends"
But don't Take My Word for it:
When we start conversations with YouTubers, the results are a varied as people. But a few constants remain.
YouTubers are selfish:
This is most apparent in commenting etiquette. After watching a producers video and leaving a comment, the reciprocation of this time spent, is often a two word response on the same producers page. Seldom if ever does a fellow track back to your channel and watch much less comment on your own videos. In fact, most of the comments that end up on our current videos from these producers, are a continued conversation about the comment that we left on their video. How does that encourage traffic on our page.
Producers will often leave irrelevant plugs to come watch their videos or subscribe to their channel, and this would be fine if a moment was taken to comment on the actual video as well. But most YouTubers being selfish, are more likely to spam than to give a damn.
YouTube uses Quantitative Data
If your video receives less than 10,000 views in it's first 48 hours-- Only your subscribers will see that video. Sure excellent meta data, tags, and video responses are a fine way to pull in the occassional view. But if you're video never made it to the featured page, you can count the hundreds of views while you dust your museum exhibit of unwatched content.
Because of this ridiculous window, trends and techniques for gaining traffic have been developed, but YouTube does it's best to make this impossible to gauge. Some say Tuesdays-Thursdays 2pm-4pm are prime time for the bored office worker. Others that Summer means a bolster in views from school out of session. But finding YouTube Account Holders logged in, is as much fun as divining a well-- and you're apt to fall down there, and Lassie's a TV show, so your cries for help won't save you.
You need to find a large number of commenters and likers and sharers in order to get the "Most Discussed" bump as well, so large, that we have no idea as to when YouTube offers that nod, it's the Holy Grail of viral videos, it would seem.
Most Traffic Views Anonymously
As previously mentioned, the typical video is fighting an uphill battle for acknowledgement. So be sure to use Annontations with subscription links, links in your description, and incorporate some video responses, annotations, or uniquely tagged videos to create a down the rabbit hole effect. When you have a viewer engaged, you must encourage them to watch more of your content, and to watch it as a registered account willing to write a few kind or likely vicious words. But hey, no such thing as bad press...
There is such thing.
Specifically in this community, which it would seems aims to bolster the fellow producer. We have seen a negative response from producers in boats no different from our own. Inflammatory cries against Trolling discourage producers from commenting on videos in a promotional way. But to tell someone that they have a good video, and that you've made a similar video-- is a play from the YouTube Playbook. Yet small minded people, do not see the benefit of cross promotion. Video Responses get ignored 99% of the time. And even starting conversations on threads in forums is met with pitchforks and torches. If you're afraid of leaving comments, then you may want to upload your videos directly to iTunes, where they will be attention starved to death. The point of YouTube is the community, the benefit is the dedicated traffic pool, but these things are disappearing daily with each new Vevo channel or the flood of media recorded from screens.
While on the Subject of Publishing Screen Captures:
SOPA/PIPA would have crushed a lot of artists and we may have never said ever to another Beiber, but at the same time limiting the amount of IP violations could have filtered out a ton of screen captures, which gain traffic for established content (perviously marketed by millions of dollars), and create revenue for producers that didn't produce much of anything. If I created audience's commentary on a full episode of MadMen, most viewers would find this insulting to the show, but in for some reason there is a community willing to watch each other play with themselves and talk about it.
Promoting your video with 3rd Party Tools
There are solutions to the new face of YouTube. Creating a quality video alone will not be enough to gain the traffic it will need to survive. Obviously posting your video to cites like FaceBook and Twitter seems okay in everyone's mind. After all this is your network of friends, you all joined the network to share this kind of content with each other.
There is a grey area when it comes to other social networks, places like FireViews and YouLikeHits. These are not as elegant in the distinction between YouTube itself. Many producers, feel that it is gaming the system to promote a video in a community full of like minded producers. YouTube does nothing to encourage community participation, well nothing positive. The truth is YouTube shows there preference to million dollar marketers, the promoted video one of the few tools that a producer feels they have to gain traffic, costs more than the views gained. So if YouTube itself, allows for a producer to pay for traffic. A free community that barters in time, is no stretch of the system. The TOS on YouTube state that you may not automate a process beyond the rate of human interaction. These networks cluster YouTube videos and allow another user to gain traffic at the same rate at which they are offering it. The sites do not guarantee that the feedback comes back to your channel. In fact, we've wasted a lot of time gaining hundreds of views that only count on YouTube as a few dozen.
When we were offered partnership by FullScreen we gave our Accounts Man a list of all of the sites that we promote our videos on, and before we were given partnership we had this list green lit to avoid an adsense violation, that we'd been so weary of that until signing with FullScreen we'd not even registered with AdSense. Those guys are like Nazi's, more specifically Soup Nazi's but you get the point.
No matter how you do it
Sub 4 Sub, Box 4 Box, Comment 4 Comment. These are practices that everyone should follow-- having to solicite this kind of interaction is simply a biproduct of the narcissistic society that we are participating in. Most users are more concerned with there image than they are with their traffic, but because the game has changed, if you want to be successful on YouTube you must help others to gain it first. YouTube has followed the global trend and made sharing platforms a popularity contest. Imagine how different YouTube would be if instead of filtering through you and your subscriptions typical behavior, it curated videos similar to one another. Oh wait, that was how it was until the Reply Girls came into the picture and made a killing. So now enjoy the handfull of videos that Google thinks you should watch on "YouTube: A Place for Friends"
But don't Take My Word for it:
