What to do about other youtubers spamming your video?

[FamilyToyReview]

Hello,

I have a toy unboxing channel. Most of the comments and interaction we receive from the community are from other youtubers with similar unboxing channels. I've noticed some are kind of spammy. There's a couple of youtubers who will usually leave a vague "good job" comment as soon as I post a new video. And they do it for almost all my videos and they do it on other videos. It's almost as if they have a script that alerts or autoposts on every new upload.

I've been able to catch some commenters who watched like 10% of our video and left a comment. And that hurts our audience retention which I am learning is an important part of the process. I want to interact with our viewers, but I don't want to encourage people who are just trying to market their channel to come to my videos and hurt the retention rates.

Has anyone else considered these issues before and how have you handled it? I've been pretty busy since Thanksgiving, but am about to start interacting with people again. Usually I try to respond more to people who seem like they watched the video, but I can't help myself and sometimes I end up responding to everyone. Also sometimes the spam filter includes responses that seem legit. I often wonder if I respond to a lot of people in an hour if my responses are also sent to spam.

 

[Brinkbabe91]

Do think the good job post is spammy? Honestly any comment at all helps your youtube analytics so I wouldn't worry about that really. If your worried about video retention then like how long are your videos? For an unboxing sort of channel your going to want to keep it pretty short. Maybe under ten minutes at least? Also consider how interesting is your video really? Is it attention grabbing for just a little bit at first and then it gets stail? Maybe add some fun sound effects appropriatly throughout the video? Just my suggestions

 

[NeddiddleyGaming]

Man, what I know is those people that post those comments are your diehard fans. The 10% of the video thing is a different story, but your diehard fans will tell you that no matter if they see the entire video or not. They have confidence that your video is going to be great. I usually watch the entire video before commenting, but other people are less critical.

 

[FamilyToyReview]

Do think the good job post is spammy? Honestly any comment at all helps your youtube analytics so I wouldn't worry about that really. If your worried about video retention then like how long are your videos? For an unboxing sort of channel your going to want to keep it pretty short. Maybe under ten minutes at least? Also consider how interesting is your video really? Is it attention grabbing for just a little bit at first and then it gets stail? Maybe add some fun sound effects appropriatly throughout the video? Just my suggestions

Thanks for the suggestions. My videos are usually under 10 minutes for sure. Retention rate varies from 30% to 60%.[DOUBLEPOST=1449787610,1449786877][/DOUBLEPOST]

Man, what I know is those people that post those comments are your diehard fans. The 10% of the video thing is a different story, but your diehard fans will tell you that no matter if they see the entire video or not. They have confidence that your video is going to be great. I usually watch the entire video before commenting, but other people are less critical.

I wish that were the case. I probably didn't explain it very well I receive a range of comments that seem legit to ones that are questionable/spammy. When you're managing your account you get a pretty good feel for what is going on. Most of the comments I receive are from other unboxing youtubers and some of them will ask me to view their videos in return. there are definitely youtubers out there trying to market their channel and you can tell when it is pretty obvious.

I enjoyed interacting with them until I realized I think they're hurting the audience retention rate. There were certain times when I had a fresh video and very few commentors and viewers, I was able to look up the audience retention rate of the day of the first comment by country. And the only youtuber who commented from that country only watched like 6% of the video and left a comment. And they were commenting on a lot of my videos. I had suspicions on some and this confirmed it.

I've done some research and apparently audience retention is a pretty important factor in getting your videos to rank well. My big thing right now is improving the quality of my video to improve my audience retention rate. I definitely appreciate having fans. But I wanted to find out from others if they had similar concerns and how they are going about it. I think unboxing video category has gotten pretty popular and I see a ton of new channels!

 

[markkaz]

If you don't want somebody commenting in your community, select "Hide this user's comments on this channel". As you stated, it is easy to detect the other channels spam commenting in order to try to attract attention to their channel.

