by Nathan Stout
This 2010 Ranking Up Project is brought to you by Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes… They’re Grrreeeat! (not really).
For those of you who don’t know what the heck is going on Chris and I are looking at getting ourselves higher up on search engine results. We are looking at the two major ones: Google and Yahoo! We have been doing some extra tagging with our websites and messing about with external links back to our site and other ‘tricks’ which don’t seem to make an ounce of difference!
Today I am going to talk about a nifty tool on YouTube for checking out your audience and some interesting results when I search ‘According To Whim’ on the major websites.
YouTube has become THE place to go for online videos. When we started putting our videos on the site the quality of the video was iffy. I was never satisfied with the compression and most of our videos lacked any sort of definition in image. Since it’s humble beginnings YouTube has become the mecca for HD video. The got some new technology and can now handle some top notch high def quality. During the early days I was so unhappy with the quality of the video that I placed Microsoft Media Files of our sketches on the website since the quality looked so much better. Infact most of the Season 1 stuff is still downloadable off the site. Go here to see some of it!
Well, since the quality got so much better I started putting our show on YouTube in high definition (and have done so since). To this day we have somewhere around 47,000 views of our 165 different videos on YouTube. This sucks when you consider Miguel has more than 65,000 on one video ALONE. Chris thinks there are so many hits on this video because the subject is homosexual activity. Check it our here. So, why can’t we get any hits on our videos? We have some fairly entertaining junk on there. We can get some insight into this through YouTube’s ‘Insight’ link from inside your account. This is basically an analytical tool that you can use to see who has been looking at you videos, how often, and how long. Let’s take a look at the highest % of watched videos (out of our 165 videos):
As you can see ‘No Fireworks in the House’ ranks as the most watched video we have. However the analytical data ONLY goes as far back as 07, so it’s not totally accurate (but mostly). This tool also shows you how long people actually spent watching the video once they started it. As you can see ‘America’s Next Top Model’ has a lot of views, but it appears people quickly leave (probably after they figure out it’s a spoof).
The next tool shows you the demographics of your viewers:
We don’t seem to have a total grasp on the 18-34 year old demographic that is so cherished in the entertainment world. In fact our numbers leave me feeling a little proud. 35 – 54 year olds seem to like our stuff the best. That’s a cool range.
One of the other tools will tell you where your videos are most popular. In our case it’s the United States. Another useful tool tells you how people got to your video, if they followed a link into YouTube or just did a YouTube search, etc. There are also subscriber demographics that you can look at but we didn’t have enough data to make any sort of report.
Those are really neat tools and extra neat considering they are free. Do they tell you much about the way people watch videos on YouTube? Yes. From this info I can tell you:
- People don’t just randomly go look at videos (for the most part). They are looking for something specific.
- If you trick people into looking at a video (with keywords, deceptive titles, etc) they will quickly get out of your video and your potential message, audience is gone.
- Shorter videos seem to have higher ‘attention’. That is to say people will sit and watch one all the way through (since its short).
During the original experiment day I added a bunch of new keywords to several videos and kept track of their views. The new keywords didn’t do much (that what helps support my first point above). You have got to find that one hook and then keep your audience on the line once you got them. I think Miguel should do some advertising inside the description of the ‘Denial’ video. he has a lot of people looking at it (even if they are just looking for the cumshot) and he might find us a new fan or two.
One final point I’d like to make is about this blog. While searching ‘According To Whim’ on Google I found several websites that have lifted the blog posts from this blog wholesale. For instance this blog post about my hard drive disaster has magically shown up on this website. Apparently (from the slipshod look of the site) something just searches for keywords or something and then copies it automatically. I am happy the link to the actual blog remained intact.
This is annoying but at the same time it can be something great. Remember I discussed about how search engines will rank you higher if you have more links pointing back to your site? Well, this is a great way to do it and we don’t have to do anything! Its not too bad since there is a link but I have found (at least) one that doesn’t have a link back to the blog.
Here is the list of ‘stolen’ blog posts on other sites:
- Obama Birther Blog post
- Vending machine Memories Blog post
- Renegade Anime Memories Blog post
- Hard Drive Recovery Blog post
- The Importance of Lyrics Blog post
The daily blog might be the big break we need in the 2010 Ranking Up Project (brought to you by [not really] Red Lobster – For the sea food lover in you).
I don't know that I would find it necessarily annoying that somebody would re-post your work on their site. As long as they aren't trying to pass it off as their own it's fair game. Besides this is part and parcel of being published. What you write becomes part of the public discourse and is shared, quoted, and referenced. If anything you should find it flattering that someone thought enough of what you wrote to go to that trouble.