I did a little test today, to see what would happen if I uploaded a short, text and audio only video to promote to the YouTube audience that I had written the article yesterday about the NES Classic. It’s a 26 second video clip that gives a very basic summary, and mentions if you want more details, click on a given link to read my article about it. As explained before, typing up a post is a hell of a lot quicker than making a video about something, but YouTube is an audience too big not to at least attempt to spread information to, and so the idea of cross-promoting such makes sense.
Just a disclaimer, this post, namely the title, is somewhat satire, but it does have a point. Also, total clickbait title. I don’t care, whatever gets views and gets the idea in peoples heads, right?
Within 30 minutes of the video being up, it was hit with the typical dislike. Now, that in and of itself is no big deal, but it just hit so perfectly timed that it makes you wonder, was it just the normal troll, or was it someone pissed that the video wasn’t the exact same “discussion” everyone else has whenever something happens in news – it isn’t like anyone average is going to have ANY different information than anyone else, no no, you come for opinions on the subject, right?
Well, I give my opinions better via text. Videos are a pain in the ass to make, as I said earlier. If I make a simple video saying “Hey, I wrote about this, go check it out” then why not go for it? Maybe the obsession with videos has taken over and much like how people read less once Radio, and later Television, took over, so too have people online started reading less since YouTube has gone big.
You care enough to search for this video, but you don’t care enough to read the article it’s linking to? What’s the point then?
That’s another article, maybe…. how YouTube has gone to crap over time.
My point here though is that it seems like cross promoting the YouTube audience to something else might NOT be the best thing, at least initially. I expect some negative reaction, and with the toxic nature of the gaming community, it’s almost certain to happen with any given post. I’m not surprised, even – I guess I just wanted to share the first elements of this little test, that sure enough, within 30 minutes of uploading the video, it got it’s first dislike; far faster than usual.
Whatever. Keep feeding me with new ideas.
Sadly people these days a lot of people do legitly hate reading so its hard to get views at all via YouTube, in fact back when my blog actually got comments most of them were saying I shouldn’t be writing stuff because it was unprofessional, boring and/or pointless.
The way I see it though is you can use something related to the article and link the article in the description, an example of this would be a short LetsPlay of one of the games that are going to be on the NES Classic. This is unlikely to get your blog views but shouldn’t get you random hate either.
I’m going to keep this up, namely in the form of “recap” videos that hit on subjects over the past week, month, whatever. The idea here though was to simply see how a “hot” subject would trend, and the reaction it would get, which has been not too bad, but the video did get the expected immediate hate. Go figure, right?
Cross promotion is a good concept, it’s just a shame that getting people to go from YouTube to something else somehow gains hatred. It’s honestly pathetic, but eh, majority rules, right? (wrong… lol)