Thursday 18 October 2012

Feeling ignored again

OK, different post this morning, devoid of videos, although I'll post another one in a bit - this is on the mini-tablet so i can't embed so far as i know (and it keeps autocorrecting my "i's", which is annoying.

This might be a bit stream-of-consciousnessy.

The situation is this:  i have now been posting YouTube videos daily for about a month, having abandoned my previous policy of deleting videos which get fewer than 144 views in the first week.  As it happens, a few of those would've gotten through that process.  The reason for this policy is that my awareness of stuff that's "out there" being ignored saps my energy and causes me to project all sorts of interpretations onto the silence.  I have no idea how good or bad the content is because i can't tell how people are reacting to it or even if they're seeing it.  I have found that if i share things on Facebook or Google Plus, they tend not to generate views unless there's a personal connection, or at least i think i have.

When i look at the advice given to generate views, i find i'm following it to no avail.  Moreover, and most tellingly, since i've been doing this, i haven't gained a single subscriber.  I had twenty-seven at the start, which dropped to twenty-six, then i picked up one who was a friend in "real life".

This is all the more baffling given the fact that the other channel is still going strong and has views for each video running into tens of thousands within weeks in spite of no effort to share, post links or follow any of the advice given about increasing subscribers, which have climbed steadily and are now at about a hundred and twenty.  But i just don't care about that channel.  It's there to make sure people do that thing safely after Wikipedia deleted the safety advice along with the entire article on the practice a couple of years ago.  There's no reason to add to it - it's an entirely closed subject and is restricted in purpose.  It does what it sets out to do well, but nothing more needs to be added.

So i'm now asking you, the readers of this blog (and i wonder if you even exist - maybe this is just a private diary) - what am i doing wrong?  I have a clear aim for the channel to post one educational video a day, with interesting stuff going on in it rather than just a talking head.  I have links on Facebook with a vibrant and relatively large educational community who do actually use YouTube for that purpose, and i'm prepared to accept that it might be a slow burner.  Part of my motivation for persisting with the channel is that both the children are now at college and i notice that people tend to link to others' content without creating their own, which always strikes me as odd but i presume it's lack of time.  Time is always something we have in spades.

Right, so please be brutal.  What's wrong with my YouTube channel?  Why am i not gaining subscribers?  How do i fix this?  Is the content just naff?  If so, how can i improve this?  Please don't hold back because you want to spare my feelings.  If you remember the wiki, you know what will happen if i continue to experience silence:  i will automatically project the worst and most self-destructive scenario onto that silence.  Yes i have a life other than this - the herbalism is, unfortunately, going really well right now, although of course not well enough, and the books are advancing towards completion, including the second edition of 'You Could've Thought Of That' - but if i don't get some kind of feedback on this, i will have no idea of how to improve the content and simply continue to spin my wheels in a silent, dark void.  I need traction.  Please provide it.

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