So you want tips to maintain your fan base eh? Well pull up a chair and pay attention!
As we all know, this is one of the worst generations for "loyalty" - people are so inundated with information and visuals that they flit from one place to another like an adhd butterfly on crack.
As a result, it is a bit foolish to think that there is any "loyalty" in the majority of people who subscribe to you. Many subscribe and then never check the persons stuff out. I admit I am guilty of this. I check stuff out because I like the person, not because I have subscribed to them.
You will also find a lot of "fair weather" followers. They follow you if you are generating new content but as soon as you stop they start to.. leave. I know it's discouraging but it is like that everywhere on the social media community.
I know a while back I was having a bad reaction to antibiotics - I was out of commission for 2 weeks - I lost about 9 followers, simply because I was not able to output videos on a consistent basis. It sucked, but as soon as I started to submit again more people started to follow me. I have had a pretty uphill climb so I can't really complain, but when you are just starting out, it can be pretty frustrating.
-----
So what can YOU do to keep your subscribers? Well let us find out!
1) Submit consistently - Yes this is the most annoying one I know. Sometimes life gets in the way and we simply don't want to. If you are a big channel you can often tell people when you are going to be submitting - maybe once a week or once every 2 weeks - and they will most likely stick around because you have given them a routine to follow. If you submit every couple of days then well.. you're going to have to stick to that.
2) Start to Queue your submissions - if you know that you submit a lot, and you simply don't want to submit certain days, or you are sick, on vacation, have a life, etc., you might want to consider making multiple videos in one period of time, and queuing them to appear on specific dates. That way you minimize the work to maybe a couple days and the rest of the time it's just a matter of posting them.
3) Advertise, advertise, ADVERTISE! - soo important! As soon as you finish, share it on every single social media platform you can! Use those tags!
4) Have a fan page that people can join so they can keep up to date - let's be honest - subscribing to a person when you subscribe to hundreds or thousands of people is NOT going to get those people to check out your stuff, and they may even forget you exist! So get a fan page, whether its on facebook or whatnot, and collect fans that you can constantly keep up to date in a way that is not annoying to them!
5) Make lots of playlists! - A LOT of the exposure you will get on youtube will be from other people linking your stuff to playlists and thus getting you spilloff exposure from that. Also you making playlists will help to sort your work, and have people check out your other work. I actually have a playlist of ALL of my work HERE and I simply add every new video to it so that people have a very easy way to view my stuff!
6) Make inverted playlists - a lot of people won't scroll through a playlist of hundreds of videos - so if you are going to simply link people to a playlist then make sure that every new video you make you place at the TOP of the playlist, and that way people with short attention spans will always have your newest song to listen to FIRST. Like THIS.
7) Know WHERE your fans are coming from - this is crucial! If you are advertising on reddit or twitter (or in the intro thread of this forum) for people to follow you - those people are what I generally call "novelty" followers. They may follow you just because you asked them to - or sub 4 sub - but they GENERALLY aren't interested in you as a person, only in exposure they might get from you. Fail to submit consistently or fail to reciprocate and you will start to notice them dropping like flies.
8) Know WHERE to find quality fans - you want people to follow you who are ACTUALLY interested in what you do. This can be hard. Your close circle of friends is always one such avenue, but it feels less, genuine when people you already know are following you - kind of like your mom following you. If you make gaming videos then advertise in a gaming forum, if you do how to videos then a how to forum or group, etc.
9) BLOG! - Yes yes I know.. groan, blogs. Most blogs suck. Let's just get that out of the way - but as the internet has evolved new types of blogs have come to the forefront. My favourite one to use atm is Niume as it allows you to gain hype and voting weight the more you participate, and it is very visual oriented - and you can submit in circles - so you don't just feel like you are tossing your output into the void, and you can see the amt of people who are viewing your stuff - it's very encouraging!
10) Find ways to keep yourself in the spotlight - this is probably the most important of all - people will continue to follow you as long as you are still in the spotlight - somewhere. ANYWHERE. For example look at me. I write you guys advice threads, but it also doubles to allow my links to be floating around on this site like THIS and THAT and to keep me in the spotlight so people know I exist and subscribe to me - you scratch my back, I scratch yours
And that's about it! I realize that I might have not been doing all of these MYSELF, but I have the freedom to choose how fast or how slow my growth occurs, and some of these I have discovered only by falling into the pitfalls myself - it's a learning process, and it's also a team effort!
-----
and that's my advice to you all - hopefully it helps!