Many of them post a comment from information that they gathered from the thumbnail, title or general subject but nothing about something that happened in the video.

 

[ZachYT]

I get some 'hey check out my channel' stuff - and I'm generally okay with that. (I often DON'T check out their channel though). But if other people want to, by all means go ahead. My gain is the comment and the view - which helps to create a community.

Also keep in mind - Viewer Session Time is starting to be a bigger factor... so if someone comes to YouTube watches your video and then watches another 2 hours of stuff on YouTube from that one session, that's good things for your channel because you brought them in. (At least that's what I've been told is being worked on.)

 

[Hazzador]

Don't woory too much about ur comment section. Smaller youtubers get spammers and people wanting to sub4sub, but once you get bigger it can get worse! Haters, trolls, loads of people saying first, even death threats if u have a lot of haters... Most people won't even comment something relevant when u get bigger (100,000 subs), just people thirsty for likes on their comment lol

 

[FamilyToyReview]

If you don't want somebody commenting in your community, select "Hide this user's comments on this channel". As you stated, it is easy to detect the other channels spam commenting in order to try to attract attention to their channel.

Many of them post a comment from information that they gathered from the thumbnail, title or general subject but nothing about something that happened in the video.

Yup thats one of the tools I'm using for the ones that are super obvious spam. Others I give the benefit of a doubt. By the way, you're RaceGrooves?! awesome!

My son loves your channel. I got him a hot wheels snap ride set last month and he usually wants to watch a video that matches his toy. So he's been watching your snap rides video over and over so much that i've caught him repeating some of the words. something like "I got this from toy's r us for 12.99 but you can get the individual pack for 3.99" he's two years old and i wish he would learn like that with the educational videos. i just picked up a couple more snap rides today for him. that means i had to get bone shaker too. we even picked up a case of hot wheels a couple of times after watching your videos. so now we have too many hot wheels lol. and we found treasure hunts for our first time and that was fun. anyways love your channel, my son loves watching. its a channel he comes back to often![DOUBLEPOST=1449794216,1449793886][/DOUBLEPOST]

I get some 'hey check out my channel' stuff - and I'm generally okay with that. (I often DON'T check out their channel though). But if other people want to, by all means go ahead. My gain is the comment and the view - which helps to create a community.

Also keep in mind - Viewer Session Time is starting to be a bigger factor... so if someone comes to YouTube watches your video and then watches another 2 hours of stuff on YouTube from that one session, that's good things for your channel because you brought them in. (At least that's what I've been told is being worked on.)

Yeah I had some kind of orientation meeting last month and Youtube rep told me to work on the annotations and cards. she mentioned if people watch more videos after watching my video, that it would help my video/channel somehow. So yeah I guess I shouldn't be so hesitant to respond to all the comments. Thanks!

 

[FamilyToyReview]

Don't woory too much about ur comment section. Smaller youtubers get spammers and people wanting to sub4sub, but once you get bigger it can get worse! Haters, trolls, loads of people saying first, even death threats if u have a lot of haters... Most people won't even comment something relevant when u get bigger (100,000 subs), just people thirsty for likes on their comment lol

I hope not! hopefully the worst we'll get are complaints from kids who are upset we mispronounced their favorite shopkins character. these complaints are my favorites actually, hard to get upset at kids who take their toys very seriously.

 

[markkaz]

My son loves your channel... So he's been watching your snap rides video over and over so much that i've caught him repeating some of the words.

Yes, it's me =)
I'm glad that your son is enjoying the channel. Since I know that the repeat what I say, I definitely keep it family friendly. I won't even use the word 'stupid' because many families don't like their kids using that word.

Congrats on acquiring a Treasure Hunt!

As for your discussion, This is an example of a comment this morning. The channel is only a few weeks old, clearly trying to become a toy unboxing channel, and leaves the following comment.

I didn't delete it today but I will be watching for him in the future. If it's another generic comment like that, I will just ban them. It's like spam that doesn't add anything to the discussion.