People of the uTubes and other social media, do you share your content elsewere?

[jamescutts 6925xp 1]

With @sundancer setting the ball rolling on questions I thought I’d bring one up of my own.

Fellow people of the interwebs and those who partake in creation of things on the uTubes and other places do you share your content on other platforms? If so where, when, how often and I a small tangent what?

I’ve noticed with the growth of our hobby the last few years and with now so many of us being “creators” that people naturally start sharing things more in more places, including sharing the same thing in many places, presumably in a effort to get more views, but does it actually make a difference? Statistically it appears to make very little difference to the youtube stats sharing on other platforms, external sources for me are consistently around 3-4% of views, I’ve one outlier at 7% which I did share in a few groups as an experiment but the majority of external views on that was from it being referenced via a blog.

Personally if I see a person sharing a link to their video (or whatever) in several facepage groups for example I’m actually less likely to watch it as I find it a bit annoying and desperate for attention, while if it was just on their twitter account of personal page/blog I probably will.

In a similar vein what do people share in addition to their main bits of content? I think we all like sharing general updates, in progress shots and even some new purchases for new projects but what’s a level you find acceptable? With the rise of so called “creators” I’ve seen there’s a lot more “look at what X company sent me” style posts, generally I’m pretty cool with that, but there are a few who seem to make it a challenge to try and get as much attention and free stuff as possible and I actually find it a bit off putting, cool you got some free stuff again, I’m now not that interested in it.

Where was I going with this? We’ll I was wondering if I was becoming a slightly older and grumpier git bemoaning people for i guess what could be simplified as attention seeking or is this a bit of a trend and the way things are going?

I should probably round off with a what I do and also what I like, having caved myself a nice little space on the utubes as much as an experiment to see how things work as it is a hobby of its own, I tend only to share things on personal spaces such as twitter/bluesky, I’ll also pop a project post up here as a way of sharing still photos in addition and also pop it in on the channel here too. I’m a fan of what Alex at Storm of Steel does, there’s a lot of updates on his personal feeds but generally he doesn’t spam communities and groups with his videos, unless its very specific to it, which feels like the right balance to me.

 

[sundancer 42985xp 2]

Things that I do:

• Streams on Twitch
• blogposts on my hobby blog
• share “in progress” pictures online.
• create “some” videos for *Tube

Where do I share this?

Streams on twitch

• Announcements here on OTT and on discord. VoDs then are put onto You- and PeerTube

blogposts on my hobby blog

• https://www.warmonger.de (who would have thought)
• Share that link on Mastodon and Facebook

share “in progress” pictures online

• PixelFed (federated Instagram alternative)

create “some” videos for *Tube

• On YouTube and on PeerTube

So mostly I share my stuff depending on what it is in different places. Some are connected like my blog autoposts to Mastodon and PixelFed and PeerTube are federated with Mastodon (meaning you can follow my content from any of those sites)

Only when I feel something is really good I share it in multiple places. (See April 1st)

I don’t mind when someone is earning a living with creating content if they put it up at multiple places but it doesn’t make me want to look at it more or less. If someone just does it as a hobby and is “info-dumping” it everywhere it can get annoying. But then again who am I to judge. I try not to be to judgemental even thought at times (especially when I’m in a bad mood) it’s hard sometimes.

Next!

 

[grantinvanman 2184xp 2]

Unfortunately, the content creation is a whole new “business model” now. It’s not just this hobby; I’m a musician, and the trend is for some people to literally NEVER have a band, gig, or make records – increasingly, social media is their ENTIRE “career”. One famous example is a guy who does lessons, has millions of followers, and became so famous Gibson has a signature Epiphone guitar attached to him! That’s just a radical shift.

Covid was a major driver of the online music trend as people looked for ways to discover new stuff. I think this has been a paradigmatic shift across many hobbies, pastimes, call it what you want. The long term effects of the shift are here to stay – until something new comes along!

Personally, I can’t stand social media, at all. It’s much as you feel: attention seeking, hey, look at meeeeee! vibe. Maybe I’m old and grumpy, like you ? .  And I’m no “boomer” – do millennials realize “boomers” are nearing 80 years old at their one end? No, because millennials are too busy on their phones to do math? . I’m firmly a GenX, the slackest generation to come after the Greatest Generation since WW2.

But there’s no denying the uptake in online content. Take the train, or take the plane: or in this case, just go virtually?

It’s a strange new world. And I don’t like it. ?