P.S. - if you wanna help me out, then please link this in your sig, so that you can help other people with questions they would normally make threads for asking the answers to
-chronamut-
As we all know, this is one of the worst generations for "loyalty" - people are so inundated with information and visuals that they flit from one place to another like an adhd butterfly on crack.
As a result, it is a bit foolish to think that there is any "loyalty" in the majority of people who subscribe to you. Many subscribe and then never check the persons stuff out. I admit I am guilty of this. I check stuff out because I like the person, not because I have subscribed to them.
You will also find a lot of "fair weather" followers. They follow you if you are generating new content but as soon as you stop they start to.. leave. I know it's discouraging but it is like that everywhere on the social media community.
I know a while back I was having a bad reaction to antibiotics - I was out of commission for 2 weeks - I lost about 9 followers, simply because I was not able to output videos on a consistent basis. It sucked, but as soon as I started to submit again more people started to follow me. I have had a pretty uphill climb so I can't really complain, but when you are just starting out, it can be pretty frustrating.
-----
So what can YOU do to keep your subscribers? Well let us find out!
1) Submit consistently - Yes this is the most annoying one I know. Sometimes life gets in the way and we simply don't want to. If you are a big channel you can often tell people when you are going to be submitting - maybe once a week or once every 2 weeks - and they will most likely stick around because you have given them a routine to follow. If you submit every couple of days then well.. you're going to have to stick to that.
2) Start to Queue your submissions - if you know that you submit a lot, and you simply don't want to submit certain days, or you are sick, on vacation, have a life, etc., you might want to consider making multiple videos in one period of time, and queuing them to appear on specific dates. That way you minimize the work to maybe a couple days and the rest of the time it's just a matter of posting them.
3) Advertise, advertise, ADVERTISE! - soo important! As soon as you finish, share it on every single social media platform you can! Use those tags!
4) Have a fan page that people can join so they can keep up to date - let's be honest - subscribing to a person when you subscribe to hundreds or thousands of people is NOT going to get those people to check out your stuff, and they may even forget you exist! So get a fan page, whether its on facebook or whatnot, and collect fans that you can constantly keep up to date in a way that is not annoying to them!
5) Make lots of playlists! - A LOT of the exposure you will get on youtube will be from other people linking your stuff to playlists and thus getting you spilloff exposure from that. Also you making playlists will help to sort your work, and have people check out your other work. I actually have a playlist of ALL of my work HERE and I simply add every new video to it so that people have a very easy way to view my stuff!
6) Make inverted playlists - a lot of people won't scroll through a playlist of hundreds of videos - so if you are going to simply link people to a playlist then make sure that every new video you make you place at the TOP of the playlist, and that way people with short attention spans will always have your newest song to listen to FIRST. Like THIS.
7) Know WHERE your fans are coming from - this is crucial! If you are advertising on reddit or twitter (or in the intro thread of this forum) for people to follow you - those people are what I generally call "novelty" followers. They may follow you just because you asked them to - or sub 4 sub - but they GENERALLY aren't interested in you as a person, only in exposure they might get from you. Fail to submit consistently or fail to reciprocate and you will start to notice them dropping like flies.
8) Know WHERE to find quality fans - you want people to follow you who are ACTUALLY interested in what you do. This can be hard. Your close circle of friends is always one such avenue, but it feels less, genuine when people you already know are following you - kind of like your mom following you. If you make gaming videos then advertise in a gaming forum, if you do how to videos then a how to forum or group, etc.
9) BLOG! - Yes yes I know.. groan, blogs. Most blogs suck. Let's just get that out of the way - but as the internet has evolved new types of blogs have come to the forefront. My favourite one to use atm is Niume as it allows you to gain hype and voting weight the more you participate, and it is very visual oriented - and you can submit in circles - so you don't just feel like you are tossing your output into the void, and you can see the amt of people who are viewing your stuff - it's very encouraging!
10) Find ways to keep yourself in the spotlight - this is probably the most important of all - people will continue to follow you as long as you are still in the spotlight - somewhere. ANYWHERE. For example look at me. I write you guys advice threads, but it also doubles to allow my links to be floating around on this site like THIS and THAT and to keep me in the spotlight so people know I exist and subscribe to me - you scratch my back, I scratch yours
And that's about it! I realize that I might have not been doing all of these MYSELF, but I have the freedom to choose how fast or how slow my growth occurs, and some of these I have discovered only by falling into the pitfalls myself - it's a learning process, and it's also a team effort!
-----
and that's my advice to you all - hopefully it helps!
P.S. - if you wanna help me out, then please link this in your sig, so that you can help other people with questions they would normally make threads for asking the answers to
-chronamut-