Youtube channel owning dopers - any tips for getting yourself noticed?

Cafe Society
#1

I’m sure I could find answers to this on the wider internet, but I wanted to ask my fellow dopers.

I occasionally post youtube videos of myself playing particular computer games (without commentary for now. I’m not confident in my own skin enough to record my voice. I also despise the sound of my voice when I hear it back!)

I don’t do it for the attention (or at least that’s what I tell myself :slight_smile: ), I do it for something to do. I consider any attention or feedback the videos get to be a bonus.

But I also feel that getting attention/feedback is likely to be a motive to keep doing it and get better at it. So what I am asking is how do you get to a point where your videos have views in the thousands?

Each new video I upload, If I consider it good enough, I’ll post links to it on facebook and in the relevant game thread on this message board. This garners the video maybe 15 views (not counting my own). But I notice relatively bad videos in the same style as mine (someone playing a PC game without commentary) with almost a thousand views, and it makes me wonder if they are actively following some rules to get those views.

#2

Just giving this one bump on the off chance it picks up this time.

#3

I started or help maintain 10 YouTube channels. Some are very popular in niche areas, some barely get attention, which is ok with me. I don’t seek out attention beyond the niche areas, but I think the key to getting attention at all, besides posting where people who would like your channel congregate, is having good tags on your videos. Put every word you can think of related to what the videos are about in the tags. We’ve had obscure and limited-appeal videos get over 100,000 views simply because it appears in the Related Videos of other popular videos. It wasn’t designed that way, we didn’t set out to manipulate anything, it just happened because we had good tags.

If your videos do start becoming popular, please maintain the comments section. It doesn’t have to be taken over by dickheads and spammers, as so many are. It amazes me how people let their video pages be ruined or at least diminished by assholes. I’ve had people lament to me that a nice video they put up was overrun by jerks in the comments section. That would never happen if everyone just maintained their video pages. If someone posts spam or some racist, bigoted shit, you can delete those comments! I’m constantly marveling at how many people don’t realize that. If it gets really bad, you can change the settings so that comments have to be approved before posting.

Jerks, assholes, spammers and creeps could be banished from the entirety of YouTube, if people just took a couple of minutes every now and then to get rid of them. It drives me nuts why they don’t.

Anyway, yeah, tags, that might be the key for you.

#4

I run a partnered channel that’s gotten over 5 million views, and 4,000 subscribers, which also deals with videogames. Here’s what I would advice:

#1) You need to offer something people want. Pure gameplay videos are a dime a dozen; there’s little special about them, unless you can get them up before everyone else (see point #2.) Commentary can be a very good addition, assuming you have meanfinful or funny things to add (and make sure to pick up a good microphone–I use one that works great for us and was only about $100). Note that I’ve also hated–and I mean hated–my voice, but after hearing it literally thousands of times now, I’m totally used to it.

#2) Get it up in a timely fashion. Your video could be of the greatest thing in the world, but if someone already beat you to it, they’ll take all of your traffic. If you’re late to the party, find some way to make your videos more distinct.

#3) Headline, description, and tags. These are literally the most important things, and in that order (that’s how YouTube’s SEO treats them). The headline should contain words you think people will search for–find out what words yours competitors are using and steal them. Then be descriptive in the description and use any additional words that you couldn’t fit in the headline. Finally, tags–as Equipoise mention, list every word you can think of. Surround words that go together (like “video game”) in quotes to ensure people who search for those terms find your video.

#4) Be social. Respond to comments and questions! This engages people in your video, making it more likely they’ll subscribe to your channel and come back for more videos.

#5) Be consistent. Try to offer videos on a somewhat regular schedule so that people know to expect more soon.

#6) Promotion. Don’t be afraid to post or submit your video to gaming blogs or message boards. These can be a good source of traffic, assuming you have something worth showing.

#7) Finally, if you have the tools and skills, try to make your videos professional looking, with an actual intro and editing. These can go a long way in making your videos stand out above others.

#5

One other suggestion: if you have narration, transcribe it and subtitle it. It may seem like a pain, but with YouTube’s automatic translation tools, it will make your videos available to everyone in the world, in every language.

#6

I love the advice that has been given here. Thankyou very much guys! :slight_smile:

I do edit my videos to a degree using Windows Movie Maker (because it’s free and provides the tools for the edits I make) I didn’t initially. I’d used youtube’s captioning features in early videos. My latest few videos have been done with WMM so they have titles, and better captions where needed, and are edited (not heavilly - just to join things together and remove irrelevant beginnings and endings of clips)

It was my intention to avoid mentioning my channel in the OP, but if anyone’s curious it’s www.youtube.com/lobley2

Feel free to critique it/the individual videos. If you have something unpleasant to say, please be gentle :slight_smile:

My biggest hurdle is definitely the narration: I can live with hearing my voice (but still despising it) but what I find almost impossible to do is actually record it. I feel deeply embarrased doing it. It’s so bad that I even find it hard to leave people messages on answering services.

Also a sign of how difficult I find it to have my voice recorded - if I happen to be out filming something with my videocamera (something inoccuous like family members) I go silent. Trying not to speak. Sometimes I can’t avoid it though, and when I hear it back it’s not as bad as when I was a kid, but I still don’t like hearing it (“Geezus, is that what I sound like?!”)

#7

One thing I have wondered: Is asking for likes/comments/subs effective? I watch a lot of videos by popular vloggers (Ray Willam Johnson, Shaytards, the cod players - wingsofredemtion, whiteboy7thst, hutch, seananners etc…) and nearly all of them end a video by asking for those three things.

I like those people, but I find it a tiny bit presumptious to ask me to like a video. If I actually like it I’ll ‘like’ it, I’m not going to ‘like’ a video just because someone asked me to. I have to actually like it.

I understand that it serves as a reminder (if you like this video, remember to ‘like’ it). I am just wondering if asking for likes/comments/subs is effective?

In other words, should I do it myself?
(I’d probably add an ending note - “If you liked this video click like”)