[jamescutts 6925xp 2]

Great summary @sundancer! I do like how you put things in the places you’d expect. I sort of try and do similar.

I don’t mind when someone is earning a living with creating content if they put it up at multiple places but it doesn’t make me want to look at it more or less. If someone just does it as a hobby and is “info-dumping” it everywhere it can get annoying.

I think that summarises it very well, I also have no problem with those earning a living sharing stuff, its the “info-dumping” hobbyists that tend to be a bit overbearing, especially once they hit the point of getting free stuff I think they tend to start seeing it in the light of making money when in reality a few thousand subs and some free bits is peanuts.

I’d not thought of it from a generational side that much @grantinvanman I’m firmly in the back end of Gen Y or a millennial, though nearly all of us are now in our 30’s. Its the Gen Z and Alpha who I always view as on their phones 😀 When i think about it a lot of those “info-dumping” sorts I mentioned tend to be Gen X or older, those with more hobby time, maybe its a need to try and see number and statistics go up?

[warhammergrimace 13766xp 3]

I’ve been creating content of some sort as a private project such as Irregular Magazine and recently its YouTube channel,  as well professionally in my day job as a media creative for various corporate companies for several years.

What I’ve noticed is as a small YouTuber the biggest problem you have is getting noticed and building an audience. Which is why a lot of new Tubers will post on social media,  It does help to drive viewers to your videos. If you were sensible and started either before or during the pandemic it was a lot easier to build that audience because people were at home all day watching all kinds of crap.

Now when I’ve created content for other companies I don’t have the issue of building an audience because most are established and have a built in viewer base. You only need to post on the company blog and social channels such as Twitter. Also placing links in the company newsletter/email news works wonders.

I don’t have an issue if people post on Facebook pages/groups because this is no difference really than when folk would post on a forum site. Eventually once you’ve built a large enough and sustainable audience then you don’t need to post outside of YouTube.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  warhammergrimace.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  warhammergrimace.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  warhammergrimace.

[grantinvanman 2184xp 0]

@jamescutts – I definitely think there’s a generational trend line in here somewhere, statistically. I don’t have those stats, but it would be very interesting to pore over. Think of the “influencer” – that’s a trend that companies picked up on as a way to get virtually free advertising. Paradigm shift. Same with the death of cable versus streaming, and now the new cable style bundled streaming packages. I think it always comes full circle. “Vintage and Retro” which sound hip to the kids, but the older ones just say, “that’s just a re-brand of (whatever)”.

Time is an interesting take on it. Maybe those of my age group do have more time to do what we want? I have one friend who does massive amounts of content creation, because his kids are grown, he’s approaching retirement, and he sees that as his time filler. I was retired young, and have found other ways to fill my time. The “meaning of life” “legacy of my existence” and other big questions weigh heavily when the days are long, trust me.

Definitely lots of angles to approach the conversation. Interesting!

[jamescutts 6925xp 1]

That is a very fair point @warhammergrimace it can be very hard to be noticed unless all your thumbnails have some sort of having a poo face with a white outline proclaiming the death of G’Wulla 😀 What sort of percentage of traffic do you see coming from external stuff, I’d be curious to see if you have one that’s higher?

For the most part I don’t have a problem, I think its just the repetitive posting of the same thing in many many places (Facebook groups are the worst for it) just to try and drive that growth, when the authors contribute nothing else to those communities that give me that, oh great this is now the 6th time ive seen this feeling.

Fair game posting some though about a specific game in the group for it though, I did some early experiments with this myself, it did see higher rates for external views, upto 20% but the views overall where lower than those i just left to let utube do its thing and didnt have more subscribers than average. I remember @sundancer doing some experiments with shorts and panzerkaput experimenting with the same video but with warhammer in the title 😀

Sorry that probably sound like im really into the numbers, when in truth i couldnt care less, for me the channel is a expansion of the hobby to share stuff, and a experiment to see how the whole utube thing works 😀 I just find it interesting along with working out the right level of social and sharing to aim for.

 

[warhammergrimace 13766xp 2]

It’s about 25% depending on the topic,  it’s more about pushing the views up do the algorithm picks the video up. Also don’t post in the pages all in one day either. Plus don’t post until the video has been on YouTube at least 2 days.

Running a channel on YouTube is a whole different beast than any other form of content creation. YouTube is. literally it’s own eco-system, that you constantly need to understand and be abreast of new changes. Long gone are the days of just upload and forget.

Personally if I was going to create a channel to earn living from I wouldn’t choose this hobby. It doesn’t earn enough,  there are far more lucrative sectors.

As for free stuff I get sent items all the time but it’s not because of the YouTube channel,  it’s the magazine which I’ve run since 2009. Using it to create video content is just a bonus for me because it’s either stuff I’d never buy or my bank balance wouldn’t allow me to.

If you want to make a living in this hobby then you need to chase the GW money. Games Workshop content generally does much better numbers than any other hobby content,  even when you’re just ranting about how shitty they might be.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  warhammergrimace.

[grantinvanman 2184xp 2]

@warhammergrimace very interesting insights – thanks for sharing that.

 

If you want to make a living in this hobby then you need to chase the GW money. Games Workshop content generally does much better numbers than any other hobby content,  even when you’re just ranting about how shitty they might be.

??? – think I just found my niche!

Vanman’s Anti-GW Rantings, man!

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  grantinvanman.

[warhammergrimace 13766xp 2]

– think I just found my niche!

Vanman’s Anti-GW Rantings, man

????????

[grantinvanman 2184xp 2]

Who says good things don’t derive from discussions on the internet? ?

[limburger 21714xp 1]

anti gW rantings ?
I think someone named discourse  (sp?) on the youtubes already covered that …

Spiffing Brit did a couple of videos/experiments on youtube views :

And like companies that exploit the google search engine to get more views … that’s something that has been done and will be done again and again. Some folk get lucky, but the rest end up at the bottom of the pyramid scheme to ultimate popularity (while us as consumers have to deal with search results that get less effective every time).

There’s bound to be loads of tricks to learn from advertising in general that will apply to social media.

Possibly related : at which point do you as a content creator consider it to be ‘enough’ ?
Is getting to the top X of most popular content creators your goal ?
Or are you happy with a more realistic target ?

 

My own youtube subscription list feels like the Bruce Springsteen song :  “56 channels and nothing on …”
Because at the end of the day there are only so many hours I can spend consuming content. No amount of marketing is going to change that. Some get lucky and manage to create consistently interesting content on a weekly basis, but the vast majority tend to have just a few videos that are interesting.

I’m sure marketing experts have words and statistics for that sort of thing, because that’s what they’ve been doing since the days of printed media. And it’s not like any of that has changed except perhaps the quantity.

[warhammergrimace 13766xp 2]

YouTube is built on an algorithm that will show you videos of interest based on what you watch. Then it’s down to the video title and thumbnail as to whether or not you click on it. Then once you click on it generally most people will decide to continue watching or go elsewhere within 30 seconds.

YouTube is an odd site because it behaves differently to other sites. It has it’s own eco system which is based around the algorithm. Also YT makes regular changes that affects how you do things on the site.

You need to find a niche within your chosen subject and slowly build from there. On average it takes 2-3  years for the average channel to reach monetization. Now some get lucky and go viral straight away. Now this sometimes can be a double edged sword, where you either continue to get high views or they suddenly drop off.  It’s actually better to slowly build your audience and viewing numbers.  The reason being is if you have a bad video it won’t affect you as much as it would if you were an. overnight success

There are other marketing ploys you can do but most of those are better employed once you’ve built an audience, such a Patreon, email subscription, merchandise and other such things like running competitions or giveaways. The only marketing I would suggest doing before you’ve built an audience are running Social Media channels. Yet don’t do all of them find out which ones those within your hobby use the most.

 

[grantinvanman 2184xp 0]

Just to be clear: I have ZERO intention of actually doing a YouTube channel ?

 

 

@limburger or to quote Pink Floyd – “I’ve got 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from (choose from…)”

@warhammergrimace – always interesting comments on this. ?

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  grantinvanman. Reason: m

[limburger 21714xp 0]

I’ve disabled that ‘personalised view’ bit on youtube (it keeps me reminding I have it disabled).
Videos I see listed do appear to be based on similar content though, although for some reason there’s the odd weird one in there that makes zero sense (to me).

I’d rather watch channels/creators that focus on doing one thing instead of those that try to chase the algorithm.
The latter inevitably use click bait titles that never tell me what exactly they have in their videos, so I tend to avoid them.

“the thing that company X doesn’t want you to know about”
“top x things you didn’t know about Y”
“I did this and an amazing thing happened”
“I did invited X on stage and they wowed the crowd”

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